Presented by Alysha Herrmann
@ Box Factory Community Centre, Adelaide
FRIDAY 2 March (performances in Lameroo, Waikerie and Renmark until March 10)

Pressure is inescapable. Navigating through fields of pressure is something life demands, no matter what age a person is.

PressureLands is a play written and directed by Alysha Herrmann, and is part of the Youth Engagement Program at the Adelaide Fringe. The concept was born in 2009 in the Riverlands, where Alysha spoke to and interviewed more than 600 young people between the ages of 14 and 26, asking what pressure meant to them. This developed into a drama workshop which young people living in the Riverlands took part in, and finally evolved into the Adelaide Fringe Show PressureLands. There are two things to keep in mind when watching the performance: one, it was created mainly to perform in schools, and two, this is amateur theatre. The actors are students from the Riverlands. Eighteen-year old actor Milly Hoffmann explains that the workshopping process ‘was really important, because it is to showcase the Riverlands. If we want to go to uni, we have to leave the nest. We can’t live at home, whereas people [from Adelaide] live at home [while studying].’ Several students need to take a gap year in order to be able to afford to move to Adelaide to study. The show really tries to create a dialogue with the audience, engaging them in the different kinds of pressures facing students living a country life, some of which are not relevant to city kids.

There is much creative interaction with the audience throughout the piece. As the audience enters and finds their chairs, each seat has a clipboard with a test, asking questions such as ‘What are you most afraid of?’, as well as an envelope. One of the actors, Brianna Obst, walks around with a folded paper chatterbox, asking various audience members if they’d like to play. Then, the lights dim and Milly Hoffmann and James Herrmann join their fellow actor onstage. “Play” is a loose term to describe the performance, because although there is a story thread running through the piece, it is constantly interrupted by direct communication with the audience, or little asides, or side tangents to the central storyline, as the three actors try to make the audience understand what it’s like living with all this pressure.

The music accompanying the piece emphasized and intensified as the pressure the students suffered strengthened. The acting was overall pretty good, particularly the onstage interactions. Even so, it was the segments which were understated and represented, rather than outright said, which were the most effective. There was one scene where the three actors repeatedly mime out their daily routines onstage, which slowly picks up speed until it reaches a frenzy in time to the music. That scene was so powerful because it demonstrated that no matter what kind of pressure a person is feeling, it manifests itself in similar ways, and is something most people can relate to.

About halfway through the show, the audience were asked to participate in an exercise that was given to a class of Year 12 students at the beginning of their final year of high school. We had to draw how we thought others perceived us on the outside of the envelope and write five different words to describe ourselves on the five pieces of paper inside the envelope. This is where the show has clearly been developed for schools, yet to me it is an important piece not only for students, but for their parents. How can parents be expected to understand the pressures their kids face when they grew up in a different generation? And how can parents offer support to their kids if they don’t at least try to understand?

The play extends to not just the many different scenarios and pressures the three actors portray, but really tries to allow everyone who took part in the project to have their voice heard. The back wall of the set was papered with letters from students, beginning “Dear PressureLands”. After the show, director Herrmann invited us to read for ourselves the pressures these students deal with every day, from school to parents and peer groups, and how those pressures affect the choices these young people make. One line from the play has stuck with me and refuses to go away. In response to her parents’ criticism of her decision not to go to university, the character replies, ‘My life wouldn’t be wasted, it would be mine.’ Enough said.

PressureLands is the voice of hundreds of Riverland students, releasing their burdens out into the open to share with others, and it is so important that those students have the chance to express themselves. It is, however, more than a play of expression: it really strives to make the audience understand why these young people feel so much pressure.

For more information on the project, please visit http://pressurelands.wordpress.com/