I have a favourite book in my library, American psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz’s highly acclaimed ‘The Examined Life : How We Lose and Find Ourselves’ which featured a number of case studies.
Sometimes in life we can lose ourselves, the truest, most authentic part of ourselves. It leaves us with gaping holes, plenty of cracks. How do we get ourselves through these cracks and find our way back?!
Actress and playwright Elaine Paton has been through a lot in her life including a battle with depression which saw her spiral into the depths of homelessness, something she didn’t envisage happening in her worst nightmare. Since then Paton has found herself in a much better place, and felt that it was important to tell her story in theatrical form.
With THROUGH THE CRACKS Paton uses a unique concept which lifts this play far above the ordinary.
Paton frames the play around a police missing persons investigation led by her alter ego big hearted Welsh Detective Myfwany Tilly who has come out of obscurity to track down Elaine.
We enter the performance space which we are advised is an evidence room where are invited to inspect evidence boards pinned with various ‘media’ from her life including photos from different times of her life, as well as diaries, letters, at al. The play begins with Detective Tilly passing exhibits to audience members.
Paton has said that she was inspired to write THROUGH THE CRACKS after watching a lot of crime dramas on television shows during the Covid lockdown period.
“Late in 2020, in the first Covid lockdown, I moved into public housing. Locked up in isolation, left with a pile of storage boxes containing my life, I opened them up and diaries, photos, letters and other ‘evidence’ spilled out. Looking at photos of my younger self, I asked ‘Who was that young woman, where has she gone? Pinning old black and white photos on large foam boards reminded me of crime dramas I had binge-watched. The focus was always the Forensic Evidence Board, where detectives constructed the story of a life, getting to know the person intimately, to work out what made them tick.”
Paton’s play is written as a one woman show with her switching between herself and her alter ego Detective Tilly. This worked well and Paton gave good performances in both roles.
The production was well directed by Aarne Neeme, a highly experienced and respected Sydney theatre director. Neeme and Paton have known each other for many decades, having first together in 1980 at the Wayside Chapel Theatre in David Edgar’s play ‘Mary Barnes’ which also featured a main character suffering from depression.
The venue for the performance was an alcove room within Leichhardt Town Hall and the intimate space, it would have fitted no more than twenty people, suited the play perfectly.
The performance went for an engrossing hour twenty. I thought what a clever idea or a play. Why hadn’t anyone thought of it before?!
The THROUGH THE CRACKS team are hoping that the play has legs and will see future productions where it can be further refined and reach larger audiences.
Most autobiographies of the kind of Paton’s are written in book form. My view is that putting the story in a theatrical form has made it fresher and more powerful.
This was such a small indie production and yet it had a greater impact than many a mainstream production.
THROUGH THE CRACKS, written and performed by Elaine Paton, directed by Aarne Neeme with video artist Gail Kenning, was performed at the Leichhardt Town, corner of Marion and Norton Street, Leichhardt between Thursday 1 September and Saturday 3 September 2022.
i am elaines brother matthew i wish i could have been there but was in america elaine is such a talented wonderful person i am so proud of her