Six years after they stopped making movies together, Mirielle Gabriel joins her old friend Steve Wilson-Alexander onstage from the confines of her bedroom via a video call to discuss their new idea for a jailbreak film. As they reconnect and share stories from both sides of the NDIS, re:group use their video magic and the audience to create a prison escape movie live on stage. In a bid to break them both free from the roles to which society has confined them, can a prison break movie dreamed up by the two friends over a video call succeed where society can’t?
KEEP YOUR HEAD UP is a deep dive into the casualisation of the care industry, the politics of incarceration and artmaking as escape. The project draws on lived experiences from re:group member Steve Wilson-Alexander and his friend, Mirielle Gabriel. An experimental work-in-progress that you can shape the future of.
re:group performance collective is Mark Rogers, Solomon Thomas, Malcolm Whittaker, Steve Wilson-Alexander and Carly Young. Inspired by the highs and lows of pop culture, they work as an ensemble to mash theatre-making and movie-making together to create “live cinema”. Their aim is to turn the typically comfortable and passive movie-going experience into something immersive, irreverent, sweaty and live. They are passionate about creating innovative work that questions the role and meaning of art in society, where the technology we use is core to the ideas in each work they make, which is typically ironic and sincere, and accessible and experimental, all in equal measure. Their current obsessions are loss, new technologies, difficult conversations, friendship, outdated media formats, labour relations and nostalgia.