Throat Pleats

See Throat Pleats Co-Authored article for the Australian Music Centre here: Throat Pleats: Two Peas in a Pod

Photos: Natesha Somasundaram

Chloe Abdel-Nour

The MacroPlastics Workout

By Throat Pleats (aka Solomon Frank and Niki Johnson)
Experimental Theatre work
Duration: 60minutes

'The MacroPlastic Workout' reimagines the present to propose novel ways to see the future, where binaries between nature/culture, human/animal, and living/non-living are blurred. Throat Pleats tackle these issues using elements of live music, foley, electroacoustic soundscapes and self-sounding installation/costume. Drawing on expanded forms of clarinet and percussion, the work establishes an elaborate plastic gymnasium activated using sound and movement. Muses are cheap mass-produced plastic clarinets and percussion instruments, household objects recontextualised as instruments (tubes, balloons, latex condoms and nylon). The work is a theatrical rendering of Waterworld crossed with Jane Fonda, performed in the style of Jacques Tati, with clarinets and percussion.

Artists

  1. Composer-performer (clarinet, balloons, hoses): Solomon Frank
  2. Composer-performer (percussion, balloons, hoses): Niki Johnson
  3. Creative Producer: Malcolm Whittaker

Performance Highlights

Throat Pleats have performed their theatre work as part of the ESCAC Brand X Flying Nun program (2024), Mardi Gras Club Mince (2024), Adhocracy residency (2023), Liveworks x Carriageworks (2020), Dots + Loops program Brisbane (2021), with Ensemble Offspring (2022), at Cementa Kandos (2022), and at Canberra International Music Festival (2022).