Public Bunnies flyer design by Mickie Quick
I went to see Public Bunnies; (Op. 3 in C# Minor) at PACT last Friday. It explores the rules and rituals we impose on ourselves by creating an elaborate society in which old underwear is treated with the highest of importance and status. The concept is quite strange but it works, and it works well.
Public Bunnies begins and ends in the theatre but the majority of the work is an interactive exploration of the entire PACT lot, expertly transformed into a junkyard outpost. The audience here becomes a part of the society it is exploring. You could walk amongst the goings on and characters in this world, and at times characters would reach out and interact with you directly. A resident mystic had an in depth conversation with me about what the colour of my underwear meant would happen in my future. With this form of interactive structure there are always bottlenecks in certain places, meaning you don’t get to experience everything, but that’s to be expected, and for the most part was dealt with quickly and without breaking character.
Director Michal Imielski’s self-composed drone-infused soundscape, combined with Aaron Clarke’s pulsating lighting design and impressive acting by PACT’s ImPACT ensemble immediately envelops the audience in this alternate world. The highlight for me though was the piano choreography in the theatre portion of the show. Members of the ImPACT ensemble rolled over, under and around a series of upright pianos with such precision that the distinction between human and piano was lost. The combination of instrument and human melded into one organic mass.
In my opinion, after having worked on a previous show of his called Blind as you See it, and now having experienced Public Bunnies, Imielski is one of the most interesting Australian based directors around at the moment. In the Public Bunnies program he says he treats the visual motifs of the work “similar to musical motifs. They are like musical notes or scales, with which one can compose a song or a symphony.” As a sound oriented person I think this is what appeals about his work. He also trends towards dark lighting and composes his own deep, thickly textured sound with elements of non-western instrumentation, all of which I am a big fan.
If you get the opportunity to see a later iteration of Public Bunnies or one of Imielski’s other directorial efforts I highly recommend going. Also, congratulations to PACT’s ImPACT ensemble of young artists for devising such an interestingly unusual work.
Tags: imPACT, Michal Imielski, PACT