Food is the delicious new play created by Kate Champion and Steve Rodgers.
A co-production between Force Majeure and Belvoir, Food combines elements of drama, comedy, dance and cookery in an erotic mix of words and movement. NORPA presents two performances this week.
Tell me about the concept for Food.
Food explores the lives of two sisters who, in the absence of a parent, choose to fill their lives with sensations centered on food and sex.
In the play they come together as adults after a spending a long time apart, and try to work out whether who they were as children defines them now in the present, and whether they can ever allow themselves and each other to be something else.
Why do you think food is so linked with obsession and sex?
They’re linked because we need them, but also want them. I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about food and sex, and they’re both extremely beautiful things, both totally necessary for our survival; but also, when the ‘want’ for both gets too big, a little dangerous. Dangerous and beautiful make for great stories.
What is the basic narrative of the play?
Two sisters come together after a long time apart. One of them convinces the other to transform the take-away shop they grew up in at the front of their house into a restaurant. To do this they employ a Turkish kitchenhand, who is at once charming and funny and turns their worlds upside down. It’s a love triangle of sorts that surprises through warmth, beauty and fun.
What were the subtexts and the undercurrents that you tried to tease out?
I tried to put people’s natures under the microscope, testing the friction between people who love to control situations against those who prefer a bit of chaos. I’ve tried to tease out and excavate human attraction, sex, the heart versus the head, need, want, and the idea that the roles we end up playing in life we choose, but are also chosen for us by others.
What should we expect for your local production of Food? Will it be the same as what was presented at Belvoir Street?
Same show! The show is set in a take-away shop, next to a river, along a highway, outside a big country town anywhere in Australia. If anything the show naturally lives beyond the fringes of the inner city and Belvoir Street.
Lismore City Hall on Friday and Saturday at 7.30pm.
Bookings call 1300 066 772 or VISIT the NORPA website.
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