I'll be very sad when the teams of construction workers turn up on Tuesday and the Republic is brought down. There is a certain sadness when any republic falls but a Theatre Republic? That's tragic. I have enjoyed a whole world of awesome performance in this space since the Brisbane Festival began. Tonight was the Two Men in a Box, our last Theatre Republic performance for 2017. This was absurd, in the theatrical and real world sense of the world. It was also very funny. But what made me laugh most was the look on Drama Teen's face. He seemed very confused in a way that said he was missing the joke. This is because he was totally missing the joke poor young and innocent thing. Anyone my age will have clear memories of the Roneo machine and the purple spirit copies it produced. Decades later the experience of sniffing those purple sheets remains fresh in my mind. My boy knows nothing of this, having been born into a world of photocopiers, laser printing and emails. This means a comedy where two men are in a cult devoted to the instructions of a manual to one of these machines made no sense at all. People of a certain age laughed out loud as the instructions about The Master and The Spirits and the fading reproductions were misinterpreted as a guide for life. Digital Natives saw the humour in the incredible clowning and physicality but had this confused and bemused looks. This is actually what I like about the Theatre Republic. It's a very mixed bag but there's something for everyone - even members of weird replication cults.
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