Review - De Stroyed

De Stroyed

Based on a number of books and writings by Simone de Beauvoir including La Femme rompue/The Woman Destroyed.

Director/Co-creator – Suzanne Chaundy

Performer/Co-creator – Jillian Murray

Video Artist – Zoe Scoglio

Composer – Christopher de Groot

Production Manager/Lighting Designer – Andy Turner

Stage Manager – Lachlan O’Connor

AV Technician – Andre Vanderwert

45 Downstairs

16 – 27^th May 2018

Jillian Murray and Suzanne Chaundy have created a beautifully refined work based on their personal responses to some of the acute realizations of Simone de Beauvoir as expressed through her writing.   The themes seem, most pertinently, about the deep pain of betrayal in a marriage and some shifts in sense of personal power and vulnerability experienced through aging.   

Video Artist Zoe Scoglio and Composer Christopher de Groot sensitively and expertly support Murray’s delivery of the text.  Through video Murray’s face is penetratingly examined again and again.  This metaphorically mirrors the way Beauvoir examined her own thoughts, emotions and understandings. 

De Stroyed is staged as a static work dependent on the beautifully modulated and very clear vocal skills of Murray and the projected images on the simple white screens that surround her.  These could be viewed as the empty white pages of a book.

De Stroyed will probably be best appreciated by audiences who have some knowledge of Beauvoir, arguably one of the most brilliant Philosophers of the 20^th century.  However my plus one thoroughly enjoyed this production as a tantalizing introduction to her writing and is now very keen to read more.

At the very least this engrossing work pays rich homage to Simone de Beauvoir and her life examined.  It offers devotees of, and those interested in, this extraordinary woman, a very fine opportunity to reflect on some of her profound and illuminating insights.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - Shifting Ground

Shifting Ground

by Zoe Scoglio

Presented by Arts House

Concept/Performer/Videographer – Zoe Scoglio,Sound Designer – Nigel Brown, Set and Prop Designer – Zoe Stuart, Interaction Designer – Chris Heywood, Producer – Briony Galligan

Meat Market 19 to 22 July

This refined work requires a receptive open mind from its audience, who is ushered into a small reception room to receive a piquant glass of tea and choose an industrial or natural rock of their own, to then enter the small gallery of a performance space. 

In the intense, short but highly immersive forty-five minutes Zoe Scoglio engages, discovers, explores and plays with natural and constructed images of the forming, formations, and constructions of geological terrain.  Not a word is spoken and the audience is free to read into it what they will.

Performer, lighting, sound, image and projections are honed and melded to explore shifting interactions with the universe, earth and manmade construction. 

Throughout, it is the interactive mechanisms of sound and movement that are particularly intriguing and affecting.

Shifting Ground is a beautifully managed, sensitive and finely tuned collaboration of considerable artistic merit.

Highly recommended for those into, or wanting to experience, performance art.

Suzanne Sandow 

(For Stage Whispers)