Born in a Taxi

The Waiting Room places collective human behaviour under the microscope, from the comical to the disturbingly surreal, in a participatory co-creation with the audience.

“The Waiting Room is cutting-edge experimental theatre: a profound exploration of how we choreograph ourselves from chaos. What makes this piece radically beautiful is that it interrogates and embodies the random processes intrinsic to human behaviour.” – Cameron Woodhead, The Age

Melbourne’s masters of improvisation and contemporary performance bring you a unique, unrepeatable performance unifying an audience of strangers in the spirit of play.

Enter The Waiting Room and you immediately ask: where’s the stage? The entire space is filled with rows of chairs. Sit where you will; from the outset, the audience is complicit in the show’s creation. The Waiting Room is rich with physical, metaphysical, and psychological resonances. A familiar place where we all find ourselves at some point. Waiting. Waiting on the phone, at the train station, in the elevator, for a diagnosis, better times, love, a verdict or death.

Free to sit and watch or join in as the audience is seduced in collective play and scrutiny. Interactions occur, events take place and meaning accrues. These interactions are the engine of The Waiting Room, where the audience as both spectator and participant bring their individual histories and imaginations to bear. The line between audience and performer fades as genuine in-the-moment exchanges shape each moment that follows. The stakes keep getting higher, till finally one person’s wait is over, in an unexpected twist: a grand solo is performed by an audience member.

Empowering and unpredictable, each night’s show is driven by a soundscape created live each night. All verbal material is pre-recorded and can be recorded in any language making this show tourable anywhere and accessible to all ages and cultures. A site-responsive work adapted to each venue.