Kristine Landon-Smith briefs the audience prior to the performance on the innovative technique of “headphone verbatim” also known as “audio-scripting” and “recorded delivery”. Developed in the USA by Anna Deveare-Smith and Mark Wing Davey in the 1990s, the technique aims at capturing the authentic voice of ordinary individuals as they tell their story, eliminating interpretation by either writer or actor as far as possible.
The cast interviews their chosen subjects extensively, recording then editing their stories, rehearsing the edit while listening to it through headphones and finally re-enacting it with headphones on stage. This process ensures that actors capture the exact speech pattern, the changes of pitch, the hesitations, the repetitions, the laughs, the inferred gestures and facial expression that authenticate personal testimony. The flexibility of this process makes it an ideal way of responding quickly and inclusively to topical issues.
In I Walk in Your Words the issue of identity and belonging in the remarkably conformist and controlling Australian society is under scrutiny. The testimonies of ordinary Australians from different cultures, backgrounds and circumstances shrewdly bypasses the pseudo-myths and soothing phrases of the dominant social group. The actors, as cast member Nick Hassemann says, must take care to re-enact the stories entrusted to them by their vulnerable subjects with integrity and respect.
Initially it is a surprise to be confronted by actors perched uncomfortably on high stools wearing sizable on-ear headphones. However, this visual clumsiness vanishes quickly as we become engrossed in the way individuals grapple with their world. The painful conflict between wanting to belong as an Australian and yet not surrender cultural difference that typifies migrant experiences occurs differently for each individual. The most moving of all is the testimony of an Indigenous man, bewildered by the incomprehensible intransigence of a government which retains the name “Australia Day” for January 26.
Interestingly, the performance also gives voice to the public housing residents of the Waterloo Estate. Powerless to prevent the destruction of an historically significant community, a site of Aboriginal and working-class activism, a word-weary resident is unable to process the erasure of his home and identity. His tone, his gesture says he no longer has the energy but simply surrenders to a callous government.
While the technique of headphone verbatim lays the basis for “real” encounters with distinctive and usually unheard stories, the dedicated and skilled cast, Lily Black, Yerin Ha, Nicholas Hasemann, Elliott Mitchell, Mark Paguio, Jenns Radda, Laila Rind and Nikita Waldron, bring a passionate conviction to the process. While any performance is a construct, Landon-Smith’s pared-down presentation wisely supports the aim of objective testimony.
