Performers Clare Britton and Matt Prest hunt for an answer to that question, playing a couple looking for a place where they can find a truer sense of ‘home’. It’s the cliches that cause the trouble – they look desperately for a home, somewhere they can call their own, put down roots, a place to settle down, without any idea of what it looks like. Meanwhile, claustrophobia begins to set in in their suffocatingly suburban house, wonderfully evoked by Danny Eggers‘ amazing and innovative set design.

The audience is housed inside the play, in four moveable rooms, to be exact. You are immediately ushered into a small room with chintz wallpaper, boarded up windows, doors that lead nowhere and mild paint fumes. There is nothing in the room to suggest its purpose, it’s just any old room.

Then it starts to move. The shifting walls herd the audience to and fro on an aimless journey, with no indication of your ultimate destination, or when you might arrive there. The lights suddenly snap off, and a voice booms through the pitch darkness, describing the process of being buried alive – a claustrophobic’s nightmare, until the doors open and the two performers take the stage.

Britton and Prest, dressed in their pyjamas, reveal fragments of a love story. In bed, the couple snore out their fear that they will slowly suffocate out in the suburbs. He jogs in the backyard, she fakes mortal injury to stave off boredom. The two talk in their sleep about never-amounting-to-anything and never-leaving-this-place.

In a standout moment, the couple dance. Not slow-dance, sweet waltz nonsense – they dance like everyone should dance: so violently and exhuberantly that the audience is pushed back into its little boxes, unable to compete with these two characters, who, for a moment, become gargantuan.

The combined powers of set design, lighting and sound are as effective in drumming up the feeling of quiet suburban claustrophobia as the performances themselves. For instance, it was interesting to see how obedient the audience was to the set. At any point, we could have opened the door and left, and when the boxes opened, we could have walked out into the play, but everybody shuffled inside, afraid to interrupt the action. The use of space suggests the home as something that manages and moulds you as a person – it reminds us that the spaces we live in create us as much as we create them.

A short animated film by James Brown (sound design) is a surreal addition to the play that changes its tempo at just the right moment, preparing the audience for the bittersweet ending. Together, all the elements bring the concept to full, bristling life, rather than solely relying on the script and performers.

Hole in the Wall grasps you on a visceral level and doesn’t let you go.

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Hole in the Wall is showing at Performance Space, 26-29 May, 2010. The full list of collaborators is: Peter Allott, Jenn Blake, Clare Britton, James Brown, Danny Egger, Alasdair Nicol, Halcyon Macleod, Matt Prest, Hallie Shellam, Mirabelle Wouters.

Everyone who came was supportive, attractive, witty, polite and dancefloor-friendly. At one stage we even saw a baby there and what she lacked in dancefloor-friendliness she totally made up for in being A REAL BABY.

And the art! Watch This Space had put together a huge group of talent, and a ridiculously high-tech sensory system. While it’s possible that the two didn’t work together exactly the way they were supposed to, we got treated to the best of both worlds in two different rooms. Win! The team also delighted Amelia right off the bat with conversation about how to turn a projector on (“Sweet talk it? Stroke it gently?”) Double win! The awesome interactive projection performance by Luke Tipene kept way more people upstairs for way longer than we anticipated, credit for which also goes to the fantastic DJ skillz of Greedy Hen and We Buy Your Kids. They kept everyone happily distracted while one of our projectors kind of exploded, and didn’t play a small amount of Paul Simon in the meantime.

And then came the bands. Steph’s totally amazing at booking bands. (Steph wrote that.) We were actually a little bit dorky and overwhelmed by Danimals, standing at the front and doing that look-around-at-everyone-like-”Woah-Are-These-Guys-For-Realz” kind of thing. Then we found out it was one of their first ever shows as a full band, and we almost started a label.

Megastick Fanfare were next. These guys are basically a consistent wow, but are actually somehow getting better and better every time we see them. So they’re playing tonight again, after midnight at a late night party called “Witching Hour” at OAF. We’ll be the ones right up the front with the happy dancey shoes on.

And unfortunately for him, Spod knows how to make a party that we don’t ever want to end. We secretly dragged the stage manager into a locked vault while Spod played, which (whoops!) trapped him in front of the decks for way longer than we agreed on. We wanted to keep dancing, and we’re sorry. (Not really sorry. It was worth it.)

Thanks so SO much to everyone who came, played, arted and danced. Thanks so much to the Wall and to the World Bar too. We love all of you. And your baby as well.

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Anyway, the party is being held at our BFF’s house. Our BFF is The Wall, every Wednesday at the World Bar. For all you arty farty party types, the Wall let you exhibit your work for free in a delightful room upstairs, while a party happens around you and below you. They don’t take commission, they help you promote it, and goddamn do they know how to party.

But this Wednesday it’s all about us, because It’s Our Birthday – and you’re invited too.

For the EARS: Electronichaotic party band MEGASTICK FANFARE are headlining the night with the beeps and beats of super-hyped superman D’ANIMALS and his live band in support, and SPOD on the decks bringing us home. In a tag-team DJ battle fandango artist duos WE BUY YOUR KIDS Vs GREEDY HEN will show their ears work as well as their eyes, plus SLEATER BROCKMAN, the Gold Coasts’ walking house party THE SURECUT KIDS and all the Wall’s favourite regulars doing their party thing until the wee hours of the morn’.

For the EYES: Arts innovators WATCH THIS SPACE present INFORMAL DIALOGUE’s latest project “Pulse.” Supported by anarchi.org, Pulse will perform the atmosphere of the venue in an automated real-time digital projection. Works by local emerging artists like TONY CURRAN, SONYA GEE, MATT HUYNH, STEPHENIE KANHUKAMWE, LUCIA FISCHER, REBECCA MURPHY, LUKE TIPENE, MEL BLIGH, JAMES BROWN and more to be announced will reflect and re-shape the social landscape of the venue by communicating back to the audience atmospheric factors detected on the night by heat, humidity, noise and beat sensors.

And on top of all that, there’s no cover charge – although we will be jumping on the bandwagon and raising some funds for FBi radio –  please bring along a gold coin to throw in a bucket.

Ears Vs Eyes. Who will win… Who will win……. (No one will win, it’s not actually a real battle. Settle down, you guys. Seriously. Settle down.)

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