Helensburgh performer Neisha Murphy – a former head trainer at Circus Monoxide who is known as the 'Loveable Larrikin' and for her daredevil stunts – will bring her new one-woman show to Wollongong Town Hall this Thursday.
About the complexity of grief and finding hope in dark days, ChaChi and The Sea of Tears is a powerful story with playful moments, including clowning, juggling and a possible world-first trick.
“It's quite ambitious. We are mixing character, emotion and circus skills, it's difficult to do,” says Neisha, who has spent the past three weeks rehearsing in the Treetop Arts space at Burgh Healthy Hub.
ChaChi director Anne-Louise Rentell – whose last production was the evocative Sirens' Return at Port Kembla Pool – says: “Neisha has done a lot of work with physical circus tricks and we really wanted to make a show that had a more personal storyline.
“The show is really about a process of coming through a period of grief. It's about your very first experience of something emotionally monumental, and then how you deal with it.”
For Neisha, the monumental event was losing her mother to illness in 2014. “It was extremely painful. It probably took me about three years to be able to listen to certain songs without having a big emotional reaction.
"It got me thinking about the fact that we all lose people in our lives, but I had no idea how painful and how world-shattering that is. It happens all around us but I've never talked to people about what was that like, losing a parent or losing a loved one.
“It changed my whole outlook. And I felt deep sadness, which I'd never felt before.”
Neisha is a circus artist who also describes herself as a "variety entertainer, director, vagabond and video producer". She was an Australian karate champion and Sportsperson of the Year at age 11 (she's still a black belt) and has been juggling since age 18.
Known for her unique and daring stunts, Neisha studied theatre media at Charles Sturt University at Bathurst and was later accepted into her dream course, the Circo Arts program at Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology in New Zealand. Then disaster struck. “I was in the Christchurch earthquakes [in 2011]. That was the first thing that happened to me that made me question the world and my plans, and that I didn't have control over everything.”
After the earthquake, the school shut down and Neisha went on to become head trainer at Circus Monoxide, from 2012 to 2015. (One of her students is now filling that role and will bring the young troupe see ChaChi this week.)
As a performer, Neisha has broken ground in Australian circus, being one of only a few women jugglers and unicyclists. When an opportunity came up at Merrigong Theatre Company’s independent artist program, MerrigongX, she seized the chance to challenge herself again.
“I wanted to do something that's going to connect with an audience and talk about subject matter that felt really important and that I hadn't seen anyone try and do with circus skills before.”
At the show’s core is a specially built set-piece, something that looks like a cross between a giant hammock stand and storage rack, decorated with quirky props including a shower curtain, a broom and a vase of flowers.
“The rig is reminiscent of my life because I've lived in caravans, I've lived in vans. So all of my possessions generally go with me,” Neisha says.
“It has its own presence,” Anne-Louise says. “Here in the building [the town hall] it’s called contraption.
“Con for short,” adds Neisha.
“The contraption came from my brain. I've been doing slack rope, which is the opposite of tight wire for 15, 16 years now.
“So the contraption was built to be a slack rope rig, but then I went, I don't like things to have only one purpose. I like for them to have many uses."
The result is a rig with a suspension platform where Neisha will perform.
“People have never done what I'm trying to do. No one has anything like this. This has come from my brain, and I got it built. And then my brother also helped to make tiny adjustments to it to make it more suitable for our show.
“What I do is something called a triple stack rola bola.”
It's a balancing act atop three cylinders more often performed by men.
“It's a world-first," she says. "Already trying to do that on stable ground is extremely hard but I'm doing it on something that wiggles. So it's actually quite dangerous as well. I've been training for the past six months to be able to do one trick in the show.
“In this circus role, there's a lot of vulnerability.”
ChaChi, a name inspired by the Happy Days character, is a fictional character. “It offers me a bit of protection so that I don't feel so raw about what I’m actually sharing.”
The show is set to be action-packed. Neisha says, “There’s juggling, there's balance, there's rope-walking, there's unicycle. There’s multi-media, shadow play.”
Anne-Louise says, “Another really beautiful thing is saw playing, which is quite a specialist thing amongst the circus world.”
Neisha: “So instead of playing a violin, I have a saw that I play with a violin bow.”
Anne-Louise: “It has an incredible sound, it's quite a mournful sound.”
First conceived in 2019, then Covid interrupted, ChaChi has received development funding from MerrigongX Artists' Program, which supports innovative independent work.
“It has enabled us to get other creatives involved,” Anne-Louise says. “We’ve got a great team.”
Neisha is the silent denim-clad star, ChaChi; Anne-Louise is the director and narrator; Sammy Read is the lighting designer; and Brent Williams is the composer and sound designer. Neisha – a big fan of Russian clown Slava Snowshow and his epic soundscapes – says, “Brent also has a capacity to build big, big spaces in which quite fragile, vulnerable things can happen.”
Currently the director of The Strangeways Ensemble at Merrigong, Anne-Louise met Neisha in 2007 when they worked together on an Athol Fugard play. She says it's great to be part of her career trajectory again in ChaChi.
“It's a show about how we deal with our feelings in moments of crisis. But it's told in a very beautiful way, through physical storytelling," Anne-Louise says.
“There are elements of whimsy and comedy in it that alleviate any sense of too much darkness. It's playful in many respects.
"And we're hoping that it'll also be moving.”
ChaChi and The Sea of Tears by Neisha Murphy combines clowning and storytelling in an action-packed show about facing your fears and finding light in the darkness – even in the biggest downpours. Full of slapstick comedy, hilarious antics, daring circus and the big time feels… oh, and don’t forget your brolly! For ages 12+
When: 2-4 March 2023
Where: Main auditorium, Wollongong Town Hall
Tickets: Book your spot.
MERRIGONGX aims to easier to experience new works. So for MERRIGONGX events there is no set ticket price. Instead, you simply reserve a spot, show up, then pay what you feel the performance is worth afterwards.
