CHRYSALIS FEST REVIEW: Queer Fish @ The Traverse
"queer fish
noun
British informal
an eccentric or odd person"
Skinny, Sweets and Baby live together in a dystopian reality, one that's a strong reflection of a lot of student culture today. They seem to endlessly party, going from dancing the night away to discussing and questioning whatever comes into their heads, and this basically carries right through the play, with some little peaks of drama along the way. The most prominently dramatic moment of this play however, comes right at the end. A suspicious parcel arrives with Sweets refuses to let Skinny open and in a haze of strobe lighting and blaring music Sweets, loses her temper, attacking Skinny and leaving her lying lifeless on the floor.
The play asks a lot of questions and strangely doesn't really go anywhere right until this end point and the attack comes slightly out of the blue - until then it feels more like we're just spectating these people exist. That being said, there are some nice moments within the piece and an interesting use of the space.
The three actresses Alice James, Roe Freeman and Gaia Webb, along with their stage manager, Lauren Butler, all devised this piece together as part of a project, without any real guidance from an "adult" figure, something which I think is really interesting.
I think as a piece of theatre and as a means of working there is a lot of potential for what they've done. The initiative to throw themselves into something like this is something that will inevitably leave some flaws, but ultimately creates much more opportunity to gain something from the experience as a whole. I think the use of a dramaturg or some other form of an outsider force later in the course of such a project could be very useful, giving the creators a chance to make something entirely for themselves whilst still being able to have someone look at it from a fresh perspective in order to really tie it together. At this point they are in their creative lives, I see no harm in taking a more free approach to theatre-making as people make the move into further education and beyond. It's a time for making decisions, making mistakes and ultimately learning from them in the purest way possible.
