We Are the Ghosts of the Future - Blancmange Productions & 7-ON

Overview

Despite the relentless bustle and swank of the Rocks as they are today, there remains, down certain laneways and alleys an eeriness, a weight indicative of history sitting heavily inside the present. Handmade nicks on the sandstone blocks of buildings and gold plaques dotted about the pavement mark out the harbour’s original shoreline, posing like potential portals to the colonial period of Australian history.

This quality has been creatively embraced by 7-ON, a formidable Australian writer’s collective looking to mark the 80th anniversary of the disappearance of pioneer aviator Charles Kingsford-Smith. We Are the Ghosts of the Future, directed by Harriet Gillies and produced by Blancmange Productions, takes place inside the Rocks Discovery Museum. The space has been divided into several sections, with a fifteen-strong cast taking on the roles of boarding house occupants from the mid-1930s, all of whom have their doubts and fears about whether 'Smithy' the daredevil aviator will return.

The set design by Hugh O’Connor is simple, but evocative of a period just beyond reach. Muslin and patch-worked hessian are draped in such a way that the mod cons of the museum are largely obscured, although the green glow of an occasional exit sign and a laminated evacuation plan sitting on a windowsill give one the impression that they are standing on a threshold or peeking through a temporal tear from our time into somebody else’s.

Although the audience is largely free to wander through the installations, there are gentle directions which enhance the experience. A strategically placed mousetrap on the steps behind a seamstress’ workstation quietly deters wanderers; later, a washerwoman takes me by the hand, hurrying me to Brian’s brush sale downstairs.

The actors perform their short scenes on a loop, apparitions tied to single events which anchor them to the corporeal world. It is the missing Kingsford-Smith, though, who looms large in the boarders’ imaginations, the ghost destined never to appear again. A radio broadcast late in the piece reports that the search has been called off and a shower of paper planes from an upper window unites cast and audience, the nosediving gliders an unsentimental rendering of our unspoken suspicions.

Immersive theatre is ridiculously hard to pull off. We Are the Ghosts of the Future, however, is executed by a skilled and extremely adaptable cast. Through the thin partitions, voices and sounds tend to mix and compete for attention, but the performers hold fast. And, after emerging from the museum, the Rocks are, if anything, just slightly spookier.

Running as part of The Rocks Village Bizarre.