The Human Voice

Following successes in their home cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, Ang Collins (Blueberry Play), Thomas De Angelis (Chamber Pot Opera), Fiona Spitzkowsky (Unicorn D*ck), Georgia Symons (Who Will Win?), Jean Tong (Hungry Ghosts) and Lewis Treston (Reagan Kelly), six of Australia’s leading young playwrights, have come together to create The Human Voice for Meat Market Stables. These exciting young playwrights have collaborated on a sextuple bill (six short plays) all of which take place over the phone, exploring the ways this now ubiquitous technology influences our ability to communicate, converse and connect.

The Human Voice showcases humanity’s strangest phone-based quirks: connection to strangers when a wrong number is dialed, the awkwardness of phone-sex, and the imperfect possibilities of true connection via the phone. From the ritual of the family phone call to the uncertain menace of surveillance and privacy, The Human Voice is a unique theatrical collaboration that will change the way you think about your phone.

Directed by Benjamin Sheen (Disparate Scenes for Millennial Dreams) and presented by Periscope Productions, The Human Voice also features the experimental choir Choral Edge, who will perform original music composed by the Father/Daughter team of David and Jess Keeffe, and with musical direction and additional composition from Juliana Kay. The idea for the show came from Sheen’s fascination with a 1930 play by Jacques Cocteau, also called The Human Voice: “The original was such a simple concept: one woman speaking on the phone. But the real drama for me was how it revealed a new sort of language. We connect with people differently on the phone and it’s such an intimate space.”

Opening Thursday 4 March at Meat Market Stables, The Human Voice is an extraordinary collaboration between some of Australian theatre’s most exciting young creatives.