Each year Shopfront Theatre has one Members Show. Members between 18 and 26 years old are invited to pitch their show. All members then vote and the winning pitch then goes on to being produced. This year’s work is Kevin Tran’s short piece NEGOTIATION TACTICS FOR THE WEAK WILLED.

Tran’s piece is in the form of a self help seminar with the premise being  that  every situation in life is a negotiation.

Four panellists feature  in the seminar, Through a few different scenarios they teach us, the audience, the different steps that are involved in all negotiations.

This was a new one for me. I had heard of Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s stages of dying but I wasn’t aware that there were certain steps involved in any negotiation.

Of-course, after the show I had to Google it. Well, unsurprisingly, American pop psychology has come up with paradigms. A quick search revealed that one book had four stages in any negotiation. Another book had five stages.

Back to the play. Tran has playfully come up with his own paradigm which is a mishmash of different theories and is targeted specifically to the weak willed! What ensues is gentle, quirky satire.

The four actors- Samuel Chapman, Gen Papadopoulos, Kirsty  Saville and Jack Taylor -play the satire to the hilt with the physical based comedy better than the textual work.  Various images are projected on a screen behind them.

NEGOTIATION TACTICS FOR THE WEAK WILLED is only  playing a short season  at the Shopfront Arts Co-Op, 86-88 Carlton Pde, Carlton between the 11th and 14th August, 2022.