As the lights come up on POV by New South Wales theatre company re:group, Grace enters the stage and introduces herself. She is twelve years old and she is a documentary film maker. She has a fancy camera, a tripod, and five or six screens around the stage ready to present her footage. She introduces Humphrey Bower and Will O’Mahony, two Perth actors whom I have seen and admired in many other shows. Grace is prepared to perform for us the filming of her documentary about her parents. Will and Humphrey, who learn that they are playing those parents at the same time we do, are not prepared. They have not rehearsed, they have seen no script, and they are at Grace’s mercy as she takes control of the action.
This is not an improv show in the sense that would expect, as Humphrey and Will very rarely have to improvise lines. They are given clipboards with scene dialogue, or it comes up on one of the screens, or is fed directly into their ear via headphones. They are, however, reading those lines for the first time on stage, with no idea what is going to happen next. They have to have complete trust in the process, and in Grace to look after them on stage.
The original spark that resulted in POV was writer Mark Rogers’s idea to use re:group’s technical skills to support a kid to run the entire show themselves. An early iteration involved the actor in a VR headset, something that Mark described to me as “a dud,” but it evolved into the format that empowers the child to tell the story by directing the adults around. From there, the central theme emerged, asking, how do we talk to children about mental health?
POV at Perth Festival
On opening night Grace Tione, who alternates with Yuna Ahn as Bub, exuded calm control. She was kind yet firm with Will and Humphrey, directing them around, giving them notes on their performance and asking them to repeat scenes until she was happy. She navigated through the emotional content with masterful poise that was gobsmacking to see from a twelve-year-old.
Yuna and Grace have travelled with re:group from over east, both from Gadigal land, and I asked Mark about how they find such phenomenal young performers.
“We auditioned through a bunch of agencies that represent kids and saw a bunch of tapes and then saw a bunch of auditions and Yuna and Grace were the only people that came into the room and started giving us shit. They weren’t overawed by the fact that there were adults there and that to us was so important for what Bub has to carry through the whole show.”
Watching the show, the audience are in the same boat as Will and Humphrey as we do not know what will happen, but in the story we are learning as the same pace as Bub. Alongside her we piece together from her parents’ conversations that Bub’s mum has bipolar, and her dad does not know how to talk to Bub about it.
This is where the unpreparedness of the two actors really shapes the emotion of the show. As Humphrey delivers his lines as Dad he genuinely does not know what he is going to say next, an all-too familiar situation for anyone who has had to have tough conversations with children. Humphrey injects genuine warmth, care and sincerity into his conversations with Bub, and he and Will are utterly believable as two parents trying their very best in a tough situation. There were very few dry eyes by the end of the show.
POV at Perth Festival
The documentary format of the show not only puts Bub in charge but also allows for a lot of meta moments. Bub stops the action, makes changes, talks directly to Will and Humphrey, and reminds us that this is a recreation of the events, as is an integral part of documentary features. I asked Mark about the choice to use a documentary structure, he said it was less of a choice and more of a natural pathway as re:group was doing a lot of camera work at the time already.
“I was watching a bunch of [Werner] Herzog stuff and Joshua Oppenheimer like The Act of Killing and Casey Jenkins stories. A bunch of these films were super influential for POV in the writing and I just got obsessed with documentary films and stole heaps from these really interesting films that are pushing at the edges of what documentary can be. The show is influenced by these hybrid new forms of documentary where they’re trying to push out what documentary can be allowed to do.”
In the Q&A after the show Mark and the director Solomon Thomas talked candidly about the mental health struggles in their own families that fed into the story of POV. I asked Mark if he felt the process of creating this show had made him, as a father, better at talking to kids about mental health, but he said he didn’t think it ever gets easier. However, “muddling through can be just as important as somehow nailing it and saying all the right things.”
I certainly felt, and know from my chat with my friend after the show, that I am not the only one feeling, that the show pushed me to think about how I would handle a situation like this. Would I know what to do? Would I say the right thing, or would I create a schism in the relationship by trying to avoid stressing anyone out, like Bub’s dad? I know after seeing POV that I would at least try to talk through the situation and be honest.
As Mark said; “the show doesn’t tell you how to do it, just that you must.”
POV is playing at Subiaco Arts Centre until the 15th February. It is a phenomenal exploration of the relationship between children and adults, and everyone should see it. I will be thinking about it for a long long time to come.