What a treat it is as an audience member to see the first ever outing of a show in development. It’s a special kind of exciting, really. You go in with no specific expectations about what you might see, but with high hopes that you’ll enjoy it.

It also feels like a special kind of privilege sometimes. We’re let in when the work is still a “rough draft” and when the artists/creators are at what I imagine might be their most vulnerable and courageous. And it’s exciting knowing that you (and all the other members of the audience around you) will have an impact on the work as it continues on its journey of development.

Whether you laughed, sighed, fidgeted, focused, gasped, groaned, walked out swiftly or clapped loud and long at the end all matters. The work is being tested on you. How you receive it and respond to it will play a part in shaping how it evolves into the future.

Almost a year ago I saw Aanisa Vylet’s The Girl/The Woman at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta. Before that, months before, I had seen two development showings of the work – one at Bankstown Arts Centre and the other at Belvoir. At Bankstown we were treated to a tiny teaser of the work. At Belvoir, months later, were we given the more extreme, edgier bits, as the point at which a collective audience laugh can turn into a collective audience discomfort was tested on us. The final show was just brilliant by the way. I wrote about it here.

Aanisa’s latest work, Sauvage (Wild), got its first outing last night at Griffin’s Batch Festival. It’s early in development and totally worth seeing. Not only for the privilege and excitement of being a part of the development journey of new contemporary Australian theatre, but because even at this early stage there is lots to love.

Like the way it centres the female experience in it’s retelling of the dutiful daughter/disobedient daughter narratives, at the same time over-laying and playing with contemporary cultural nuances. (The King character, for example, is your average Wog Dad. He certainly has a lot in common with mine, just a slightly different accent).

And Aanisa’s charm, warmth and natural, easy physicality in storytelling is of course the highlight, especially in the moments when she invites the audience into the work. These bits worked really well in the intimacy of the Stables Theatre. Some of my favourite moments in the show were carried by the genie/wild womyn/sage/seer character moving in and out of Arabic and English fluidly, punctuating text with non-worded vocalisations and utterances. This was for me really quite captivating and a bit of an aural treat in quite a sparse soundscape.

I look forward to seeing where Sauvage (Wild) will be taken from here.

If you love being a part of the journey of new work; if you love really fresh new, hyper-local theatre; if you love theatre about and by women; if you love myth and storytelling and play; and especially if you love theatre that centres diverse stories, characters and languages from this melting pot of a city we live in…  then I think you’ll like Sauvage (Wild). It’s on daily at 8:30pm until and including Sat 11th May at Griffin Theatre. Tickets are selling fast.