Waterloo

Bron Batten


Year the project commenced:2018  
Year it became impossible:2020 
Audience not reached:​​​​​​​1000+
In a year where, due to lock downs and social distancing, illicit affairs were very hard to orchestrate. We were also robbed of our chance to vicariously indulge in Bron Batten’s. WATERLOO, which had its Melbourne, New Zealand and UK performances cancelled, would have been an explosive interrogation of Batten’s ill-fated affair with a conservative UK military official. A cutting edge contemporary performance, Waterloo would utilise direct address, participation and performative task, as techniques of the live-art and post dramatic theatre, to turn the lens on the audience. Provoking the potential apathy of a left leaning audience it would encouraging attendees to examine their own ideological beliefs around war, politics and the military. It would ask them to engage with the real possibility of enacting violence and what they could be capable of.
Waterloo is about our human fascination with destruction - whether it be personal, material, environmental or political. It is a particularly urgent work given the global tendency towards ideological binaries and the personal and societal division those create within communities. It is a complex morality tale entwined with a tender love story, and transcends political division by asking: What happens when you cross enemy lines? This year the enemy is a virus but we hope in future years illicit affairs become possible again.
There are tentative plans to tour and present Waterloo next year, but obviously this is incredibly hopefully and precarious. All we know for sure is that 1000 people missed out on seeing it in 2020.
Written and Performed by Bron Batten
Outside eye / Director - Gary Adams 
Photography - Image Credit - Theresa Harrison



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