Performance Space: You’re History

Overview

Performance Space is having a birthday party, but don't worry about bringing a gift. They're actually giving you the presents: wrapped-up pieces of performance, visual art, dance, music and more, celebrating their big 3-0.

Like anyone planning a party, Performance Space co-director Jeff Khan says he's a bit nervous that no one will to show. "There's a sense of vulnerability, you're putting what feels like yourself on the line and its very much up to the audience whether they take it or leave it," he says ahead of 'You're History', the three-week program of events opening on Wednesday, November 20.

That is such a Performance Space thing to say, that last part. Since the experimental collective began, back in a dingy Cleveland Street terrace in 1983, they've been all about the audience and its response. The main stage rules did not apply; the active performer-passive audience idea was left to the main stage companies.

Like that time an audience gathered for a show in the terrace, and all the lights went off. It was too dark to see much at all, and least of all the line between performer and punter. "It was a while until they realised that the performers were gone and they were locked in," Jeff says, laughing. "People were furious, debate raged for months and months." Founder Mike Mullins and the artists around him had new ideas and politics to explore, and so made a new space to do it in.

Three decades later and its time to celebrate all the artists nurtured, performances developed and bewildered audiences locked in dark terraces. For an organisation normally so focused on the artistic future they're doing a knock-out job with the past. The Directors' Cuts will see the archive come alive, as yesterday's directors, stretching right back to Mullins, take over today's stage.

30 Ways with Time and Space is another stand-out, shut-UP piece of programming: the Carriageworks public foyer, sliced into new spaces by visual artist Agatha Gothe-Snape, will overflow with 30 performances over the festival's 12 days, and it's all free. It just won't all fit in this article. But to give you an idea: Jon Rose is set to play a pane of glass with his face while his mate Lucas Abela is on the deconstructed violin, a family and their seven-year-old daughter will perform inside a translucent plastic bubble and Mike Parr — yes, The Mike Parr — will be doing as The Mike Parr does. If you get a spare second, look up: Box of Birds will see dancers vaulted up into the cavernous Carriageworks scaffolding.

I don't think Jeff Khan has to worry; people will definitely come to his party, and I think they'll love their presents. I ask him what he thinks makes a good 30th, and he nails the analogy: "I think probably the right balance of planning and spontaneity," he says. "You know, you want to plan for a great party and you want to plan for enough things to be there for everyone to have a great time, but in the end its just the chemistry between the people and the party that make it."