Taking place in the dark, Another Sight is an immersive theatrical experience performed by Blind Theater. Telling a domestic tale of cancer treatment, emotional growth, and family strength through trauma, it places the audience in the space occupied by blindness, replacing spectacle with smells, voices and sounds of the actor moving around the room.
The title is a play on the way in which the audience finds itself in a different experience of theatre, and the way that the characters are forced to reconsider their situations. A maid is in the home straight of recovery, while her mistress is about to begin her treatment. Competing class interests collide with an emotional anguish, with the household servant providing both optimism and social conscience for the bourgeois family. Through a gesture of compassion, the mistress discovers the courage and belief that she initially lacks.
The performance begins as the audience are negotiated into the auditorium, provoking questions beyond the usual theatrical experience: immersed by the dark, they are invited not only to consider the clearly laid out dilemmas of the drama, but also a novel way of engaging with movement and processing the event. The script may be slight, but Another Sight expands into a therapeutic and compassionate social exercise.
Another Sight, ZOO Playground, until 24 Aug (not 11, 18), 8.45pm