LARYNGECTOMY
"...presented with such skill, ferocity and courage ... that you had to sit up and take notice"
LARYNGECTOMY (2011, 2012)
In many ways, I feel like Laryngectomy was the first performance work I made. Yes there had been other shows, but this was the first in which I had some semblance of what my "voice" might be.
Free Speech has always been, to me at least, a human right of the utmost importance - one that needed to be defended at all cost. This work was a paean to that. It was the first work where I broke completely with narrative form in favor of what was essentially a performative lecture.
My performers were Jess Allen, Paul Grabovac, Jess Rawnsley and Demelza Rogers.
The work was written in conjunction with Demelza Rogers, who also choreographed movement for the work.
-Joe Lui (Writer/ Director/ Sound and LX Designer on Laryngectomy)
"Laryngectomy is not comfortable entertainment. Rarely are convictions displayed so passionately in today’s politically correct, tolerant and culturally diverse-sensitive society. Laryngectomycondemns politeness as a poor excuse for inaction and celebrates the right to be offended. The rapid, scattergun approach to the multiplicity of ways in which freedom of speech is fundamentally important keeps the audience on edge, constantly wondering what will happen next. There is a valiant attempt to be comprehensive without lecturing throughout, which leaves an impression of having covered significant ground.
Initially bemused and doubtful of the effectiveness of Laryngectomy, it has been hard to dismiss from my mind. This is not ‘preaching to the converted’ or an undergraduate attempt to shock, so much as a call to action for our times."
-Artshub.com
"Renegade Productions' Laryngectomy proved, quite literally, to be the chalky bit of the evening, but presented with such skill, ferocity and courage by its creator Joe Lui and performers Paul Grabovac, Jessica Rawnsley, Demelza Rogers and Jessica Allen Jones that you had to sit up and take notice.
Lui's thesis is that we are being deprived of the fundamental right to take offence, inevitably leading to a form of deafness and blindness in society. As he puts it "To listen to everything, you have to be able to hear it".
It's not new ground but Laryngectomy comes at it from fresh and startling angles with insight and effectiveness."
-The West Australian
