Here is the Message You Asked For…
OzAsia Festival – Dunstan Playhouse, 1^st November 2018

(Reviewed by John Glennie)

The audience are encouraged to download a social media app on their phones and interact with the performers during the show. As soon as you log into the chat the performers send you messages to welcome you, saying “this is the message you asked for…don’t tell anyone else!”. The session I went to was attended by a class of high-school students who mostly sat on cushions close to the main stage set.

On entering the theatre you see 3 sets of bunk beds with 7 “sleeping beauties”. Soon after, an alarm goes off and the girls in the middle set of bunks awaken and start playing techno music – the 2 girls on the bottom bunk playing a beat box and bass guitar while the girl on the top bunk plays techno music on her laptop.

After a while the other girls wake up and start texting the audience. The netting hanging over both end bunks become a see-through video screen supposedly portraying what the girls are talking about. With everything in Chinese it was difficult to determine what was happening – as evident from the messages posted by the school students!

At various stages, the girls came off their bunks and wandered around the audience or played with soft toys. The finale had the 4 girls from the end bunks going to the back of the theatre and throwing dozens of soft toys into the audience. Meanwhile, the other 3 girls were playing their techno music.

I kept asking myself what each scenario was supposed to represent or achieve – but never really found an answer. Being fairly tech-savvy I had been looking forward to it, but came out wondering! The most entertaining part was reading through some of the messages after the show. Mostly there were comments from the male students saying which girl they thought was the cutest J.