Unearthing Fear in the Blood

THEATRE

DEEPEST fears came to the light when director Olivia Allen got to the heart of Antonin Artaud's Jet of Blood.

A young man, played by Jindabyne star Simon Stone, wakes up in a nightmarish world where he meets eccentric characters who confront him with his worst fears.

"It's based on the idea that a nightmare usually reveals things about your life that you only have glimpses of in your waking life," Allen says.

"We looked at a range of fears, from the simple fear of spiders or falling to the more neurotic one of being caught with your pants down in public."

Allen, part of the Ignite theatre company of acting graduates, came across Artaud's explosive play when a lecturer threw it at her during her time at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

"He gave it to me as a challenge, I think, to explore a style that was very non-linear and non-narrative.

"He gave it to test me as to what I'd come up with," she says of the script by the Surrealist poet and actor/director who died in 1948.

"When Artaud was 14 his family thought he had a mental illness so they administered shock treatment, which I think made him a great deal worse.

"He spent quite long periods in mental asylums throughout his life."

Personal experience gives an edge to the 28-year-old director's plunge into the sub-conscious.

"Close friends and family have suffered from mental illness and for them it is a constant looking at reality.

"Looking at someone who is going through that, you can't help but reassess things yourself.

"To see someone who thinks the world is well-ordered, then watch them come to the realisation it's not, is quite relieving for the people watching as well. It shatters expectations of what you think you have to achieve and how you feel you have to live your life."

JET OF BLOOD

Where: Theatreworks, 14 Acland St, St Kilda, until Saturday. Tickets: $24/$18. Bookings: ph: 9534 3388 or www.theatreworks.org.au