Helen Ramoutsaki's 'Wet: an appetite for the tropics'.

Helen Ramoutsaki’s Wet: an appetite for the tropics project takes the Wet Tropics country, a character, a camera and a collection of poems, combining them in works of live oral-spatial literature to suit particular performance situations. Helen uses poems and narrative sections as blocks, like the ceramic tesserae of mosaics, so they can be arranged and rearranged to fit seamlessly in textual tessellations. This project started in 2013 and will be continuing over the next few years. The script for Wet: an appetite for the tropics is being developed under the JUTE Theatre’s Enter Stage Write program in Cairns with support from dramaturge Peter Matheson.

The character Ruanna has spent her time wandering from place to place but eventually finds herself in the Wet Tropics. Over time, her fascination with the rich environment grows as she translates her experiences in poems and photos. Will her relationship with the Wet Tropics environment be enough to hold her there or will another type of love relationship pull her away?

The performance scripts are being developed in two main stages. The first stage has been an ‘appetiser’, a half-hour script. A ‘main course’ script is now underway and will be a full-length theatrical production.

Helen Ramoutsaki performs 'Wet: an appetite for the tropics' — Helen Ramoutsaki performing the ‘appetiser’ – a half-hour version of ‘Wet: an appetite for the tropics’ – in Kuranda. (Photo: Ian Whittaker)

Helen Ramoutsaki performing the half-hour version of 'Wet: an appetite for the tropics' at the 2013 Association for the Study of Australian Literature Conference in Wagga Wagga. (Photo: Lachlan Brown) — Helen Ramoutsaki performing the half-hour version of ‘Wet: an appetite for the tropics’ at the 2013 Association for the Study of Australian Literature Conference in Wagga Wagga. (Photo: Lachlan Brown)

The poems and their image sequences are also created to stand alone or in combination without the narrative. As the project develops, Helen has been presenting the poems with images at festivals and performance events, including the 2013 Worcestershire Literary Festival in the UK (follow the link for a review by Kate Lakie).

Worcester literary fest 2013 — Helen Ramoutsaki performs poems from ‘Wet: an appetite for the tropics’ at the 2013 Worcestershire Literary Festival.

wondermensional - dry country — Helen Ramoutsaki performs ‘Dry Country’ from ‘Wet: an appetite for the tropics’ at the 2014 Wondermensional event in Kuranda. (Photo: Ian Whittaker)