The idea of a The Waiting Room is rich with physical, metaphysical and psychological resonances. It may evoke an airport lounge, doctor’s surgery, dole office, job interview, or purgatory. Waiting. Waiting for a change, for a break, a diagnosis, for better times, for the paint to dry, for love, for a verdict, for death. In the waiting interactions occur, events take place, and meaning accrues.
Enter The Waiting Room and you immediately ask: where’s the stage? The entire space is filled with rows of chairs. Sit where you will; from the outset, the audience is complicit in the show’s creation. The Waiting Room is a space for possibilities, for unforeseen interactions and events. These interactions are the engine of The Waiting Room and the audience as both spectators and participants bring their individual histories and imaginations to bear. The line between audience and performers fade as genuine in-the-moment exchanges shape each moment that follows.
The Waiting Room places collective human behaviour under the microscope from the banal to the absurd as increasingly ridiculous scenarios unfold. Free to sit and watch or join in, while Melbourne's masters of improvisation seduce the audience in collective play and scrutiny. The stakes keep getting higher, till finally one person's wait is over, in an unexpected twist: a grand solo is performed by an audience member. Empowering and unpredictable, each night’s show has its own unique, unrepeatable moments. Non-verbal and accessible it is a performance for everyone across culture and age.
“What makes this piece radically beautiful is that it interrogates and embodies the random processes intrinsic to human behaviour. Informed by physical theatre, social psychology and neuroscience, The Waiting Room is a living incarnation of fractal art….cutting-edge experimental theatre: a profound exploration of how we choreograph ourselves from chaos” Cameron Woodhead, The Age