On the 8th of April, I saw South African cellist Abel Selaocoe perform alongside the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO). Throughout the evening Selaocoe played not just his cello, but the audience too, pulling on the strings of their souls and drawing them into the music. I say this in a metaphorical, but also literal sense. He had audience members first clapping, then singing, then, finally, dancing along to his music. It was an act of creating community, binding hundreds of people together through the power of song. This was an experience I had never previously had in attending a performance of ‘high culture’.
Growing up, I had been taught that, when viewing a piece of classical music, or theatre, you had to be totally silent, in a state of complete reverence to the work in front of you. This reverence was to be held not just by the audience, but by the performers too. Classical musicians had to wear all black, backs straight, heads bowed, until the conductor gravely raised their baton, the signal to snap into focus. There was no talking, no dancing, and certainly no improvising. Selaocoe clearly didn’t bother to read f the rulebook.
Instead of the sombre appreciation for the music ahead, Selaocoe opened with a gigantic, excited smile, explaining how he learnt music in South Africa as an act of expression, of creation, of freedom. He was always being encouraged to experiment with a piece, to try something new. As he began he said cheekily, “Let’s make something up.”
Selaocoe didn’t slow down for the entire performance; by dancing as he played, swaying and moving with the music, he turned the cello into an extension of himself. Standing in the centre of a semicircle of musicians, he was constantly pushing them to feel the music and embrace the sound as it swirled and danced around them. His joy was infectious. By the end, everyone was dancing, audience and musicians alike.
At the concert’s conclusion, Selaocoe reemerged for a final encore. True to his word, he began improvising a song alongside percussionist and longtime collaborator Sidiki Dembele and his ACO accompaniment, who looked genuinely scared when Selaocoe called on them to take up their instruments again. He was nothing but supportive, full of praise for his musical companions and for the sounds of a tone-deaf audience in equal measure. It was exhilarating. I don’t think I will ever view music the same way.
For Selaocoe, music was a way of life, a method to bring people together. Though I went alone, I found myself feeling incredibly connected to this audience of complete strangers. I went into a space of high culture, and left with a newfound community.
In 2018 I saw The Merchant of Venice and Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Pop-Up Globe in Moore Park. This 1:1 recreation of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre saw audience members packed into every corner of the building, from the pit to the rafters and even on the stage. I have never laughed harder than I did during Midsummer Night’s Dream (I later described it in a text to my mother as “Midsummer Night’s acid trip”). As eight actors lined up, bent over in front of a man wearing a giant paper-mache donkey’s head, forming the world’s largest and crudest metaphorical penis, Shakespeare finally clicked for me. His plays weren’t stuffy, antiquated pieces of convoluted gibberish to be laboriously picked dry by English teachers in Year 10 classrooms, or overly-serious intellectual thinkpieces. They were incredibly funny, sardonically witty, rather crude and, most importantly, written for an everyday audience.
In this production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Mechanicals had been reimagined as a series of modern day tradies, one of several changes to the original material. Wearing hi-vis jackets emblazoned with “Sweet Ass Mechanical Solutions”, the crew execute their performance of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ to uproarious laughter. When Bottom-as-Pyramus and Flute-as-Thisbe went to kiss the hole in the wall (played by Snout wearing a brick wall costume, with witches hats jutting out at a suggestive height) the produced image resulted in such laughter that even Shakespeare himself would’ve been proud. The crowds could enjoy beer and popcorn, audience members were regularly called upon, and so much fake blood was spewed across the pit it was impossible not to be splattered.
Though very different experiences, these two moments left similar marks on me. Both took pieces of work that have been considered for centuries within the highest echelons of their field, and improvised, adapted, and expanded them. As audiences, we were incorporated into art, becoming part of the production.
Selaocoe at the ACO turned his audience into a shrine of joy and celebration to music, whilst the pop-up Globe transformed us into a group comedy session. We were invited to laugh, not just at those onstage, but at each other, and to find joy in the absurdity of our situation. With an open roof and ample lighting, it was impossible to separate the audience from the work, turning it into a social occasion as much as a theatrical one. These experiences have fundamentally altered the way that I view art and interact with the world around me. They have deeply moved me, and I have experienced an overwhelming sense of emotion that has regularly eluded me, both in theatre and in music.
Shakespeare’s plays were designed in a theatre where audiences would walk in and out, have conversations, eat food, and socialise. The Globe was a space of interaction and community as much as it was pure theatre. Our current system of solo reverence, beginning with Wagner in the 19th century, has prompted a one-on-one interaction which strips the act of community from the viewer, and has isolated theatre as a symbol of the upper class, stifling interest and engagement in work that should be appreciated by everyone.
For art to be meaningful, it has to be shared, it has to be accessible, and it has to be moving. Through humour, song, dance, and shared community, these pieces of art moved and changed me. They pushed boundaries, broke conventions, and strived to transform art from something that is watched in bored silence, into something that is joyously shared as an act of community. In a space where increasing consumerism and capitalism is driving us from community and into a loneliness epidemic, art has the power to bring us together. We just have to embrace the change that is necessary to make it so.
Abel Selacoe played from 5th to 9th April at City Recital Hall.
