An Imaginary Life was co-created by long-time collaborators Humphrey Bower and Kingsley Reeve, from their originating idea to create a “minimalist” show in a non-theatre space that responded to the venue’s “unique acoustic properties.” That non-theatre space ended up being the Moores Building Art Space in Walyalup (Fremantle), where the textured white walls and high ceilings create a fantastic environment for playing with sound.
Musician Pavan Kumar Hari – who also worked on the sound design with Reeve – sat on a woven rug in a corner of the gallery and made acoustic magic. Using an assortment of instruments that I could not name without an internet search he set the scene in a calm wilderness, built tension, drummed up a devilish possession, and had us all holding our breath. At a point of high tension the sound of a stringed instrument seemed to emanate from the walls themselves.
Bower is the only other performer in the show, as well as being writer and director. Accompanied only by the music from Kumar Hari and his own vivacious shadow on the wall behind, Bower tells the story of the Roman poet Ovid in exile, as imagined by Australian writer David Malouf in his novella An Imaginary Life.
An Imaginary Life. Photography by Daniel Grant.
My memory of the book from when I studied it in high school is hazy, only a vague image of an untamed wilderness cycling through seasons of idyllic springs and brutal winters. Having now heard Bower’s abridged version I know that this memory is as accurate as it is apt, as the story’s real strength lies in its imagery. Malouf’s prose – especially in Bower’s rich timbre – is poetry without pretention. The real Ovid was exiled from Rome (his offense is uncertain but I believe these days we would say he was cancelled) to Tomis near the Black Sea, and An Imaginary Life tells just that, a simple yet affecting story of the poet living amongst a tribe of people he cannot communicate with. Tolerated by the community he discovers a wild boy living in the surrounding wilderness, and becomes obsessed with the idea of bringing him into the fold and teaching him to speak.
An Imaginary Life. Photography by Daniel Grant.
Bower as Ovid tells us of riding a horse through the trees in autumn, huddling over the peat fire in the barn loft in winter, and seeing the stars reflected in a bowl of water he leaves out for the wild boy. His voice transforms the gallery into the glittering wilderness. The rustle of paper cups meeting lips becomes wind blowing through the trees, a cough from the back row becomes the voice of the village matriarch conducting sacred ceremonies, the scrape of a chair is the wild boy eagerly spooning gruel from a bowl by the fireside. In the distance, is that the howl of a wolf?
For an hour in a slightly chilly art gallery in Freo we were entranced by Ovid and the boy he cares for, and when we are released from the story’s spell it feels like breaking the surface of a cold lake, changed in ways that cannot be explained.
This minimalist production proves that good theatre is made not by extravagance and fancy tech, but by talented creatives pooling their skills to tell a great story.
An Imaginary Life is on at Moores Building Art Space in Fremantle from the 16th to 19th of July.