“Gives us space to laugh while we consider the enormity of this crisis.” Celia White on latest Vulcana production ‘IMPACT’

All images: Photographer Chloe Callistemon, art direction, Grace Law.

IMPACT is the latest large-scale ensemble work presented by Vulcana. IMPACT explores personal responses to the climate emergency and how we can act, find hope, create beauty, learn from each other and share ideas for change. It invites audiences to experience a performative world built on circus, dance, theatre, imagery and everything in between. Nothing Ever Happens in Brisbane sat down with Artistic Director Celia White to explore the creative process and collaborative mechanisms behind this new work of powerful beauty.

Every few years Vulcana presents one of these unique artistic projects, which brings together a large-scale ensemble of diverse skills and talents working in a collaborative fashion to unearth the stories and share them. The collaborative artists were found through community call-out and invitation. The show features a diverse cast of different ages and of cultures including First Nations and Pasifika artists and disabled artists. The Saturday 7th of October performance will also be Auslan interpreted, and the Sunday 8th will be audio described.

In IMPACT there are nineteen Vulcana performers including emerging and professional members of the community. Beauty and the Beats bring music and dance to trace Pasifika themes, with musicians Hope Haami, Lana Tukaroa, Eve Carol Nikolao and Bubz Kuinsilani. First Nations writers Aurora Liddle-Christie and Che Skeen add spoken word, poetry and performance art to the mix, while visual artist Vika Mana adds visual imagery, and Pasifika dancers Mariah Pelesa and Kara Kaisara add movement and dance.

“One of the things that Vulcana projects are interested in is the exchange between participants that happens. It’s an inherent learning process. Everyone has a different experience and knowledge of the current emergency, and there is so much information available that it is overwhelming, so this is more about unearthing our personal responses. We have left the data and looked at our own emotional responses, and what we think we can do. What is our collective action.”

It was very important to to the ensemble to create a show that contains both hope, and even comedy. In a population of whom many are already traumatised, sharing a range of emotional responses was imperative.  

“We present this to an audience, but we are not here to teach you but to inspire. We are not adding to the existing knowledge, but we asked our ensemble, and now our audience, to consider their own collective actions.”

The performance takes place outdoors by the riverbank. Audience members are encouraged to bring picnic blankets and camp chairs, as limited furniture exists onsite. It is not site specific in that it is not built on the site, but is transforming an existing site, in a park, on the river.

“The site is important but what is really important is where we are situating this piece of theatre, which is, under the stars by the river. The river is a really vital part of the stories of where the audience is coming from, the river fills the stories, it’s a symbolic connection between a city in the wrong place, and then this same river flows to the sea, connects to the islands in the Pacific that are already experiencing climate challenges.  

“We thought it was important to talk about the current impacts. They’re very personal stories of loss, not big generic world stories. The impact of seeing the aftermath of fires, witnessing the aftermath of a local flood, witnessing the loss of childhood environment and local neighbourhood, loss of natural environment. The reasons why people might come is that they will some beautiful music and imagery, experience an interesting new environment, the story may resonate. They don’t have to know anything to come and see circus theatre.”

The audience need not know anything about circus to come and see this piece of original circus theatre.

“Circus is an abstraction, it’s what we’ve been interested to do here, because we work in this form. Exploring how we facilitate storytelling and embody it, so that it is not just theatre but more than that. Some of the text is standing and speaking, some is delivered in more precarious and unexpected ways. Our favourite medium is circus so it was important to tackle this subject and how we tell these kind of stories through this modality. It will be really interesting to see how the audience responds a series of images, a series of tipping points.

The use of comedic elements was important and galvanising in its own way. People don’t respond well to being pummelled all the time.

“We have included some of the beautiful offers from the ensemble members, one of which was a clown character. To include comedic into this kind of storytelling, gives us space to laugh while we consider the enormity of this crisis.  
It might be funny.  It might not. We laugh.”  

IMPACT takes place 6-8 October at Vulcana Circus, Morningside.