Theatre & Opera Director, Artistic Producer, Writer
Friction by Kate Gaul
Australian Theatre of the Deaf
Darlinghurst Theatre, 17 - 27 November, 2004
Cast included Kate Nelson, Sophya Gollan, Valerie Berry,
Friction combines the power of gestural and physical storytelling with a visceral form of live music. While strongly theatrical it is sprinkled with moments of unsettling comedy. Images are projected onto semi transparent walls to set mood and connect scenes. a gambling factory worker lives with a romantic, while a butcher shares space with a woman who will not leave the apartment. Doors slam, the men compete on garbage night and small-talk is non-existent. But when a strange young woman arrives, she is like a walking challenge to all of them. She seems to have fallen to earth, is curious about simple things and sees a world beyond the boxes they live in. eventually, at a spontaneous party, all of the buried issues home to the surface in a surprising resolution.
Friction is driven by a new music score specifically designed to be appreciated by both hearing and deaf audiences. the latter will be able to experience sonic changes through vibrations, while the former will have earplugs with their free programs, so they can (if they so desire) drop the sonic impact down a notch or two. the score is written, and performed live, by Llew Kiek.
Read about Kate Nelson from the cast here.
Friction at the Australian Theatre of the Deaf was one of those rare productions that seemed to invent its own theatrical language in front of your eyes. Presented at Darlinghurst Theatre Company in 2004, the work fused movement, sign, sound and image into something deeply sensual and unexpectedly emotional.
Kate Gaul’s writing and direction were the production’s driving force. Refusing sentimentality or easy “issue-based” theatre, Gaul instead constructed a fractured, poetic meditation on intimacy, alienation and the unstable boundary between public and private selves. The text arrived in shards — elliptical, muscular, sometimes funny, often haunting — and trusted the audience to lean into ambiguity rather than recoil from it.
What was most striking was Gaul’s instinct for visual rhythm. Scenes unfolded like live installations: bodies sliding through shafts of light, Auslan becoming choreography, silence operating as both tension and release. Lesser directors might have treated the work as an exercise in accessibility politics; Gaul approached it as fully realised contemporary theatre. The result was electrifying.
Her direction displayed the qualities that would later define much of her independent work: precision, muscularity, emotional danger and a fierce commitment to ensemble storytelling. Every stage image felt composed yet alive. A sequence involving projected text and “visual music” could easily have tipped into pretension, but under Gaul’s control it became strangely moving — a theatrical experience felt physically as much as intellectually.
Most impressive was the generosity of the production’s gaze. Friction did not explain Deaf culture to hearing audiences; it invited audiences into a new sensory grammar and asked them to adapt. That confidence gave the work its power.
Two decades later, Friction feels like a precursor to many of the interdisciplinary performance works now celebrated across contemporary festivals. In 2004, however, it felt thrillingly ahead of its time — and much of that achievement belonged to Kate Gaul’s assured, fearless theatrical vision.