By Shamsiya Hussainpoor
THE RABBLE presents WAKE at Upwey’s Burrinja Cultural Centre, a heartfelt performance celebrating the beauty of aging – created in collaboration with women from the Yarra Ranges – the event will be showing for two nights only on Friday 25 and Saturday, 26 October.
The play is about a bold, surreal meditation on the body, death, loneliness, and ageing – part party, part surreal vaudeville show, part conversation and part town hall meeting.
‘Wake’ crew Lynette Forrest is one of the five elders ranging from their late 60’s to 70’s.
Ms Forrest’s highlight about the show has been the involvement of elder women from the Hills.
“It’s inspiring to see a professional theatre company of younger women eager to listen to older women’s stories and bring them to the stage because aging and the concerns that comes with it are often overlooked in theatres, so this opportunity to highlight those narratives is truly important,” she said.
“The older we get, especially for older women – the more isolated you get, the narrower your life becomes and often it’s a lot to do with poverty, but in this area, it’s a lot to do with distances and mobility.”
“There’s a lot in this cast that haven’t been done to theatres before – so it’s a really brave challenge for us to be heard, to be seen, and to be professionally produced on a stage in our local area.”
The new version of WAKE is co-authored with an ensemble of five older women from the Yarra Ranges region, representing a range of backgrounds and experiences as members of the mountain community.
Ms Forrest has been a resident of the Hills for 47 years.
She discovered a flyer on Burrinja’s Facebook page inviting people to meet and share their thoughts and opinions about their issues in the hills, their feelings about aging and dying.
“It really excited me, because I have opinions and experiences that I’d love to share it with the wider community,” Ms Forrest said.
“I was involved in theatre productions about 40 years ago, and now, here I am again, four decades later, embracing it all anew with fresh perspectives and experiences.”
Through an extensive co-creation process, the women are supported by ‘The Rabble’ to be brave, to celebrate and to reflect on the last trimester of their lives.
“I believe we live in an age-phobic culture, where everything—from beauty products to advertising—targets the young, and we tend to shy away from discussions about death and grief – this performance provides a chance to celebrate our lives and tackle those difficult topics in a light-hearted way, reminding people that they’re not alone,” she said.
“Grief is an integral part of life, whether it’s about pets, childhood experiences, or loved ones, if we go through life with our heads in the sand, avoiding it all our life, when grief arrives – we have no skills to cope with it.”
“We have a set ‘shelf life’ for grief, with a limited amount of time off for funerals, but for those who are grieving, there’s no timeline because it can resurface years later, reminding us that it’s a natural part of our experiences – a necessary process woven into love and life itself.”
Kate Davis and Emma Valente from The Rabble highlight that they wanted to explore the isolation and the invisibility that comes with getting older.
With the first work looking at the lives of women in the western suburbs of Melbourne, they wanted the second iteration of the work to explore the lives of those in a regional context.
“The Yarra Ranges is home to a wealth of deeply creative women, and we feel privileged to collaborate with five remarkable individuals from this beautiful community – their artistic courage truly enriches this work,” they said.
The Rabble is a group of visionary women who have consistently produced bold, provocative, and visually stunning theatrical experiences.
The company has forged an unrivalled reputation for producing experimental theatre of the highest quality – theatre that interrogates the human condition through a combination of surreal and visceral aesthetics, a feminist sensibility, and the application of intellectually rigorous research.
The results have changed the paradigm of what is possible in theatrical culture in Australia.
“I’d encourage the community, regardless of age, to come and listen to the stories – the often untold and unheard narratives of the elders in your local area,” Ms Forrest said.
