For their Kambarang/Birak season, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) is thrilled to present the world premiere of At the End of the Land – a dark and dreamlike encounter with the great unknown – from celebrated Western-Australian-based theatre-makers Too Close to the Sun, from 28 November to 2 December 2023.
Travelling to the afterlife, an unreliable teenage narrator and her demonic Red Monkey sidekick muse over the disappearance of her fellow Victorian-era orphans and what it’s like to be dead.
For their first-ever season at PICA, internationally praised Too Close to the Sun bring their renowned absurdist and immersive theatre style with a David Lynchian-esque solo show from award-winning poet and performance maker (and Too Close to the Sun co-founder) Talya Rubin.
Weaving together two worlds and creating an inner-dreamlike-trance, joining Rubin are some of the country’s most distinguished creators, including director and Too Close to the Sun co-founder Nick James; acclaimed video designer Samuel James; award-winning composer and sound designer Rachael Dease; and multidisciplinary artist and recent Richard Lester Prize Portraiture winner Tarryn Gill as the Red Monkey maker.
Rubin expresses her own experience of being psychic as a child, seeing ghosts and the invisible, and her changing relationship to this mysterious realm. The work ultimately expresses the value of the unknowable as rich territory for true human experience.
With the use of spirit photography, mediumship and projections, Rubin explores her own brushes with the beyond in a frenzied, non-linear narrative.
Founded in 2009 by Rubin and James, Too Close to the Sun is an interdisciplinary theatre company at the cross-section of performance, visual art, video and sound. Best known for their immersive performance works and non-linear approach, the company has toured across Australia to organisations such as Arts House, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane Festival and Metro Arts; as well as residencies at CultureLAB Arts House, Terrapin Theatre, Sydney University, The National Arts Centre (CA) and The Banff Centre (CA).
Part encounter, part gothic horror, At the End of the Land is a highly aesthetic, uncanny investigation into the things we cannot explain.
pica.org.au
Image: Samuel James
