Australian performance artist Nicola Gunn wants to be a French actor, or rather a French film actress. They always look so damn good. Their clothes aren’t from op shops, their hair is never frizzy, and they can eat fondue without dripping it everywhere. And they get great scripts and sound so sexy speaking in French, even if they are ordering takeaway. I get it.
Nicola wants to be Marion Cotillard or maybe Julie Delpy; I want to be Juliette Binoche and hang out with Julie Delpy. But Gunn’s not French. She doesn’t speak French. She may be living in Europe, but it’s hard to not be Aussie.
At it’s surface, Gunn’s Apologia (she wrote, directed and performs) is about translation and interpretation and how our projections about what we want a place or person to be like are rarely what they are really like.
The striking design by Katie Atland feels French – or it feels like French films I’ve seen at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Bold fuchsia and orange carpet cover raised geometric shapes in front of a draped curtain.
With Darius Kedros’s sound and Kate Davis’s so-French costumes, which are all black and shaped or scrunched to flow, I can now imagine what I look like in my fantasy Paris apartment. And it’s lit exquisitely by Emma Valente, who’s subtle (and not so subtle) changes of colour shape the mood by what looks like her changing the colour of the air.
Gunn casually enters this space dressed in an over-sized but perfectly-fitted black suit, and positions a speaker. One of the many remarkable things about Gunn’s theatre work is that it’s never about what it seems. I never try to figure it out until I’ve had time to reflect and wonder if my experience was even close to what Gunn thinks her audience will experience.
She talks about wanting to be French with a French translator (Severine Magois) who has dubbed many film actors and literally made them French or English. Magois is recorded and is heard through a series of speakers. But her conversations with Gunn are natural and their relationship brings a personal element to the exploration.
And when we’re settling into their world, they leave as Yumi Umiumare and Taka Takiguchi are Japanese tourists looking at Notre Dame Cathedral as it is being rebuilt after the 2019 fire. Speaking in Japanese (with surtitles), their idea of Paris isn’t their reality. This is so common among Japanese tourists that it’s called Paris Syndrome.
And, naturally, all three performers find their way together wearing lace body suits and holding coloured Perspex circles. I thought this was the opening and closing credits of every French film I’ve seen; others think it’s obviously the stained glass of the cathedral.
Performance art isn’t about following a story. It’s about finding your story and your experience on the stage. The uneasiness in Apologia is as much our uneasiness about wanting to be someone else or be somewhere else.
Gunn has her chic actress film moment. Or maybe it’s a real moment that’s as funny and awkward as it is moving. Whatever it’s like, it’s tellement français.
APOLOGIA
Beckett Theatre – Malthouse Theatre, 113 Sturt Street, Southbank
Performance: Tuesday 13 August 2024
Season continues to 18 August 2024
Information and Bookings: www.malthousetheatre.com.au
Image: Nicola Gunn in Apologia – photo by Gregory Lorenzutti
Review: Anne-Marie Peard