Format

6 x short audio plays, live art

About

Choose your own colour. Listen to it speak!

Talon Salon is a site-specific audio theatre work about Vietnamese-run nail salons in Australia, first presented within a salon as part of the Next Wave Festival 2012 and presented again in the You Are Here Festival in Canberra 2013.

In Talon Salon, immerse your mind in one of four fictional audio pieces while you receive the nail treatment of your choice. Glimpse into the nail salon universe – workers, owners, customers, daughters, husbands and passers by.

Colours/Tracks

The chair, Orange: Let the lovely Annie, the every-woman nail technician, soothe you, the every-woman customer! Go on! You deserve it!

Travellers, Purple: Maly and Ananth are both studying in Melbourne. For escape, at nights, after school or after Maly has finished working at the nail salon, they spend time being serenaded by a folk singer in a rowdy backpackers' bar.

Husbands, Red: Meet the men in the nail salon, Chin, the nail salon's husband; Paulo, a regular customer; and Benny, a lost soul wandering the streets outside the salon.

Telephone, Pale pink: A niece, in Ho Chi Minh City, phones her aunty in Melbourne. They keep missing each other on the phone.

Wives, Blue (Commissioned for Darwin Festival): A day in the life of Minh, the mother-in-law of a nail salon owner, and of Gerald, an escapee from the south and who runs a motel in Fannie Bay.

Home, Blue (Commissioned for Darwin Festival): Across time zones and computer screens, the next generation of Vietnamese westerners spend their summer in the heat and the wet. Two cousins at the Leanyer Water Park face love and heartbreak.

Creative team

Lead artist and writer Michele Lee

Director and concept development Tanya Dickson

Sound designer and concept development Alan Nguyen

Visual designer and concept development Clare McCracken

Additional sound designer Ash Blakeney (Travellers)

Performers Keith Brockett, Roddy Cairns, Matt Crosby, Tom Dent, Jing-Xuan Chan, Kane Felsinger, Fanny Hanusin, Ferdinand Hoang, Nicole Lee, Elizabeth Nabben, Mark Tregonning, Sarah Walker and Janine Watson

Additional arrangement and composition Roddy Cairns

Sound engineers Ash Blakeney and Simon Cotter

Mentor Roslyn Oades

Previous developments: Gorkem Acaroglu, Petra Kalive, Maria Coviello, Will Cowan, Brendan O’Connell

Production and development

2014: broadcast on Radio National, the track The Chair

2013: remounted for Darwin Festival and commissioned to write two new audio plays, with Australia Council remount funding

2013: remounted for You Are Here Festival

2012: presented by Next Wave Festival, with Australia Council and City of Yarra funding

2011-12: developed by Next Wave’s Kickstart program

Supporters

Australia Council for the Arts, City of Yarra, Next Wave Festival, Darwin Festival, You Are Here

Reviews

Greeted with a smorgasbord of sounds, voices and music that pervaded my senses as soon as the headphones descended onto my ears, I was submersed into the world of Vietnamese nail salons. Sitting within one getting my nails done only intensified the surreal feeling that I was one with this fictional world that I was listening in on.

Listening to the audio theatre works was akin to a meditative experience as I was pampered by the gifted nail technician and treated to myriad conversations … - Right Now

(About The Chair) Annie’s words are like witnessing a woman’s mind turning inside out. She’s obsessed with the image of being on top of everything, of achieving a distorted view of our full potential as women. It’s the voice of an everyday woman seeking refuge from self-imposed pressures in the chair of a salon, and offering refuge for the listener in turn. Afterwards, to help me readjust to reality, Nikki offers me candy, which I gladly accept while awkwardly juggling personal effects without smearing my still-wet orange nails. Although I’m still spacey, my head still in that strange bubble where it was just me and Annie’s voice, I emerge feeling calm, enriched, and well-groomed - scissorspaperpen