“I remember therefore I am” is a strident refrain in Milk Crate Theatre’s magnificently life affirming THIS HOUSE IS MINE.

Memory makes us who we are and memory makes for story. Story telling is necessary to record and share memory, a depository of identity both of self and society.

Milk Crate Theatre works with an ensemble of artists who have experienced homelessness or social marginalisation and in THIS HOUSE IS MINE we are presented with a series of connected vignettes interspersed with verbatim video vox pops from the community of collaborators from which the narrative originated and evolved.

Seven actors take on characters that have suffered psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, dementia and domestic violence, or people who have perpetrated or been affected by domestic violence or mental illness.
The ensemble seems to be led by the fireball Veronica Flynn playing Evelyn, a dynamo buffeted on two fronts by mental illness – her Alzheimer’s afflicted father (John McDonnell) and her friend Jason (Matthias Nudl).

Playing out beside this trio’s stories is the quad made up of couple Mack and Clem (Chris Barwick and Fabiola Meza) their daughter Brooke (Rach Williams) and Brooke’s fellow HSC student and lover, Anna (Contessa Treffone). Domestic violence issues and homophobic attitudes fragment this family, displacing and disintegrating the sense of home and safety.

All the performers are terrific, tackling the painful with a playful vim, vigour and vitality, keeping it real and raw, yet disciplined and defined.

The narrative is augmented and enhanced by video projections by a second unit ensemble that creates a visually arresting aesthetic that is beautiful and chaotic, a semblance of a mind in conflict and confusion.

Scripted by Maree Freeman and directed by Paige Rattray, THIS HOUSE IS MINE is theatre that empowers not only the theatre makers but the audience by enlightening through entertainment and by reminding us of the honest dignity we all have in common.

If anyone has qualms about arts funding, where it should go, and query what the beneficial outcomes to the whole community such public purse benevolence produces, attendance to Milk Crate Theatre’s THIS HOUSE IS MINE should not only allay such apprehensions, but confirm the necessity for public and private philanthropy for projects such as this.

THIS HOUSE IS MINE plays The Eternity Playhouse , 39 Burton Street, Darlinghurst till March 22

For more about THIS HOUSE IS MINE, visit http://www.milkcratetheatre.com