In many ways, it is here that Brink’s philosophy of collaboration really comes into its own.

Brink Productions is a company of collaboration, and this is nowhere more evident than in their new work, Skip Miller’s Hit Songs. Following in the wake of the outstanding When The Rain Stops Falling, Skip Miller is a complex work following the experiences of an Australian photojournalist after his return from Africa. The strength of Brink’s philosophy of collaboration is evident from the moment the action begins: the cross-pollination of writer, director, musician, designer and actor creates an immediate sense of gravity, and thoroughness, which resolves into a strong and memorable performance.

Director Chris Drummond and designer Wendy Todd have created a theatrical world suffused with meaning and symbolic possibility. Skip Miller, like other Brink productions, provides a great example of the ingenious ways in which a performance’s technical and design features can intensify, without ever overshadowing, the stories central to the performance. Props and features of set mimic and reinforce the performance’s central metaphors and themes: from the hanging photos of Skip’s darkroom, to Neville’s sad old collectables, to the brushed sand floor, each object on stage becomes richer on reflection, much like the photos Skip takes of the dispossessed and damaged individuals he encounters.

James Kalisch’s strongly evocative film is confidently—but never pretentiously—used to create mood and a sense of emotion and drama. This, along with Geoff Cobham’s lighting and the excellent musicianship of Quentin Grant, Jerome Lyons and Lamine Nanky, is key to demarcating shifts between scenes, times and places, while establishing an overall continuity of atmosphere. The question of how, or even whether, words can convey the atrocities of conflict is a central one. Skip Miller engages with it on multiple levels, and engages with the similar question of what (song? images? silence?) might take the place of the words that have failed.

The relationships and stories that make up the work are similarly layered, and presented via a continuing flow of intersections between past and present, memory and reality. In many ways, it is here that Brink’s philosophy of collaboration really comes into its own. Though it takes a little longer to emerge, the well of knowledge that it provides helps Brink and its shows move closer to embodying, rather than just representing, the diversity and complexity of human experience. The same team of individuals has worked on developing the production for almost three years, and so their experiences and perspectives informed and shaped development far more than they would in a ‘conventional’ production process.

Concentration and patience is required of audience members, who need to endure any small frustrations or uncertainties in the knowledge that things will become clear in the end. Their concentration is amply rewarded: like a developing photograph, the depth of interwoven stories, characters and time-lines and time-lines is slowly revealed. Skip (Chris Pitman) must finally face head-on his inability to stay removed from the lives of those in his photos. Harmless, pathetic Neville (Rory Walker) grapples with his sense of inadequacy, while dangerous, casually sexual Alison (Lizzy Falkland), is revealed as vulnerable and scarred, longing for a genuine connection to others. Patience (Assina Ntawumenya) and Augustus (Mondlii Makhoba) emerge as deeply dignified, resilient individuals, persevering with quiet grace in the face of the things they have experienced. And Basel (Adolphus Waylee) represents that resilience as it must look in the young, as a precocious maturity, presence and strength of character.

Brink’s philosophy of collaboration, finally, manages to encompass even the audience members themselves. The Brechtian use of open wings at side stage, so actors are visible to the audience even when ‘off’, and the use of frequent soliloquies, create this feeling during the performance itself. Even in the hours and days after the performance, though, the feeling of being ‘part of’ things continues; and Skip Miller, like Brink’s other productions, repays many times over the ongoing reflection in the minds of audience members.

It is this feeling that Brink’s productions create – a sense of reflective possibility, of involvement in art transcending the borders of the theatre – that is perhaps their greatest characteristic. Skip Miller is not perfect, with the occasional clunky delivery or distracting blocking, but the overwhelming impression it creates is one of authenticity and depth. Too often, companies that aim to ‘innovate’, with production methodology or technical novelty, end up giving an audience nothing but emptiness or bemusement. This is not the case with Skip Miller. Undoubtedly, the people at Brink know they are making art; but it is their drive to achieve new things through collaboration, and their fervent desire to tell stories in new ways, which defines their work, and makes them so important to contemporary South Australian theatre. Skip Miller is a work highly recommended, from a company we should be glad calls Adelaide home.

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