Now Showing: The Improbable Doors of the Ghan Theatre!

Five and Six makes Eleven. An important equation. Its relevance lies in the desire to understand the dreams of others. An important term. ‘Others’. Mankind looks at a house and sees it as a singular construct. They see its doors, windows, roof and walls, floors and fences. Yet each of these could be, should be considered singular. A community of houses that make up the collective House. A theatre is no different. It is a House of singular constructs to form a collective Theatre.

Doors.

Windows.

Roof and walls.

Floors and fences.

‘But what of function? A Theatre surely differs from a House in that regard.’

A House possesses a television; it does not become a Theatre. But a Theatre possessing people can become a House. Still not convinced? Allow me to Educate:

HISTORY EQUIDISTANT

NOW SHOWING:

The Journey of Sounds. 

An Expedition of Space. 

Improbable Connections. 

Irrefutable Reality. 

Shifting Models. 

Inevitable Houses. 

Before me stands the Theatre. Ghan. Named in the fashion of a prosperous rail endeavour in Australia’s south in the year of 1929. The Ghan Theatre was (re)opened in 1923 in the city of Heathcote, NSW. This place, curious in its effect on space and time, seemed not immune to the inaccuracies of historians, but in the interest of education, was consistent in its changing histories. Previously Les Belle Morts, it was one of the first buildings to follow the construction of Heathcote’s first drinking establishment The Lantern. Yet, where historical inaccuracies are concerned, it either pre-dates the House, post-dates it, or exists simultaneously together with the House on the hill. 

            I’ve come here many times before. 

            I always forget the size of it. Smaller.

            My memory dilates and shrinks. 

            A first date. Waiting in the cold winter breeze. Had it been raining? I saw Daphne approaching. A long-standing crush. It might’ve been mutual. She had said yes. She’d called it a date. There was no confusion to the nature of the event. What was the film? We were seeing Reptilian Lace. Science fiction. Cults. Sex and violence. That might be where time began to bleed. From story to screen to reality. Can you call it that? But Daphne arrived in a dress of purple. A white headband. A light jacket. Slight rouge. A beauty. An embrace, long and warm. The echo of greetings, then the simultaneous comments of excitement, then the jinx. Again, and again. It felt right. It felt natural. Is this hindsight in comparison to what came next?

            The doors. 

            Brass etched.

            Red paint.

            (Stop)

They say that behind the brass doors there’s an old cinema: an old House of pornography that was once a theatre, then a perversion, then a terrible scar on society. 

            I paid for our tickets. Daphne would get the popcorn and drinks. We liked coming here as friends. Now we were more than that. (Un)definable to what, but of remaining what we were, improbable. It’s the lights of the marquee that do this, you see. They shine a magnificent light on things. Things you love, things you hate, mostly things you don’t want to see at all. 

            Daphne (knocks) on the doors. I can’t tell if she did the first time. Nor the second, third, fourth, fifth, on and on. I know it’s present now. It tells me it’s hollow. It’s not real. It’s Morse code in an alien language. First comes the (knock) and then another. The doors will (creak) open and swing and engulfed will we be with the warmth of the theatre. That’s what gets you. Fills you with hope and excitement once more. Reminds you of the times you came here with your parents. They’d saved for months. They sacrificed. 

            The (rustle) of snacks hidden in your clothes. 

            The (tsssk) of warm home-brand soda. 

            The (giggles) of getting away with it. 

            You can smell the popcorn. 

            You can see the bright coloured carpet. 

            You can imagine that you’re indulging in theatre treats. 

            Because you are. You know this is a treat. The whole thing. So, when Daphne buys you snacks because you paid for the tickets, all those hours scrubbing toilets and mowing lawns and doing whatever you could to pitch in at home, it all comes to fruition. It’s the first-time eating theatre popcorn. It’s the first-time drinking theatre soda. 

            (Knock-knock-knock)

            I’m back in the foyer of the theatre. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve been here. Daphne stopped coming here. I can still smell her perfume. And I guess that’s what keeps me opening these improbable doors. She’s somewhere in the theatre. Maybe I’ll find her. Maybe I won’t. Maybe that’s the idea. The foyer seems to echo this belief. A waiting room. Far beyond the term ‘clinical’ or ‘sanitised’. Smells compete with one another. Lights are overbearing and there’s music playing incessantly on the speakers. 

            This time it’s Jazz. 

            This time it’s Instrumental. 

            This time it’s the wailing of Widows. I hate that one. 

            The foyer has an obvious number of doors. The twin double doors that bracket the ticket booth outside. Opening in like a mirror that absorbs everything. There’s the Staff Only door. The Men’s room doors. The Women’s room doors. Theatre One. Theatre Two. Theatre Three. Loading Dock. Storeroom. Basement. Behind these doors, a consistency of appearance and arrangement in temporality. 

            What concerns me is the improbable doors. 

            The doors of shifting perspective. 

            Peripheral vision changes them, you see. 

            Living things. Parasitic in nature. Doors of the mind.

            What is the mind but the soul. What are the eyes but windows to the soul? 

NOW SHOWING:

The Obvious doors: One to Nine. 

[See ‘The Brass Doors’ for doors 10 & 11]

Door One: They say that behind the doors of Theatre One there’s an old department store: an old House of mannequins that once held grandeur, then affordable, then cheap imitations of magnificence. 

Daphne had been here. The notes of lavender clung to everything. Fresh. Old. The scarves draping over the mannequins shifting and shimmering like a luminescent ocean at night, reflecting on a close ceiling of glass above. Here, in Theatre One, it’s a labyrinth of dolls bearing the brutality of mankind. Some are shrivelled husks. Others muscular and tight. Burn victims. Rape victims. Murder victims. There are limbs and scenes of carnage. But the deeper I go into this room, the more the shimmering tide swallows any understanding of a way out. The (whir) of the projector booth. The (flash) of images on the screen above. The (cadence) and (beat) of deafening music accompany the visions of death shown to me. Always Daphne. Hunting me. A beautiful corpse on lavender winds raving and lashing out in the maze of mannequins. 

Daphne had been here. What are the corpses of the present but memories of the past? There can be no future for them, so they wither and die in the images we hold of them. They press in all around. Suffocating. A sea of plastic bodies. The corpses of lives lived rotting and consuming the living. Now I had been here. An exit existed. Another door. 

Door Two: They say that behind the women’s room doors there’s an old pervert: an old House of wickedness that was once brutal, then murderous, then inescapable. 

Perceptions of what lay beyond that which I had never glimpsed were shattered again in the second door. Unlike the Candy Bar, which I believed to be the source of the permeating smell of popcorn – salty and cloying like the tears of grief – this door brought with it the rancid tones of urine and excrement alike. A sea of soaking-wet popcorn. The sting of urine on the skin. The salt in the wounds of perpetual spaces. The (Crackle) of speakers. Announcing an incomprehensible message of curiously light design. Upbeat tones. Carnival music. Bleeding electronics with cascades of hot butter. The stalls pouring out the burnt, the fresh, even the (un)cooked kernels into the inevitable swamp of human waste. 

Daphne may have been here. It’s hard to tell. It’s a strong composition of odours. But he’s here. The old man. Naked with a face painted with the white circles of the doors. He’s tried to take me before. He’s nearly succeeded a handful of times. Now he just moves in ripples and eddies. A perverted shark in this sea. Forever tainting the freshness of a place trying to rectify what was done to it. 

Door Three: They say that behind the basement door there’s an old archive: an old House of artifacts that was once a catalogue, then a library, then a Corpse.

In Door Three, I find your clothes. Not simply the ones you were wearing. But the soiled. The clean. The entirety of your wardrobe spread out. Mostly yours. Until it’s everything. Piles and piles of clothes. And then the underwear. Object of long-standing obsession. Obsession laced with shame, pain, and the awkwardness of an emergent sexuality. There was no sexuality in it when I was five. But then there was, and that’s all there was, and that’s all there is. 

Are these the dressings of the mannequins? The naked ones pressing their plastic bodies into me, into you when we chase one another in Door One. And who are they? Strangers from passing? Or the possibilities of sexual encounters never achieved but dominated with fantasy? What would you have worn for me, Daphne? What would I have taken from you in my desires? I had the chance to take your intimates, yet I faltered and preserved that boundary between us. Had I?

Door Four: They say that behind the doors of Theatre Two there’s an old amusement park, an old House of innocence that was once everything, then something, then nothing. 

You told me about the time you lost your parents. The terror you felt as a child with the sea of moving bodies oblivious to you, to your cries, to the horror of a world crushing down on you. I’ve told you once, and I will tell you again, that it couldn’t be helped. They didn’t do it with intent. You’d seen a green crocodile. Your favourite. Your parents were tired. Distracted. Arguing as normal people do with exhaustion and stimulation beating down relentlessly. You got the crocodile. You couldn’t find them. Nobody would help you because you feared them all. So, you clung to the crocodile, letting it soak up your tears. Until they found you. Right where they’d lost you. Time stretched and then time shrunk. It levelled out. 

You’ve been here. Recently. The clowns in the walls are whispering to me. Moving left to right, impossibly wide grins, waiting to devour. Crocodilian hisses.     ‘Feed us,’ they cry. Wall to wall. Three sides of clowns, hundreds, all moving as one to the carnival music both distorted and jarring. But the swamp, the marshland, the pit that has swallowed the floor of Theatre Two, I know you’ve been here because the crocodile is watching, waiting, its eyes glowing in popcorn yellow. 

I’m getting closer, Daphne…

Door Five: They say that behind the staffroom door there’s an old brothel, an old House of pleasure that was once a nunnery, then an abortion clinic, then irony. 

Dear Daphne,

It’s been some time since I saw you, but I feel you everywhere. Nowhere are you felt more strongly than here in Door Five. The desecrated church of sandstone and marble. The headless corpses of nuns holding their hearts out to God. Maybe I don’t feel you here at all. Maybe I just feel the terror of the Door where Christ once was. A door with white circles. And seeing this, another door (improbable) I cry out for you, I cry and gag and retch. I need you, Daphne.

Lead me from this place.

Lead me into your arms. 

Lead me out the door.

But you’re not here. I thought you were. I thought you were on the altar underneath the door. Naked and crying until you were red in the face. It looked like you. It had your eyes. It sounded like you. 

Then it went blue. 

Then it collapsed into ruin. 

Its blood pouring off the altar onto the floor. 

Door Six: They say that behind the loading dock door there’s an old sewer: an old House of tunnels that was once coherent, then a labyrinth, and then a place of Ghoulish intent. 

The tunnels of Door Six. That’s what it can be brought down to. Though they’re all octagonal in shape, if you change your perception, you can see the circles they make. That’s the nature of this place. Six-sided shapes making a circle that lead to an octagonal room, and then a circle within that. I saw you here, Daphne. In Door Six. You were running from something. Was it me? You were panting, screaming, begging for mercy. I was trying to help you, but you didn’t see me. You saw fear and it consumed you. The parasite of grief blinding you to love.

Then you climbed. Up and up and up. You snagged your dress on the climb. Your perfume is fading. It’s mostly sweat now. That’s alright. It’s natural. I’m sweating too. I’m tiring. The sewers, the tunnels, it’s hard to breathe down here. The air isn’t rancid nor festering, but hot. As if the pipes are full of steam and blood. 

Door Seven: They say that behind the men’s room doors there’s an old maid: an old House of tragedy that was once beautiful, then a crone, then dead. 

            I can’t hear her cry anymore. This isn’t apathy. This isn’t malice. It’s acceptance. A long process of grief at the inability to help, to change, to stop. It’s a tiled room. It’s industrial. Pipes and cisterns and rust. But a frailty to it. Curtains hang from the ceiling. Lace wrappings bracket the edges. She’s in here. Always. The Maid. Crying yet always through a sheer curtain. As sheer as the black stockings on her legs. Persistent is her wailing. From one wall I see only her face. From a cistern I see her advances. From the drain I see the rot of her body. Shoved down in pieces. 

            I can’t hear her cry anymore. I only ask if she’s seen Daphne. I ask them all if they’ve seen Daphne. The people of the cinema. The people of the theatre. Surely one of them knows which door holds Daphne. Maybe all. Maybe none. But still… a hope. 

Door Eight: They say that behind the storeroom door there’s an old staircase: an old House of trajectory that was once up, then down, then broken.

Daphne’s footprints are in the eighth. Dust covers everything in this concrete shell of a door. It smells like a construction site. Fresh timber. Fresh concrete. Old dirt. She started strong in this maze of ambition. A left, a right, then straight ahead. Footprints spaced apart at the end. She’s started running. Nothing behind. But the mirror ahead. It’s cracked now. It reflects everywhere. Behind is more concrete. I can see her frantic footprints leading in all directions. ‘My darling, Daphne. Where are you in this maze of Improbable Doors?’

Back. Left. Right. Around. Then the steps. Three of them. In the middle of the path. Leading neither up nor down. Backwards or forwards, they’re simply there. Daphne’s footprints cross around and follow different paths. Never onto the stairs. She’s travelled to the room with the hands in the concrete, swaying like reeds in a river, following the movement of us through its domain. She’s travelled to the room that’s the emptiest of them all. A cube. Four sides. The first of the concrete maze. The other three? Terrible to comprehend. Like looking into a House of mirrors.

Perhaps the broken stairs were once purposefully designed. Perhaps now they’re just a memory. A fragment. Maybe they lead somewhere still. Maybe they hold no footprints at all. 

Door Nine: They say that behind the doors of Theatre Three there’s an old film: an old House of ambition that was once a dream, then a distortion, then cursed.

MY LATE(X) MOTHER (R18+)

It’s everything that’s been done in this place. It’s constricting. The material of space and time here in the old cinema. Door Nine shows me this. It shows me the doors of people. The ones we show to the world. And the ones we don’t. It shows me everything I did to Daphne. 

NOW SHOWING:

They Say A Lot of Things. 

About The Old Doors. 

Possibilities.

Or Are They Choices?

Endless Are The Interpretations Of My Doors. 

Never Impossible, but Improbable? 

Of That Nature, (Un)expressible To You. 

Such Is The Chaos Of The House. 

Knock, knock…

Who’s there? Is it you, Daphne? Have I found you at last?

Knock, knock…

Who’s there? Is it you, Daphne? Have I found… 

Knock, knock…

I know who’s there. 

I told you of the Improbable Doors. How they warrant no easy explanation. In reflection, neither are the Obvious Doors. None of this is easy. It’s the parasite of doubt born of grief, born of ambition. To experience desire comes with a price in this place. And to the shifting mass of doubt within, it threatens to destabilise my limited understanding of this place, this theatre, this House. 

NOW SHOWING:

The Improbable Doors.

Change At Will. 

With No Pattern. 

Other Than Circles. 

Of The Mind. 

HISTORY EQUIDISTANT