Claire Thomas’ The Performance

Three women attend a staging of Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days. Inside the theatre is air conditioned to a chill, while outside bushfires rage outside the city.

On the stage a woman is trapped to her waist inside an expanding mound, happily exploring her past through items in her bag.

Within the audience the women’s minds drift out across time. Margot considers her family, expanded to include a new grandson, even as her husband slowly moves into his old age. Ivy thinks about her world and how far she’s come from the person she was at uni. Summer wishes she could pay closer attention to the stage. Her job is to usher guests to their seats but her mind is miles away as the fires circling the city move closer to her girlfriends family home.

In their own lives the women consider the ways in which their worlds may open up or more frequently be silenced. Margot is being pushed towards a retirement she doesn’t want. Ivy is unsure whether she is seen for more than her money. While Summer feels inauthentic in her struggle to carve out some sort of space.

The Performance is a captivating invitation to enter the inner worlds of three very different women and the opening  up of perspectives it offered.

Discover Claire Thomas’s The Performance...