The Crying Room
A Zoom performance about grief and the internet

Created by Marcus McKenzie in affiliation with Club Greg International

Commissioned by Arts Centre Melbourne & Melbourne Fringe for Take Over! 2020

“McKenzie’s practice continues to wangle language, performance, narrative and humour into intense and memorable feats I feel privileged to witness. It is extraordinary to me, since we’ve been able to meet people and leave our houses, that McKenzie created The Crying Room during a year of such repressive and strange circumstances—all in the confines of his apartment”

- Chelsea Hopper, MeMo Review

Awards:

  • Green Room Awards: Contemporary & Experimental Performance

  • Melbourne Fringe: Best Experimental Work

  • Melbourne Fringe: Best Adaptation to Screen, supported by Theatre Network Australia

  • Melbourne Fringe: Art Unbound Award, Supported by Experimenta

Crying rooms are the small, soundproof chambers at the back of theatre auditoriums and churches where a person can experience an event via one-way glass and live audio feed without disrupting the congregation.

As audience members in 2020, are we not now relegated to the privacy of our own isolated viewing chambers - our very own crying rooms? But what if a crying room was actually a space dedicated to emotionality? A place not to conceal tears, but to invoke them?

A deeply personal and form-breaking work by Marcus Ian McKenzie about cataclysmic events and the transformation that becomes of them.


This project is supported by the City Of Melbourne COVID-19 Arts Grants and by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.