Shelter | The Drawer Productions

I have always been a snoop. My mother will attest to my seemingly supernatural ability to spoil even the most covertly organised surprise. And coming from a regional town I am a gossip by osmosis. So, The Drawer Productions’ Shelter: The Immersive Experience (which debuted at this year’s Anywhere Festival to great success) was perfect for me. And while the company was only founded this year, The Drawer Productions are producing work at a quality far beyond their years. This works follows Sophia Chapman (played by Keely Woods) as she investigates the condemned bunker she inherited from her recently deceased mother and uncovers four decades worth of family secrets.

Woods sets the work in motion entering the foyer in-character and talking to audience members as we’re all old friends. We had a brief discussion that somehow ended with me outlining my ethical qualms with RuPaul’s Drag Race and the two of us had bonded before we even entered the bunker – guided by a hilariously awkward real estate agent. Once inside the spectres of the Chapman family (played by Lola Bond, Oscar O’Brien, Dimitri Politis, and Bridget Webb) arrive in the space and the story of their time underground begins to unfold.

Keely Woods as Sophia Chapman. Image supplied by The Drawer Productions.

I can’t tell you too much more about what happened once we were inside because this show is full of spoilers. Literally. Piecing together the entire story is something you can do using objects and scraps of paper found all throughout the created space. Something I perhaps did too well as I was the one to come across most of the major artefacts throughout the night (yes, I am very proud of myself, how could you tell?) However, I have been binge watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries on Netflix lately, so I cannot be held fully responsible for my expert sleuthing.

Despite the fun of mystery solving and an in-show scavenger hunt, Shelter at its nucleus is quite sombre. We watch on as three generations of women seek to understand each other. We see mothers and daughters gain and lose each other over the course of four decades. We see the expansion and contraction of a family’s heart as these women seek to be unlike each other for the sake of healing, but only end up inflicting different kinds of harm upon each other as a result. We see the last living Chapman grapple with the feeling of losing a family member upon learning a fuller truth of their lived experience. And the complexity that comes with a simultaneous feeling of having found a new one, but only when it was too late.

All five performances were given with generosity and a depth of detail that was on par with that of the set. Woods was the stand-out not only because I spent the most time with her throughout the work, but because of how well she adapted to my seemingly never-ending discoveries. All of which I presented to her almost immediately after making them. The extent of her adaptive prowess was revealed in a chat we had soon after the work ended. Woods informed me that one of the discoveries I made (probably the most significant of the work) usually isn’t brought to her attention until the end of the show – I found it within 15 minutes. However, I was deemed “the fun-est audience member ever” by Woods as a result of my eagerness to snoop and so I harbour no guilt regarding my nosiness.

Intricately woven, utterly impressive, and a crash-course in ancestral healing. Shelter deserves all the success it has had commercially and critically, as well as the success I am sure is coming in the near-future. I am so glad I was able to experience this work.