Black Is The Colour - Melbourne Fringe Festival review

New theatre company Deafferent Theatre is just a little bit deafferent, in that they create new and engaging pieces of work for hearing and deaf audiences. For their first production, presented as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, they have chosen Daniel Keene's Black Is The Colour, which is performed entirely in Auslan.

The story revolves around two friends and their experiences with domestic violence. Catherine (Anna Seymour) is a victim of physical abuse from her husband, while her best friend Irene (Hilary Fisher) struggles to makes her understand the situation she is in. This production results in a unique exploration regarding loss of voice: in the text, the two characters have lost their voices and in reality, so too have the people of the Deaf community. There are some powerfully directed scenes by Jessica Moody where the characters express their rage and frustration by letting out a scream only to have the room remain empty with silence.

Black Is The Colour | Deafferrent Theatre | Melbourne Fringe Festival interview

Deafferrent Theatre is another emerging theatre company that is making their debut at the Melbourne Fringe Festival with Australian playwright Daniel Keene's Black Is The Colour. The difference here, and as the name might suggest, is that the performance is presented entirely in Auslan, and captioned in English. Deafferrent theatre aims to create theatre that is accessible to hearing and deaf audiences and to attract new audiences to the world of theatre.

Usually, there are enough nerves from just performing a show, let alone performing your inaugural show during one of Melbourne's biggest festivals. "It's simultaneously thrilling and completely nerve-wracking!" says Ilana Charnelle Gelbart, one half of the team at Deafferent Theatre. "Jess and I have been planning this company for nearly two years so it's very exciting to finally see our theatre 'baby' taking its first steps out in to the world!"

Under My Skin review

Presented as part of the 2016 Next Wave Festival, Under My Skin is a new dance/performance piece that explores how we choose to present ourselves to the world and to consider the things we prefer not to reveal. However, what makes Under My Skin stand out from any other show is that the company behind this, The Delta Project, use both deaf and hearing dancers in its productions. 

With that in mind, there are visual and lighting cues for the four dancers (Anna Seymour, Amanda Lever, Luigi Vescio and Elvin Lam) to follow, but there were no discernible moments where I was able to notice these occurring, as all the dancers seemed to be intensely in tune with the movements of each other and of their own bodies. There was a definite sense of trust among them, which allowed the emotive choreography by Jo Dunbar and Lina Limosani to work so well among the dancers and make their performances all the more powerful.