Feminist Mavericks Post Craft The Madcap And Mundane In 'Ich Nibber Dibber'

Fourteen years ago, during a workshop at Sydney's PACT Youth Theatre, Zoë Coombs Marr and Natalie Rose decided to see if they could fit Mish Grigor inside a dishwasher. Thus, the collaborative performance ensemble post was born. Over the last decade and a bit, post has produced work that is at once glitzy and daggy, fiercely intelligent and gleefully stupid, and they've toured it all over the country to huge critical and popular acclaim. Their most recent offering, Ich Nibber Dibber, will be served up across two weekends at the Campbelltown Arts Centre as part of this year's Sydney Festival.

The company's work is always political, which may seem to sit in contrast to their bright, pop-culture aesthetic. In fact, the politics and the glam go hand in hand, says Grigor. When they started the company, post wanted to make work that "spoke to a contemporary art dialogue, but also that our Mums could go along to and have a good time... we try and democratise this different world of entertainment". Grigor is quick to point out that they're not the first company to blend "high-art and low-art", but if they're not the first, they're certainly up there with the best. Their past works have seen them try to explain the global financial crisis in one hour, re-enact every death scene ever written, and become jazz ballet stars.

"I think it's a terrible tragedy that it is still a political act … women taking up space and women talking about themselves."

When they're not explaining economics or being murdered on stage, much of the company's work is drawn from their own lives. Some of post's work could be described as feminist auto-fiction — a genre that stretches all the way back to Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein. More recent examples include Chris Kraus's I Love Dick, Lena Dunham's TV hit Girls, and the theatre and live art of Bryony Kimmings and Zoey Dawson. These are women artists who put their own lived experiences on display, unapologetically, as an antidote to the male-dominated culture in which we live. There are legitimate concerns around the genre regarding race (i.e. how much easier it is for white women to present themselves in this unflinching and exposed way), but the cultural impact of these artists is still noteworthy, in terms of giving women a truer, deeper reflection of ourselves in our cultural canon. Of this kind of work, Chris Kraus once wrote, "I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flippant, self-destructive but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in the world."

Whether or not post's ambitions are revolutionary, they're certainly aware of the political nature of presenting their bodies and lives on stage. "I think it's a terrible tragedy that it is still a political act," says Grigor; "women taking up space and women talking about themselves." And this is exactly what they're doing in their new show, Ich Nibber Dibber. Over their decade-long history of working together, post has always filmed rehearsals and improvisations, in order to be able to keep track of the company's work. On their tenth anniversary, they wanted to make a show exploring these documented conversations and the ways that communication had changed over the course of their twenties.

During the show's development, they decided to go back through all their old rehearsal records and collate every moment of conversation where they went off-topic. They thought this would yield a script full of discussions about life's milestones; victories and defeats, first loves and breakups. As it turned out, the material was a lot sillier and low-key than that. "Actually most of the time, when we go off topic, someone just starts talking about needing to go to the toilet or feeling like they've put on heaps of weight... the big deals of our life are not necessarily things that we have recorded... [instead, it's] the small minutiae of nonsense."

And so, post have flowed with their material to craft a show not so much about the milestones of coming of age, but the day-to-day minutiae of being a woman in your twenties. But don't be fooled - though the content may be mundane, the show itself is sure to be anything but. On top of their glitz-and-gore aesthetic, I asked Grigor if there was anything audiences should be warned about for this particular show. Her answers? Constipation, the Atkins Diet, and live records of childbirth. If you can stomach all of that, Ich Nibber Dibber may be the show for you.

Post presents Ich Nibber Dibber,  20 — 28 Jan, at the Campbeltown Arts Centre, part of the Sydney Festival.