Parents are supposed to guide and support their children. But what if they aren’t able to do that? What if an illness is holding them back? More problematically, what if it’s a mental illness? How do we talk to our kids about mental health?
POV, created by re:group performance collective for Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney and later picked up by Perth Festival, is an innovative piece of theatre that uses the trope of the documentary to explore childhood, parenting and mental health.
The fun of the project lies in the fact that the kids call the shots. Each night two different actors are chosen who know little about the project. They arrive with only thumbnail sketches of their characters and the knowledge that they’ll be improvising a story based on prompts from an eleven‑year‑old actor/director/documentary‑maker. The child tells them where to sit or stand, what to read and how to act.
There’s something inherently intriguing about a 12‑year‑old with that much agency. Grace Tione, who plays ‘Bub’ (alternating with Yuna Ahn), commands the stage with beguiling confidence.
The premise is that she’s making a documentary about her Mum Penny’s forthcoming ceramics exhibition. But the subtext quickly emerges: all is not well with Penny. Dad is trying to shield Bub from the fact that her Mum is experiencing a bipolar episode. Armed with a camera and a series of probing questions, Bub’s documentary becomes an exposé of her parents’ struggle with Penny’s mental health.
For a serious topic, the production treads lightly and has a lot of fun with its material. Humphrey Bower, playing Dad (and Bub’s hero — the legendary documentary maker Werner Herzog), is hilarious and brings a lovely authenticity to the role.
The awkwardness inherent in the actors’ limited knowledge and the improvisational format transfers neatly to the awkwardness of the Dad character (whom Bub describes as “the biggest nerd in the world”), making Bower appear natural and grounded.
Mum Penny (played by Will O’Mahony) is a more complex challenge. O’Mahony is playing against gender, which requires a little more suspension of disbelief from the audience, and he’s also navigating a character with deeper emotional terrain — not an easy task when improvising sight unseen.
He captures Penny’s undertones of sadness with some beautiful, authentic nuances, but he seems less comfortable in the role, and a few moments (including the ending) don’t land as convincingly as they might.
This aside, there’s no denying the emotional force of a crucial scene in which Bub insists on talking to her Mum despite Dad’s gentle opposition. The actors perform the scene repeatedly under Bub’s direction, and it hits with remarkable impact. The beauty of it is that the audience carries the emotion. The actors are simply following instructions, and within that the child actors are also protected from the heavy weight of the material.
Solomon Thomas, the director and video designer of POV, has woven the multimedia into the fabric of the storytelling so completely that it becomes its own character. The screens aren’t decorative or supplementary. They’re the mechanism through which Bub tries to make sense of her world.
As she wields her camera — sometimes playfully, sometimes with unnerving intensity — the live feed splinters across the screens, giving us multiple angles on the same moment and revealing the gaps between what the adults say and what they feel.
The dolly track used to move the camera cleverly doubles as a train track that Bub lies on during tense moments, blurring the line between documentary device and emotional landscape. The result is a multimedia design that doesn’t just support the story but actively shapes it, capturing the way a child might use technology to interrogate, interpret and sometimes escape the complexities of the adult world.
POV is a funny, tender and moving portrait of a family caught between the messiness of adulthood and the unfiltered curiosity of childhood. Not every improvisational moment lands with the same force, but the production’s willingness to take risks — and to place a child at the centre of the storytelling — gives it a freshness and immediacy that’s hard to resist.
POV doesn’t pretend to offer neat answers. Instead, it invites us to sit with the discomfort, the humour and the humanity of mental illness within a family. That invitation alone makes it a work of real value.
POV is presented by re:group performance collective and runs to 15 February as part of Perth Festival. Subiaco Arts Centre, 180 Hamersley Rd Subiaco WA 6008.
It then runs from 4 – 8 March as part of Adelaide Festival.
Tickets: https://www.perthfestival.com.au/program/season-2026/pov
Website: https://www.regroupperformancecollective.org/pov
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/regroup_/ and https://www.instagram.com/perthfest/
Photo credits: Aaron Claringbold
