PLAYWAVE CREATIVE REVIEW: ORGANS!

May 26, 2018

Photography by Tim da-Rin

ORGANS!
Reviewed by Lara Franzi

An invitation into our beating, shifting, sorting bodies, Nicole Pingon introduces Organs!, an inner body experience reflective of our most basic human functions.

Organs! is the new member production of Shopfront Arts Co-op, who support local emerging artists with their ideas and inventions. With support from her community of theatre makers, Pingon brings us this outstanding view of our own anatomy which ventures towards questions of our individuality and the physiology that may never be known.

Organs! expresses more than what is physically contained within us. It offers an appreciation of what keeps us kicking and thriving in this chaotic world, beyond our congested atherosclerosis streets. Our narrow arteries are gridlocked with pollution and spite that spark into road rage. Our weak veins mirror city roads that travel through crushed capillaries which have burst into dark bruises. Our body couldn’t be better connected with our world.

Pingon reminds us that our organs are always working, continuously fighting for us to survive. Even with a broken heart or a broken leg, we seem to stay alive. But how do we know when our body begins to turn on us?

The uncontrolled division of our cells might just be what kills us. The idea of a broken heart is far more dramatic, but malignant abnormal cells are destructive; as photocopies of our failed cells, they multiply and multiply, without our conscious input.

Life is a gamble: a combination of AT – CG gene structures.

Organs! reminds us that we can puncture, prod, scar, pierce and ink our bodies - our flimsy way of taking control over it - but in the end, we are just passengers, with no control over our beating hearts and sorting cells. Exercise and good food will nurture our stomachs and fuel our muscles to run faster and think better; but even still, that might only give us an extra 20 years. In the end, we all have an average life expectancy, one that is predicted to decrease with our new generation of technology. Organs! couldn’t have been brought to us at a better time, awakening important thoughts about our lifestyles.  

Nicole reminds us to step lightly with the body and take care of it, so that we can breathe and taste for those extra 20 years. Organs! pries apart the useless drama that consumes our life, it cleanses our minds and brings us back to what is essential for living.

Organs! Is a powerful play that manifests Nicole Pingon’s creative statements, her early beginnings for much more formidable productions to come. Her play blooms our own individual interpretations towards something that we are all close to: our organs. Whether we dehydrate them, poison them with alcohol or starve them to achieve an impossible body image - they are the one thing that will always be with us. Because once they aren’t, neither are we.

ORGANS!
26 - 29 April
Shopfront Arts Co-op