Club Extimacy | The Black Box Collective
Club Extimacy is on its last legs - with Queensland Health threatening to close its doors due to its flagrant disregard for health regulations - leaving it down to its last working bathroom. And even worse, it's the men’s. So that’s where audiences find themselves; privy to the innerworkings of this newly unisex bathroom, where woo girls pee in groups and men refuse to talk about their feelings. The seven cast members brilliantly embodied a host of around 30 different characters, who all found themselves here to celebrate a 21st birthday.
Each character felt like a person I’d met in a club bathroom, or at least someone like them. The work was a revolving door of fleeting interactions, as the world of the club thumped just outside the piss-stained walls. A hilariously authentic depiction of the bathroom chats and antics that many of us know all too well, this show accurately captured the liminality of club bathrooms. However, its depiction of the fleetingness of these interactions at times made it hard to connect to the characters and left me with some narrative questions. In saying that, it was in the eclecticness and randomness of these characters that the work often found its humour. So maybe what I’m asking for is not what the work was ever meant to be.
From the minds of a talented group of emerging creatives, Club Extimacy was a high-quality production by The Black Box Collective that owned the BackDock space. It’s captivating design elements, coupled with a high calibre of acting performances, grabbed audiences from the get-go, and refused to let go until the bathroom door swung closed for the last time.
