Herald Theatre
Sept 26-Oct 11 | Reviewed by Renee Liang

SARA JULI is a twenty-something performance artist based in New York. After “squirm-inducing discussions” with her husband on the usual domestic tripwire of money, she decides to settle the matter by creating a show in which she gives away her actual life savings to members of the audience, with the option of an “honesty box” return at the end of the show.

Her life savings are $5000 – or what’s left of it after she has already tested the ethical mettle of audiences in New York and Melbourne. During the show she quite literally rips off her pockets, counts out the cash, and gives it to audience members with a direct stare and a “take it, it’s yours” – but the price of taking, or not taking, comes at a price – the scrutiny of the rest of the audience.

To say that The Money Conversation is an unusual show is an understatement. Usually when the terms “unforgettable frisson”, “knife edge” “experimental” are used in a programme, one expects to see a light and sound installation, some attempt at immersion of the senses, or an unusual take on a little-visited theme. Juli, who has a degree in the somewhat unusual combination of Dance and Anthropology, takes that concept of experimental performance art and turns it on its head. She takes a common, almost vulgarly everyday topic like money and plays with it on a bare stage with minimal lighting effects (by New York-based Chris Ajeman) and no sound or music.

The subtlety of the staging adds to its pleasure. The audience (part of which is actually seated on the stage) is lit up, and hanging omnidirectional mics mean even muttered comments can be heard. The show is, indeed, all about a “conversation” – with the audience providing most of the words, and Juli acting as a wacky, sometimes confrontational, sweetly suggestive talk show host.

On the opening night which I attended, Juli could initially have felt discouraged by the response from the taciturn audience. We would have been a challenge – theatre audiences in New Zealand are famously undemonstrative and almost uniformly impossible to startle into any kind of reaction. (I mean, if you’re a true blue New Zilder, isn’t the only acceptable place to heckle at the sidelines, or at the sports bar after a few beers? )

Juli persevered – warming the audience up with short movement pieces, body-percussion-spoken word (which, even though they represented arguments about money, came across as cute) and clever banter using ideas the audience presented to her. “What does $150 buy you?” she asked us, and the answers started coming in, slowly at first and then more enthusiastically: a phone bill from Telecom, a week’s rent, a really good dinner for two with wine. “What does $400 buy you?” she asked later, and by then we’d got the idea: a Trelise Cooper outfit for a child, or sponsorship for four children in a developing country. “A medium gun!” yelled out a young guy from the row in front of me, provoking a raised eyebrow from Juli (who must have been wondering about the mindset of Kiwi males) and good-natured jibes and laughter from the rest of the audience.

This is a show in which there is lots of spontaneous laughter. And it’s the good sort too, not the painful laughter associated with certain professional comedians who seem to specialise in humiliating either themselves or audience members. This is not to say that the laughter is not threaded through with discomfort at times – mainly personal discomfort. Are we laughing with, or at, the man who admits he spent $800 on a sports jacket from Smith and Caughey’s? Or the woman who would spend $150 on a haircut for her dogs? Aren’t we all as shallow as the next person? The show is about watching ourselves watch others.

Juli not only puts her money up for grabs, but her body. Audience members are required to fish money out from increasingly taboo parts of her person – jeans pockets, cleavage, and finally money resting uncomfortably next to very private places. I wasn’t sure whether Juli was trying to draw a parallel between the polluting power of sex and money – but the reaction was there.

The only disappointment for me was that Juli did not reveal much about her own personal relationship with money. She only gave the expected lines about money always being an issue for artists, and the high cost of living in New York. By now we were starting to realise that people gave a different value to things depending on who they were, so it would have been insightful to find out just how Juli came to the conclusion that to make her peace with money, she had to give it away.

At the end of the show – after rolling in it, dancing with it, shoving in it fistfuls down her top, and giving random cash handouts – Juli counts the money she has left – which is still thousands – and walks around offering it to people until someone takes it. On the night I was there, Medium Gun Guy took it. But even before he got up from his seat he was surrounded by people: “You are going to return it, aren’t you?” The poor guy didn’t stand a chance. Those of us not under such scrutiny walked quietly towards the exit, towards an Honesty Box glowing an almost kindergarten lime green: were we going to let our consciences get the better of us, or not?

I guess the rest of Auckland has four days left in which to decide.