5 Questions with Vidya Rajan
Vidya Rajan is a writer & performer currently based in Australia working across screenwriting, theatre, comedy, and digital space.
A former writer-in-residence at the Malthouse Theatre, graduate of the VCA, and a recipient of Screen Australia’s Developer Program, her work has often been described as surreal, inventive, darkly funny, and probing of the contemporary moment.
Some past projects as a writer and performer include Looking for Alibrandi (Malthouse/Belvoir), Deadloch (Amazon), Respawn (MICF, Darwin Festival), The Feed Comedy (SBS), At Home Alone Together (ABC Comedy), Nemeses: The Sitcom (Wheeler Centre), Cancellation Adventure (Liminal), Small & Cute Oh No (The Blue Room Theatre), The Lizard is Present (Jewel Box Grant, Melbourne Fringe), Playlist (Red Stitch), Sleepover Gurlz (Melbourne Fringe), Asian Ghost-ery Store (Griffin).
Recently, her sketch writing as part of the The Feed (SBS) won the 2022 AWGIE award for Best Comedy Writing, and her digital interactive experience In Search of Lost Scroll took home Best Experimental Artwork at the 2022 Melbourne Fringe awards.
She can next be seen as part of the core ensemble on the new Aunty Donna sitcom series—Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe (2023, ABC)—on which she also worked as a writer/story consultant.
No.1
A crisis actor is a person who is either a trained actor or volunteer engaged to portray disaster, as a way to train first responders during an actual catastrophe. How was Crisis Actor conceptualised with this in mind, and how does the show speak to our current unfolding polycrisis?
Initially I was interested in how the term ‘crisis actor’ has evolved in popular consciousness from its original meaning (i.e. an actor who plays a victim for disaster training) to an alt-right term, used to accuse victims of actual disasters (shootings, floods, war) of ‘faking it’, thus faking the reality of the event.
The more we sat with this, feeling the speed of the accumulating horrors of the polycrisis and the spectacle of victimhood that’s been forced into being over the last few years especially—we wondered what the logical endpoint of this term would be in our fascist times.
It’s barely speculative at this point, but it feels like we are heading towards a point where victimhood has become a weapon of memory and entertainment, and as a fetish tool that fully divests the humanity of its victims. It’s no coincidence that simulation aesthetics and AI (a technology of bodily capture and archival collapse) are the style of this moment and show. And in Crisis Actor, we lean into this, imagining a live gaming/reality competition that provides a glimpse of what’s coming.
No.2
Crisis Actor brings together conventions of contemporary performance, motion-capture technology, reality television and game design. It doesn’t seem unlike your past shows, In Search of Lost Scroll and nemeses, but it also seems like your most ambitious show yet. Can you tell us a little bit about how its development evolved over time, especially working with Sam McGilp and Andrew Sutherland?
Yes, it feels like it builds on those things, even though maybe I wasn’t consciously doing so at first! I think my practice is just becoming more loud about its interest in game design and emerging technology.
It’s a little scary for sure—this work is such an experiment, and we didn’t have many precedents of integrating these forms, with such thematic text-based content. Often when you see these hybrid art experiments it can be purely formal or more aesthetically focussed in its outcome. Which is also cool!
But here the exploration of form felt aligned with the subject matter and that’s thanks to the team who felt we should try to go there. Andrew and I have a working language already and that was helpful—they were particularly instrumental in the ideas around memory and memorialisation that unlocked a lot of the show. Working with Sam has been great too. We were suggested to work together and didn’t know each other, but there’s been a real alignment of our ethics in the room and processes—involving a high tolerance of ambiguity, curiosity about iteration, and a sense of humour—which are probably good things to have when doing this kind of work.
No.3
How did it feel to develop a show like this, looking at the two particular scourges of the metamodern world—technology and public relations—while the crisis was itself developing outside the studio’s walls? Is there a specific point of view you’d like to show, or is it more open to interpretation?
The initial impetus for the show was from before the current Palestinian omnicide which has been broadcast into our phones for the last two years. Before events like the L.A. fires and the hurricanes (plus accusations of weather machines + A.I. imagery of non-existent white victims), before people shopping around ICE Raid Reality shows. Already, the platforms we exist on have been clearly grifting us into a state of disengagement from real pain and empathy.
The show certainly has a point of view about the world and its politics, but I think—and this is the game design logic at the heart of it too—it really leaves a lot of it to the audience. It’s super against the rules of most theatre in a way, because you’re taught that you’re supposed to shape attention to the nth degree, to make sure people feel X or Y at this point or that point of the show. But that felt dishonest here.
If we’re trying to reflect the truth and question of how we live now in our art, the urgent thing right now for me is for us to sense in an embodied way how our attention and viewing of ‘others’ are being captured, distracted and gamified. On our phones we don’t realise this because it’s a frictionless experience (evilly and intentionally so). The work leans into that distraction and gamification but the friction is made present by the fact you’re in the theatre with fellow live bodies. But it’s not going to seduce or baby you into a cathartic experience—I’ve made those works [before] and didn’t feel like I could at this moment of horror—where is the narrative catharsis in the genocide? Why must trauma or victimhood be shaped for western consumption? The choices you make in the show second by second determine your experience, and that’s my way of respecting the reality of now.
No.4
What was your production process like? What are some things that you learned perhaps on a more tactical level that might be helpful for less experienced creators and performers to understand if they’re wanting to start a interactive project like this?
Thanks to Arts House, it was a generally gentle process of iteration. I think working with people who are truly curious about their form and willing to collaborate is the key. On a tactical level, you have to accept that you just are going to have to change your usual workflow processes quite a bit. Working with a live game engine and technologists has been super new for me—a willingness to be led by their timelines (it takes a lot longer to make a 3d environment than a monologue, babes) has been very important. You can’t have a fixed idea.
Also, it’s crucial to be open to the technology as an idea and not just a tool, which is what I feel performance-makers can really bring to these types of shows. Crisis Actor responds to motion-capture sensors and capture rather than just using them, like building an avatar in the engine which structures the logic and game of the show.
No.5
In recent times, it’s become more apparent that traditional institutions and legacy companies aren’t the best path for artists. What role do you think audiences play in the equation, and consequently, for Crisis Actor itself?
I think places like Arts House are really important for this. Legacy institutions are not really going to let you re-write the power dynamics you have with an audience. This run is just the first iteration of the show, so I feel I’d be better able to answer this after the season. With work like this it’s super hard to present it as a complete thing until it has had some time in the world, especially given its desire to hand over so much of the experience to the audience.
My faith in reaching the right audiences isn’t high in general with the state of the world, not to mention the lack of time or money organisations want to invest in proper scaffolding of community. But as always, we will see. And sometimes a minority of audience responses becomes the dominant one as time goes on.
Photograph by Jesse Vogelaar; Design by Sam Mcgilp and Quinn Franks.
Find Out More
Blending physical theatre and simulated reality, Crisis Actor is an interactive performance where suffering is a vibe and resilience is celebrity.
There has been a disaster. Two actors hold our collective memory of the event. In an escalating competition for our empathy, they pit body and feeling against each other. Via your phone, you’re offered options and pathways to help them win.
Exploring the attention economy, marginalised bodies and victimhood as spectacle, Crisis Actor brings together conventions of contemporary performance, motion-capture technology, reality television and game design.
As comedic as it is unsettling, absurd as it is incisive, Crisis Actor sees us evolve into the Sims of forces greater than ourselves, ushering the uncanny valley into the realm of the everyday.
Crisis Actor takes place in the theatre and on your smartphone. Make sure to charge and bring your device for the full experience.
Crisis Actor runs from 27 Aug to 31 Aug at Arts House as part of Now or Never Festival. More info and tickets here.