movies and memories

Image: Tale Thief

Local creatives are front and centre in the 2023 Merrigong Theatre Company season, including UOW creative arts graduates and two of the creators of Coil, Carly Young and Mark Rogers.

Inspired by the highs and lows of pop culture and the closure of Leading Edge video store in Thirroul, Coil combines theatre and movie-making to create an immersive experience for audiences.

We spoke to Carly and Mark about the joys, perils and pitfalls of nostalgia and its effect on our lives and community.

Tell us about your show, Coil…

The show is set in the now closed Leading Edge Video Thirroul which was one of the last standing video shops in New South Wales. It only recently closed in August 2020, after 40 years of operation. Our show, Coil, reflects on what we might have lost in losing community spaces around art, like a video shop.

We made the show during residencies in small regional towns - we made part of it in Castlemaine and also in Tassie, and I grew up in a small town as well in Wagga. All these places had those shops, a Blockbuster or Video Ezy or even a petrol station that was also a post office and it had a wall of DVDs. There was always somewhere.

It really wasn't that long ago that those places were central to the cultural life of these small towns. On a Friday night they would be packed with people and families searching to get their five weeklies or new release. That experience has been totally wiped by innovations in digital technology. Those innovations are great, but we're curious about what we've lost in that process.

The show mixes live theatre and filmmaking, how does it all come together?

As a collective of performers, we make live cinema, which is kind of like theatre, but we make a movie live on stage in front of the audience. That's our interest. We're all movie buffs, probably from all our time in the Video Ezy shops. We had an idea about doing a live cinema show with one person only, and they can play all the characters in the show against themselves.

Steve Wilson-Alexander is the main performer in the show, and he grew up in Thirroul. The show is loosely based on him and a friendship that was centered around filmmaking and that location, Leading Edge Thirroul, and about nostalgia and loss.

We were developing the tech, but we didn't have the heart to the story. It wasn't until Leading Edge closed down and then all our other video stores started closing down, we were realised there's something about loss, nostalgia, memory and growing up that can all roll into this idea that we are making around cinema and film.

As soon as we had the heart of what was all of our childhoods, it felt like it hit home a lot more. We all had the same memories from the same Friday nights.

Image: Rosie Hastie

How does Coil parallel the loss of connection or community?

For me, it's things that you would physically have to go to that you don't anymore. I think cinema is wrapped up in that to an extent. Even if you were doing your movie in pizza night, you don't have to leave the home anymore. There's a loss in even takeaway shops in that you won't go in and get your pizza to get your video to go home. It just all comes to you. It feels like there's a loss in us leaving home to do things and all the things that are involved.

It was exacerbated by COVID, where we were instructed not to leave our homes and we got quite used to it. Now that we're post COVID, I don't know whether the opening up that we had imagined is happening - in the sense of an enthusiastic going out, desperate to experience life around other people again.

What do you hope audiences will take away from Coil?

It's very heartfelt in its message of genuine friendship or loss or how nostalgia can be luring, but dangerous for everyone. There's a reason we haven't gone back - if you're stuck in nostalgia, you're not really moving forward. You're not living in the now.

For me, I think the show warms the audience up, and then provides a sting. I also think it's a joyous reflection on something that we've lost that maybe we didn't want to. Maybe now that we've lost it, we kind of wish we had it back a little bit.

I think that's why it's relatable. Every generation is harking back to their time, whatever that may be, pre-video store. If we're all harking back whilst moving forward. It is relatable to people who didn't even care about video shops, but they do care about their childhood.

Find out more and book tickets for Merrigong Season 2023 at merrigong.com.au