Iris
Co-writers: Mish Fry, Clementine de la Hunty
Director: Clementine de la Hunty
The Actor’s Pulse Playhouse
September 18-21, 2024
Iris is the production of the Dead Fruit Theatre Company, a recently developed collective of three Wollongong artists, Mish Fry, Clementine de la Hunty and Dominic Hort and is part of the Sydney Fringe Festival, 2024. The staging of this one-hander is strikingly inventive making clever use of visual media to underline its exploration of evolving selfhood.
As Iris, performed by an appealing Mish Fry, erupts into the stage space, in an agony of self-blame for acting stupidly, we wonder what she could have done. Something terrible, it seems, as her mental distress translates into bodily anguish. It seems that her recent failure is one in a string of incidents where she feels she has made mistakes, beginning with accidentally breaking another child’s spongy ball in primary school.
A minor incident. Not at all. As Iris recalls the incident a greyscale version of her is projected onto the back wall showing us how deeply that memory is embedded in her self-representation. We watch her take an action she can see might be risky, but nevertheless can’t resist her impulse to squeeze the ball. Her frightened response when she damages it also lets us see where she stands with the group – outside it. After a recital of several incidents, told in a comical way, but nevertheless initially painful, she tries to reassure herself – and us – that she’s not that “person” as if one’s selves can be shed like leaves.
Also projected onto the back wall is another version of Iris, the negative inner voice, always critical, always undermining her efforts to find a balance, and unfortunately, more vibrant. She appears, self-confident and admonitory, dishing out unhelpful advice or mockery when Iris attempts an uncertain hopefulness and raking up painful examples of Iris’s ineptness when she is trying to ignore her past. When the really “bad thing” Iris has done is finally revealed, will the telling of it quieten Iris’s externalised internal critic?
As a theatre piece, Iris works well. The device of heightening the drama of the monologue by using projected images was an ingenious idea and effectively supported the psychological insight into Iris offered by the narration. It maintained interest and often provided a leavening warmth in an essentially melancholy story. As Iris, Mish Fry was perfect, unafraid to engage the audience through a direct and appealing eye contact and able to project the struggle to become a person her character could like and approve of, in an authentic way. A captivating fragility and wistful hopefulness garnered our own hopes for Iris to find the key to self-acceptance.
Stage manager/lighting operator/sound operator/Tech God, Domenic Hort managed the important timing of the visuals and shifting light and shade smoothly. Clearly, the three theatremakers work well together and we look forward to their next production.
