Is it dance? Is it theatre? Is it… simulated sex work? The Act is the result of a collaboration between Amrita Hepi (Bunjalung Ngapuhi artist, dancer, RISING Board member, Triad member of APHIDS and artistic associate at STRUT) and Tilly Lawless (queer sex worker and writer). Having discovered Lawless and been impressed by her work, Hepi made contact and the pair then developed The Act over time with the assistance of co-writer and director Mish Grigor.
The results are arresting to say the least. In an uncluttered space, a white floor morphing seamlessly into the white backdrop is bare save for two partial fake glass walls and a wheeled rostrum (lilac with a pink valance – immediately hinting at the colour scheme of a suburban brothel). Hepi appears and offers some context for the performance before Lawless enters and, shedding her clothing en route, joins Hepi in using the rostrum to restage Édouard Manet’s 1863 painting Olympia, once described as ‘the 19th century’s most scandalous painting‘. This was not due to its depiction of nudity, but the fact that the naked subject was assumed to be a sex worker potentially looking straight out at the viewer as client, rather than the ethereal and heavenly gazing muse-like nudes of classical art.
In 2025 there’s nothing scandalous about a dancer and a sex worker sharing the stage to make a piece of work, but it could still be described as unusual. Using the position taken by Olympia‘s model (Victorine Meurent – whose own art and other modelling roles, coincidentally, can be seen in the French Impressionist exhibition now running at the NGV) as a starting point, Hepi then attempts to understand Lawless’ experience, to get under the skin as it were, while also interpreting this dialogue in dance and expressing her own experiences and truths as a dancer though the medium of movement. In doing so the pair unearth and play with the perhaps unsuspected parallels and comparable elements of their worlds.
While not a dancer, Lawless matches Hepi to a degree, but it’s impossible not to be reminded of the quote attributed to cartoonist Bob Thaves about Ginger Rogers, that she did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. Lawless may not be travelling backwards, but those sky-high see-through platform heels are a feat of engineering in themselves. If nothing else, The Act should give viewers a whole new level of respect for the physical adroitness demanded of sex workers, and not just their levels of acceptance and stamina.
There are some standout moments of the performance – particularly related to buckets (one that is emptied from on high at a most effective moment, and a couple more that turn into fountains at another), but most of the impact relates to the push and pull between Hepi and Lawless, the yin and the yang, the sweaty and the composed, the old hand and the neophyte.
Read: Immersive review: Prison Island Melbourne, Docklands
This is a project that has been some time in the making. It would be fascinating to see just how much further it could go. If say, they could go full Ingmar Bergman and, Persona-like, merge into each other completely…
The Act, produced by Performing Lines and Vitalstatistix
Co-Creator and Performer: Amrita Hepi
Co-Creator and Performer: Tilly Lawless
Director and co-Writer: Mish Grigor
Composer and Sound Designer: Daniel Jenatsch
Lighting Designers: Katie Sfetkidis and Harrie Hogan
Set Designer: Francesca Carey
Costume Designer: D&K Ricarda Bigolin and Chantal Kirby
Production and Stage Manager: Celina Mack
Tickets: $44-$49
The Act will be performed at Chunky Move Studios, 111 Sturt Street, Southbank, Melbourne as part of RISING until 14 June, with a new show added due to demand at 2pm on Saturday 14 June.
