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| Latai Taumoepeau explores climate change in Disaffected, a new multi-disciplinary theatre work premiering at the Blacktown Arts Centre. Photo: Katy Green Loughrey |
The best way to make people understand climate change, says performer-activist Latai Taumoepeau, is not to use maps, charts and diagrams. It is more immediate and more impactful, she says, to use the human body.
Taumoepeau is one of three performers exploring climate change in the Pacific region in Disaffected, new multi-disciplinary theatre work premiering at the Blacktown Arts Centre.
"Over the years, I've accumulated a lot of research from climate scientists and economists," says Taumoepeau. "It's such a huge issue on so many fronts. But I've come to the conclusion that the best thing I can do is to show people what it feels like to be impacted by climate change.
"What it feels like to have your homelands swamped. What it feels like to have to leave your land and culture behind, or to see the bones of your ancestors washed away."
Among other things in Disaffected, the human body becomes a metaphor for land and those Pacific nations facing inundation as sea levels rise over coming decades.
"We're trying to give the audience a way into ideas that are overwhelming," Taumoepeau explains. "We want them to come away with an awareness of the urgency of the issue."
Devised by Taumoepeau, who has Tongan heritage, Valerie Berry (an actor originally from the Philippines), Ryuichi Fujimura (a Japanese dancer) and director Kym Vercoe, Disaffected sees the Blacktown Arts Centre turned into a makeshift disaster shelter for an immersive exploration of what it is like at the frontline of climate change.
"It's going to be a very messy, visceral piece," says Vercoe. "The space is an old church hall and as soon as we saw it, we thought this is exactly the kind of place people are brought to in an emergency. It's perfect for taking the audience on an imaginative and emotional journey."
Instead of conventional seats, the room will be a sea of mattresses and tarpaulins, says Vercoe. "The audience is going to be in the same space as the performers while they unpack what it's like to be living in the kind of situation faced by people in the Philippines after [Typhoon] Haiyan, or by people in Fiji right now."
Disaffected is a blend of movement, dance, sound (composed by Tom Hogan) and material taken from interviews with people from Kiribati, the Cook Islands and the Philippines.
"The voices of those communities and what they have told us has very much influenced the piece," Vercoe says. "We are representing the whole Pacific region in this work. The cast is also bringing their own cultural backgrounds to the piece as well as their Australian sensibilities to the performance. So we have people who know what it is to live in relative privilege and wealth in Australia who also have strong ties to the region."
In some ways Disaffected draws on the practices developed by Vercoe with the Sydney performance company Version 1.0.
"But Version was a totally collaborative set up, so me calling the shots as director is a very different experience for me," Vercoe says. "So is working with people with a very strong movement and physical theatre background. But what I've always tried to do in my work is to unlock the doors for people to understand what is going on around them."
Vercoe hopes Disaffected will lead its audience to consider Australia's leadership role in the region and affirm the need for the country to ramp up its efforts in dealing with the effects of climate change.
"We're experiencing record heat and humidity, stronger storms and heavier rains. We've seen records being broken everywhere. But I don't think Australians can say we really understand the harsh reality of climate change. For some people in the Pacific region, life has become a never-ending cycle of devastation, rebuilding, and devastation again."
Disaffected is at Blacktown Arts Centre March 17-20.
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