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| Dr Brendan McPhillips performing at the Camelot Lounge, Sept 2014 |
The man in the picture is a psychotherapist and a performer. This his story:
"My
name is Brendan McPhillips and I am a member of the improvised playback theatre
group Out of the Box. There are around 10 of us in the group, and we perform publicly 4 times
a year, usually upstairs at the Roxbury Hotel in Glebe in Sydney's inner west.
Playback
was started 30 years ago by Jonathan Fox in America. It grew out of
Psychodrama, but, rather than being therapeutic, it was designed as
performance - performance for communities that enabled them to reflect on themselves,
and see the common human threads that run through all groups of people.
At a playback performance a 'conductor' stands in front of the audience. Behind the conductor are 4 actors and a
musician. The conductor asks audience members to tell stories from their lives. These are
then enacted immediately and without rehearsal by the performers. Often
something seemingly ordinary that would otherwise pass by without notice becomes
startling and moving.
I became involved in playback theatre myself 20 years ago, when, on a whim, I did a course in
improvised theatre. It has subsequently seamed my life with such a vein of gold
that I still often stand on stage in wonder at how this extraordinary path
opened to me"
.
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