All That (Fits In A) Jazz

It's certainly among the more unusual venues this Fringe, though for Davina Wright it feels perfect. "The sound system, the control, it works for me like a really traditional theatre space," says the writer and director, who also performs in and produces Dion from the driver's seat.

Alongside Wright, there are six other actors, including Xavier O'Shannessy. As the car moves around Adelaide, brief scenes play out around the car and everything is so tightly choreographed that something as simple as getting stuck in traffic can throw all the timing off. When asked about the logistics of staging the show, they respond in unison that it's "a nightmare."

Residents, workers and people enjoying a night out on the town live out their lives around the audience and performers, so the show necessarily has to have a somewhat improvisatory nature. In Melbourne they've had to deal with being locked in a car park, drunk passers by trying to join the performance and factory workers timing their breaks to watch one of the racier scenes.

Wright and O'Shannessy describe Dion variously as "an extremely well-oiled machine" and "an easily unravelled tapestry."

Where exactly in Adelaide the venue will be driving is still being decided, but the narrative will have much the same shape as when Dion won the Best Performance award at the Melbourne Fringe in 2016.

"For me, it's kind of simple," explains Wright. "The audience gets into the car and the starting point is a breakup. The opening narration is a bitter poem to my ex-girlfriend. It's over the speakers so there's nothing spoken in the car at all. And then it's just taking the audience on this journey of what happens when you start looking around you. When you get really sad and your life is tossed up in the air so much, you start seeing shit again."

During February and March, if you walk the streets of the East End it's sometimes hard to tell who's performing and who's watching. For O'Shannessy, that's the perfect environment in which to experience Dion. "What we really like is when the audience starts to question what has been planned and what's just weird shit that just happens."

 

Dion, meet at Raj House, 23 Feb-9 Mar (not Mondays), various times, $35-49