TILT Program B review
In a breathless display of creative activity, the third-year graduating 2025 WAAPA Bachelor of Performing Arts (Performance Making) students wowed audiences at the Blue Room Theatre, Northbridge recently in their multi-talented production TILT.
An eclectic mix of singing, dancing and alternative performance theatre, TILT was the perfect showcase for the awesome talent of this year’s 2025 WAAPA Performing Arts’ graduates.
Held over the last two weeks of September, I was lucky enough to witness a performance from the second week of this disruptive and fascinating production.
Program B began with Requiem, helmed by lead creative Georgia Goff. The musical, featuring an impressive live band consisting of cello, guitar, drums and piano, is a sad lament for those who grieve. Whether it be a daughter crying for her sick mother, a man calling out to his silent God, or a painter who has given up everything for his unfinished canvas. Requiem showcases the vocal talents of Georgia Goff, Marshall Brown, James Brooks, Lulu Schiller and Natalia Smith.
Up next Walking With You, with lead creation by Ionia Venoutsos, lightens the mood as professional ‘shoelace-tiers’ Sockedile (Enya Lippert) and Twinkletoes (Georgia Langenberg) produce a mesmerizing comedic display in the vein of 1920s slapstick king Buster Keaton and Peter Pan’s Tinkerbell to help a mystified Jasper (Ionia Venoutsos) learn how to tie her shoelaces. This show is intended for young audiences of 4-6 years old, but proves just as effective for adults too!
The mood shifts somewhat in the third piece titled Bush Chook, written and directed by Hayley Perrin. The play is a dark depiction of coercive control and sexual assault played out in a remote roadhouse on the edge of the Nullarbor Plain, east of Perth. A disturbing account of one man’s efforts to take advantage of a younger, isolated woman, Matthew J. Young produces an outstanding display as Angus, 26, who is heading east to visit his dying father.
Young’s performance is complemented by Lea Simic who plays the young and naive Mary, 19, who after sharing too many drinks with Angus, enters a dark and dystopian world hidden beneath the initial laughter and drunken merriment.
After intermission, a set change reveals the next chapter in the program: the surreal and mystical Vivarium, featuring Ella Peeters and James Brooks as larvae-like creatures known as Bioma which slowly twist and interact with each other like slow-motion slugs. The mesmerising choreography and direction was helmed by lead creative Natalia Myślińska.
Entirely shrouded in complex, multi-layered red and orange tapestries that undulate and swirl in a slow dance on the stage, the Bioma slowly discover each other’s presence and revel in the new connection, complemented by a curious hare (Alex Franklin) and a large inquisitive dragonfly (Olivia Taliangis).
Finally, in Teeth, co-directed by Lachlan Ives and Peyton Hutchins, Program B comes to a crescendo as a large cast come together to worship The Creator, performed hauntingly by Joe Stevens. The characters show their love and respect for The Creator by ‘gargling’ an unknown liquid and spitting the remains into a silver receptacle at the front of the stage.
Those who cannot bring The Creator ‘gifts’ are known as the ‘giftless’ and are destined to remain outcasts in a commune where The Word rules and differences are punished with ruthless efficiency.
This entire production of TILT is a glowing testament to the talent and unique abilities of the third-year WAAPA Bachelor of Performing Arts (Performance Making) students. I look forward to seeing where these future theatre makers go.
By Mike Peeters Media