QUICKFIRE FRINGE: #9. Power Ballad
★★★☆☆
Empowering feminist theatre is all around and Power Ballad is no exception. Julia Croft's solo performance incorporates karaoke, movement and live sound recording to create a bold piece of performance art that truly reaches out and tests it's audience.
Who's it by?
Power Ballad is presented by Zanetti Productions, a company which
"celebrate otherness and sends audiences into the world with a spark in their heart".
The piece itself was created by and stars Julia Croft, a contemporary performer from New Zealand. She considers herself to be a "task based performer" with a messy aesthetic that utilises colour, comedy, excess and creates the "feeling of a party".
What happened?
Having pre-empted a funky, energetic, interactive piece (as well as being very excited by the prospect of karaoke) I was very surprised by the opening section of the performance. The cold, dreary underground vibe of the space was filled with a long section of Croft maneuvering her body around the room, using microphone (later using a loop pedal to layer the created sounds) to create different sounds from her body; breathing, speaking, tapping and stroking audience members, ultimately creating a very visceral soundscape. With her face draped in a scruffy, long, black wig, moving in an almost demonic way, her initial performance is something I couldn't help compare to "The Ring's" Samara, and the distancing nature of it all left me feeling like I'd stumbled into an underground club without an invite.
Things later picked up - there was an entertaining sequence in which she categorises different things into "facts" and "feelings", and of course, as promised, there a trio of karaoke songs including Pat Benatar's "We Belong". Yet somehow it took a lot to lift the mood of the room out of the near discomfort of the start. Perhaps if this wasn't the first thing people experienced in that show then it would encourage a more open response to the rest of it.
I found myself conflicted with the performance in that I felt I was seeing something that is likely a very interesting and successful piece of theatre, yet it just didn't encouraging receive the intended audience response. Something about it was perhaps just a little too forceful and failed to connect to this specific group of people, leaving the the karaoke moments in which Croft reaches out her microphone to the audience, invite them to sing, to fall flat and becoming an uncomfortable few minutes of silent instrumental. She was baring all to her audience yet for some reason, it just didn't really work this time.
Although I didn't quite enjoy the experience at the time, there is definitely something about this piece that I was intrigued by, and I have a lot of admiration for Croft's boldness as a performer. I have no doubt she'll continue to reach out and hope I'm able to see more of her work in future.
