Theatre In Preview
It sounds like the set up of a joke - a raver, a politician and a magician walk into a theatre - but in the hands of contemporary Sydney performance trio Post, it is a fun examination of the sometimes confusing world of lies.

In 'Shamelessly Glitzy Work', performers and collaborators - Zoe Coombs Marr, Mish Grigor and Natalie Rose - take on the three roles and explore how lies shape their identity and experience.

“We thought it was an interesting topic, in theatre you lie all the time and manipulate the audience, so lying is not always in a bad way,” Coombs Marr says of the genesis of the play. “But we are tricking the audience to believe something. We were just interested in the idea of lying and how an audience receives a lie and we came up with the realm of politics, magic and strangely, rave culture and dance culture. And we were interested in where the lie lies. In magic, you are expecting to be lied to but in politics, you have a platform and the whole set up is you are a voice for truth and so the lies become so high stakes.”

They began writing the play last year, with universal themes in the production - “the show is constantly evolving, so it is not really about any specific incident or topic,” - but comings and goings in the US certainly helped shape the story.
According to Coombs Marr, during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the person hired to design the media centre to feed back information from the front line was magician and illusionist David Blaine.

And while 'Shamelessly Glitzy Work' was already in the works before the most recent US presidential campaign, Coombs Marr says they were surprised with how closely events there mirrored their story. “We could not help noticing all those things and how many people involved in the campaign were actually magicians. These people worked as designers on the campaigns and there was one Republican guy who was a pollster, but he was also a trained mentalist, so he could manipulate people, which affected the polls,” she says.

But while one of the main characters is a politician; Coombs Marr says it was not really their intention to create a political satire. “It doesn't have a political point, but it does have a political colour,” she reflects. “It is a reminder of the things we know are happening but it is more about the experience of the lying. So the images are political, but the story isn't necessarily political.”

And to counteract the heavy and thought-provoking concepts, Post make sure they have fun with the material as well. In development they spent a long time learning the tricks of the illusionist trade to include in the performance. “We did learn some magic tricks, some are very impressive and some are not impressive at all,” Coombs Marr says. “But there is lots of glitter and puffs of smoke and I levitate in the show!”
The concept of lying and how people react to it is something that has interested the Post team for a while now, with 'Shamelessly Glitzy Work' the latest work to explore the issue.
Previous performance piece 'Swimming Home In Heels' also touched on the topic, but this is the first 'feature-length' production to tackle the issue.

Post have been on the Sydney scene for a few years and have inevitably been described as 'quirky', as no audience is too big or too small for the trio. “We have been together for about five years now. We met on a theatre course and we were randomly assigned as a group on the first day of rehearsal and told to come up with something … so it's like we have never left the room,” Coombs Marr says. “We formed a company and we have toured some short-works. We did a show with six audience members at a time in a shipping container and we have done one (audience member) shows at houses. So we have worked together in extreme situations.”

‘Shamelessly Glitzy Work’ will play at the Visy Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse from Wednesday, June 24 to Saturday, June 27.