The Bougainville Photoplay Project

Overview

I have a friend who will claim, every time he sees you, that "the craziest thing happened to me today". This sounds like it could be irritating, but it's not at all — he always has crazier and crazier stories to back it up. While I'm sure that these ridiculous events are not all imagination, a large slice of this pie is his skill for seeing and telling things like no one else I know.

Watching the Bougainville Photoplay Project was a bit like that. While academic Dr. Paul Dwyer introduces himself in full suit and credentials, the performance rapidly unfolds into an intimate retelling. Dwyer is unusually honest in blending ethnographic research and a recent history of colonialism with his family's history and personal motivations. While maps and research studies cover the walls, it is his father's slides that the performance revolves around. By offering up his memories and his own body as evidence, alongside his reflections, curiousity and wit, Dwyer presents us with a case study in as complete a form as he can give it. Any gaps in the narrative only serve his case, instilling in the audience a concern that resonates long after leaving the Old Fitz.