By Luke Voogt
A bunch of seniors checking their phones at schoolies and chucking their underwear to a DJ is more than “hilarious novelty” for Roslyn Oades.
The Melbourne director has switched the stereotypes of teenagers and the elderly in her latest play Hello Goodbye.
“It asks the audience to listen to them as human beings,” she told the Indy.
“Although to hear an older man say that is quite amusing.”
Theatre veterans enact the Oades’ real-life interviews of 18-year-olds in the unique play, while young actors tell the stories of seniors.
In one scene the younger actors talk about “their most recent stroke” with a good dose of gallows humour.
“It’s a lovely way to create empathy,” Oades said.
“I think we can make a lot of assumptions about elderly people or younger people. There’s a lot of fear in those two age groups of the other.”
Oades, a pioneer of ‘Headphone Verbatim’ theatre, came up with Hello Goodbye after attending an 18th and 80th birthday in close succession.
“I felt like at both of those parties I’d witnessed the two bookends of adult life,” she said.
Oades spent the next two years “crashing as many 18th, 80th, 90th, and 100th birthdays” as she could.
She collected 100 hours’ worth of audio, which she edited into one hour of script, weaving together nine separate stories.
“I had 18-year-olds crying about boys who didn’t know they existed and 80-year-olds crying because their wives no longer recognised them,” she said.
“The biggest challenge was putting them altogether into a dynamic show.”
Oades said it was hilarious to watch veteran actors, like Jim Daly, mimic teenagers with such perfection.
“He’s trying to copy her inflections exactly,” she said.
“Our actors aren’t interpreting, they are performing the interviews exactly how they hear them.”
The play has been going for two years but next month will be the first time it comes to Geelong.
“This is the first time I’ve been on a regional tour and I’m really looking forward to sharing my stories around more of Australia,” Oades said.
One of Oades’ interviewees, Piper Huynh, planned to bring some friends to Geelong for the show, after seeing it previously in Melbourne.
“I’ve cried a few times and I’ve laughed so much I couldn’t breathe,” she said. “It’s so raw, what the actors are hearing is me.”
Actor Jim Daly enjoyed the challenge of Oades’ style.
“What the audience gets is a very lifelike presentation of these characters based on real people,” he said.
“You begin to see a lot of yourself in the characters and you see yourself as you were when you were young.”
Hello Goodbye runs for five shows at Geelong Performing Arts Centre from 12 to 15 July.
