ABSTRACT
Savages, written by one of Australia’s most celebrated and awarded playwrights, Patricia Cornelius, explores the themes of masculinity and misogyny amongst a pack of ordinary young men who don’t really know themselves or what they can become. Savages was an investigation of experiences of architecture through the body and of the body through architecture. Persona Collective’s version of Cornelius’s Savages (2014) responded genuinely, and organically with (and to) the physical (performance space and architecture) and personal (actors’ own bodies) space. The Efforts represent an ongoing (Flow) sense of self (Weight) in relation to the environment (Space) over time (Time); however, the performer does not only exist in the space, and they are also part of the space itself. This chapter discusses how the actors utilised these systems to connect bodies and voices to the site-specific performance space.
