Amelia Cropley
Laura Lomas’s play Chaos is all about what the title suggests. And alternatively, about the rules and order of everyday life that we passively accept.Chaos is a performance performed all over and by various theatre companies, and our university is no exception. Nottingham New Theatre brought Lomas’s production into its own right, unique to the student’s creative choices and performed to a selection of four jam-packed audiences.
Before the performance began, audience members were told that Chaos is a string of not unrelated but dislocated scenes, each one individual in its own respect, and yet can form a story. A ‘symphony of dislocated and interconnected scenes’ Lomas calls it.
THE ART IT REVEALS IS SO PERSONAL TO ITS INTERPRETER. IS THAT CHAOS? SUBJECTIVITY? PERSONALITY? INDIVIDUALISM?
What I thought had the kindest touch, was this pre-performance message also included that it is okay if a story does not form when watching the show, and likewise, it is okay if one does too. So, this immediately brought a smile to my face, it’s interpretative, abstract and subjective to the viewer. The same image, the same action, the same scene but that can be seen under so many different scopes that the art it reveals is so personal to its interpreter. Is that chaos? Subjectivity? Personality? Individualism?
Performed by our university’s Nottingham New Theatre, the only entirely student-run theatre in England, all ten actors shone as if their names were up in lights. And behind it too, every action and every breath, you could tell, was put there by the student directors Nura Bentata and Kaila Maze and producer Ananya Nair, like an artist’s paintbrush that lets its painting shimmer on its own.
Visually, the performance screamed ambiguity, something the play itself celebrates. As a solely student-run organisation, every stage flat and set, and every origami butterfly was made and put into place by NNT. In a black box theatre, the audience intimately sat with its performers, watching their every move and analysing their every meaning. This was only emphasised by the tension each actor brought into their roles, portraying the internal and collective chaos of their daily characters’ lives.
The non-linear narrative was more than effective. To begin with, often intentionally confusing to allow the audien
ce member to connect their own dots. And yet, not confusing to be utterly bewildering – I assure you no matter what the interpretation is; an interpretation shall be formed. It begins with a boy on a platform edge, seeing a girl with flowers and a boy bouncing a ball. Normal encounters. But you also see from the other perspectives like the girl with flowers, who she is waiting for and why. And the boy bouncing the ball, perhaps in unconscious nonchalance or to soothe his anxieties, that’s up to you.
Each scene was a snippet of a character’s life, in some way or another being disrupted by social forces, existential thoughts or other human beings. Like one girl bringing another girl flowers and their up-and-down acceptance of their relationship, one about parents, divorce and domestic hardship, or another about one’s protests for all the injustices of the world.
Each actor never failed to make the audience laugh, and many of those laughs are due to how representative they are of everyday life. Saturday’s matinee performance created a ripple of laughter when Jane, played by our fellow student Lucy Young performed a one-sided phone conversation about how family is a social construct, later revealing the recipient is her mother, and that she is not coming downstairs to talk. A moment that made the mothers in the room chuckle, thinking of their own children and the similar encounter that happened between them.
THIS WAS NOT AN AMATEUR STUDENT PERFORMANCE BUT ONE OF PROFESSIONALISM.
NNT student actors Alex Gray and Alistair Tiplad, portraying Charlie and Dan, created professional rapid-fire stichomythia-resembling dialogue of the cosmetic, physical anatomy of the universe (and consequently not finding any certainty in another’s answers). The conversation was so effectively fast and tumultuous that the tensions of life, endless questions and personal (as well as universal) chaos were ever present and vibrating between each other’s lines. 
Many parts of the performance revealed that this was not an amateur student performance but one of professionalism. The type of professionalism which shall take each NNT society member far in their degree and theatrical abilities. Unequivocally, Katherine Keane, playing Imogen amazed all with her chilling screams that disrupted a silent freeze frame. A moment that was not only goosebump-inducing but incredible to witness its meaning of the chaos inside Imogen’s mind, the internal struggles and the need to express that one way or another.
Alongside Imogen, Lauren played by Katie Chant performs the reactions many may have to Imogen’s hyperbolic surprise to ‘him’ doing ‘something’ that she just ‘can’t effing believe’. Often inserting comments in a phlegmatic tone, we all have tostop ourselves saying sometimes. Characters and simple lines like these in their simplicity relate to the human every day and expose the truth that each character is around us, if not within us in our personal and individual lives.
So, the girl holding flowers, Ally played by Wincy Jeyaraj, is a gentle portrayal of loving softly yet deeply. And together with Rose Momenim playing Michaela in her NNT debut, illustrate the highs and lows of flourishing romance, denial and acceptance. Together, this duo struggle, argue and love the other in the classic ‘will-they-won’t-they’ in their awareness and acceptance of homosexuality. 
EACH CHARACTER AND EACH DISTANT MENTION OF A PERSON IS PRESENTED INT HE CAST’S EFFECTIVE PORTRAYAL OF INTERCONNECTEDNESS
But Chaos does not falter in representing endless vantage points, each character and each distant mention of a person is presented in the cast’s effective portrayal of interconnectedness. Maisie Jack, who has previously performed in a variety of NNT productions, develops her character Aisha’s perspective of what love means and the physical, world-bending state of being in love with another.
Nottingham New Theatre is the epitome of students becoming the master. Student directors Nura and Kaila perfected each scene like craftsmanship and alongside their friends’ acting perfected the philosophical questions of existence and love we ask ourselves every day. Yet they also warranted the existence of solid characters audience members can identify as people in their own lives. Finally, Rosanna Beacock plays the tender and kindhearted Emily crafted the friend you all need, as well as bringing Chaos back to its roots as a butterfly with a broken wing, and Orla Evans’ Chiarra who is so defiant in her character’s protests she became the audiences’ advocate for change.
Overall, Chaos is a performance one should not miss the opportunity to see, but more so than that Nottingham New Theatre is what you should not be going without. Entirely student-run, every part of this production is to the credit of its members, with the production music cosmetically composed, video design created, lighting and stage managed by students, not only does the performance but the people behind it, take your breath away.
Amelia Cropley
Featured image courtesy of Alex Watkin. Permission to use granted to Impact. No changes were made to this image.
All in-article images courtesy of Nottingham New Theatre. No changes were made to these images.
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