a2 Company on going from Fringe Outsiders to Festival Firestarters (Melbourne Fringe Festival)

Not many Melburnians would have known a2 Company this time last year, but after taking home the Best in Theatre award at the 2024 Melbourne Fringe Festival for Running into the Sun, they’ve become a theatre company on everyone’s lips. Excitement is building as they prepare to return to the festival with their sophomore production, Motion Sickness.

It was an incredible season for the company, capped off by their win for Best Emerging Company. Toby Leman (composer and performer) and Ben Ashby (writer and performer) describe the experience as something like a fevered dream. "It still feels like a fairytale. I don't remember all the details from that night because it all happened so fast!" Leman says.

"Completely agree with Toby!" Ashby adds. "We felt like total outsiders going into last year's fringe. We started with almost nobody in the crowd and it grew steadily through the season from word of mouth. Honestly, it was everything you hope might happen at a fringe festival."

Fairly or not, receiving such recognition sets certain expectations and pressures from an audience perspective. It is something that has not gone unnoticed by the company and has coloured how they approached making Motion Sickness. "Well, the massive plus side is that we have been able to get some funding for this show off the back of that success. That has taken the pressure off the producing element, and afforded us more time and freedom in making the show," Ashby explains. "However, it definitely feels like more people are paying attention, and that adds pressure to the creative decisions."

"Winning these awards has created a precedent for our art making, which is usually screaming into the void," Leman adds. "Knowing that we are good, knowing that we have chemistry and the ability to trust our artistic judgements is invaluable in moving forward."

But enough about the past, and looking ahead to this year’s festival, Motion Sickness is their latest work, with text by Ashby and music by Leman, and both performing. Through a blend of text, music, movement, and projections, the show sits at the intersection of rave culture and existential dread, asking how we can hold on to our humanity in a world that feels increasingly inhuman. Here, rave culture is framed as a space where people confront, or escape, the “burning” problems of the world.

"Raving is intrinsic to corporate greed and neocapitalism. What else would we be trying to release but the throes and woes of dread and fascism," Lemans tells me. "The cognitive dissonance associated with raving, primarily its negative association with 'tapping out' and avoiding reality, is what makes it rife for discussions of the state of the world. Raves exist in direct opposition to the state of the world. Even Nero played his fiddle on the roof as he watched Rome burn."


Motion Sickness, as a title, captures both the exhilaration of movement and the disorientation of nausea. Leman and Ashby explain that the show is designed to take audiences on a specific emotional and sensory journey. "Motion sickness is generally a universal feeling, but there are nuances. It has an adjacent meaning similar to 'growing pains', about superseding comfort and familiarity to become authentic and activated in the world," Leman says "So our hope is not to have them feeling somewhere in between, but all at once."
 
The sentiment is, unsurprisingly, shared by Ashby. "We are throwing everything at them at once. I hope people leave feeling that off-balance euphoria you get from a reckless night out."

With their works' music and text so intrinsically tied together, it's like asking the age old question of which comes first, the oral or the aural? "I was listening to an audiobook about the end of the universe, and I realised I felt comforted by it, and then I was shocked that I found that comforting," Ashby recalls. "The world is so bleak that the end of it being completely out of our control is comforting. I didn’t like that feeling so I started writing about it."

"And as we moved through the rehearsal process, the music began to take shape in a way that lent the show more structure than the text," Leman explains. "The text predates the music, but the musical forms are intentionally continuous, meaning that they are more inflexible."

"Yes, to be honest the text is pretty formless and chaotic. Toby, Asha Barr (Stage Design and Projections), and Nadiyah Akbar (Rehearsal Direction and Choreography) have put the shape to the show with the music, movement, and AV design," Ashby says.

While the show is fuelled by frustration at the world's chaos, the ensemble is cautious to make sure that the anger lands without leaving their audience feeling hopeless or helpless. We're angry but not despairing," Leman confirms. "But we also can't make sure of any given emotional response to the show, just as how we were surprised at how strongly Running Into the Sun struck home.

"In reality, our audiences don’t need to be convinced that we are living in a terrible time for human rights and democratic rights, they already know it," Ashby says. "I think the job we have given ourselves with this show is to give some energy back to the people to remind them to keep going, to keep going, to keep going. The option to give up cannot be the option. We have to keep going, so we have to find joy."

Motion Sickness will no doubt leave its mark on this year’s Fringe. It's a work that doesn’t ask for easy answers, only that we keep moving toward them. Which means the only real question left is whether you’ll move fast enough to grab a ticket before the sell-out notices appear.

FRINGE FIVE FAST ONES


1. A song I could listen to on repeat forever is
Toby: Don't Wish Me Well by Solange.
Ben: Never Fight a Man With a Perm by Idles.

2. One object I can’t live without backstage is
Toby: a flushing toilet.

Ben: gaffa tape.



3. My favourite word is
Toby: schoolmarm because it gives me vocabulary to challenge my least favourite traits.

Ben: parsnip because it’s pinsrap backwards.



4. Something unexpected that brings me joy is

Toby: kelp.

Ben: parkour YouTube videos.



5. If I could live one day as someone else, it would be
Toby: David Seymour to totally and irrevocably destroy his constituency and appeal in politics.

Ben: Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender.


Show Details

Venue: Trades Hall, Cnr Lygon & Victoria Sts, Carlton
Season: 8 - 19 October | Wed - Sat 8:30pm, Sun 7:30pm
Duration: 60 minutes
Tickets: Full $34.50 | Concession $24.50 | Wednesday Hump Day $25.88
Bookings: Melbourne Fringe Festival

Images credits: Liam Barr and The Curly Garpher