'Coil' Is the Nostalgic Live Cinema Performance That Pays Tribute to Long-Lost Video Stores

When Australia's last Blockbuster store closed its doors back in 2019, it marked the end of an era — especially if you spent your childhood and teenage years trawling through racks of VHS tapes, renting as big a stack as you could carry, then gluing your eyes to the TV every weekend. Every Aussie city also has its own stories about losing beloved independent video shops and, if you're still a fan of physical media in the streaming era, you might even have a few ex-rental bargains from closed-down stores sitting on your shelves at home.

It's these fond feelings for a part of life that's now gone that new live cinema performance Coil aims to tap into, all while paying tribute to all the long-lost spots that once celebrated and nurtured cinephilia. Video stores were more than just places to rent tapes — they were havens of filmic discovery, sources of inspiration and thriving local communities — and that's all baked into this production.

Coil made its world premiere at this year's Mona Foma, and brings its tribute and farewell to Australia's video shops to Sydney and Melbourne — playing PACT in Erskineville from Thursday, February 10–Saturday, February 12, then heading to Brunswick Mechanics Institute from Thursday, February 17–Saturday, February 19.

The latest work from re:group, a collective of artists based between Hobart, Wollongong and Sydney, Coil stages its show in a set that recreates a 90s-era video shop. The focus: telling a tale of nostalgia, loneliness, friendship and viability that pays homage to those gone-but-not-forgotten spaces and celebrates the communities forged within them. It's a performance designed to ponder questions — including what we've lost now that we browse online sites for flicks instead of physically walking the aisles.

That's a line of thinking that resonates with re:group well beyond simply yearning for the glory days of renting out VHS tapes. The collective itself started almost a decade ago with a cast of ten, but now only has one performer.

"It parallels our own story as a theatre collective continuing to make work despite the clear unviability of it all, trying to survive in the business of live performance in an age of online streaming," explains co-creator and performer Steve Wilson-Alexander.

And if you're wondering how a live cinema performance with a one-person cast works, Coil takes place live on stage before its audience, but deploys video design that lets its lone performer play every character in cinematic scenes. You'll be watching all of that happen, with the show combining verbatim interviews with real-time filmmaking — all to make the kind of performance that you definitely won't see on streaming.

Coil plays PACT, 107 Railway Parade, Erskineville, from Thursday, February 10–Saturday, February 12, then heads to Brunswick Mechanics Institute, 270 Sydney Road, Brunswick, from Thursday, February 17–Saturday, February 19. For more information, head to the production's website.

Images: Rosie Hastie.