Physical Theatre / Manage Your Expectations,, performed by Eliza Sanders. At The Courtyard Studio, until July 3. Reviewed by SAMARA PURNELL.

Dancer, performer and creator Eliza Sanders stands before the audience with a camera projecting her performance in real time on to the screen behind her. The words “We are all born confused” slowly appear during her monologue. 

She proceeds to give a detailed and exhaustively comprehensive description of what she is about to do and what the audience is about to see. She says, so we may (“May as in might but not the month”), choose to watch, given the proviso that our imagination of what is to come, based on her description, may or may not prepare us sufficiently. We may have a pathetic imagination, or it may be much better than what actually unfolds. We may choose to leave – a statement that also comes with a deluge of alternatives, directives but not orders, and other opportunities to exit.

Any possible meaning, misinterpretation or implication of every sentence is addressed and explained. The sub sub sub subtitles of her performance are given, as Sanders also pokes fun at performance art. The explanations of various movements mocking contemporary dance is hysterical.

Things that are only thought of by the audience as they are being mentioned tickle the collective fancy upon realisation that there is more than a kernel of accuracy to all this. A stream of consciousness that goes on internally at times, no doubt, be it amusing or distressing, has become a reality with “trigger warnings”, disclaimers, descriptions and explanations in almost every situation.

It is mildly distressing to watch someone turn themself inside out and exhaust themself in this way, but the content is hilarious because it is an absurd reflection of where we are at as a society.

There are a lot of ideas contained in Manage Your Expectations and some fit more easily than others. Snippets of YouTube clips, of funny but misfortune events play on screen, the meaning is not definitive – perhaps events where expectations have been assumed and it’s gone pear-shaped. The inclusion of ancestry and colonisation is from left-field but thematically ties in with the ideas of choice and consent – themes that informed the creation of Manage Your Expectations.

Sanders used her own experiences with relationships and the dynamics of interpretation as inspiration and shares presumably accurate, personal details. Expectations of Lovers layers images of her on film, as she dances with her heart thumping out of chest and Siri goes down a rabbit hole of word connections simultaneously amusing and heartbreaking.

Sanders literally exposes herself and her vulnerabilities in a segment called The Expectations of Children, where footage of the Sanders siblings innocently play as babies, while onstage, Sanders forms a baby from clay. It is apparent now that the title of the segment can be taken as the expectations of (as in having) children, not just the expectations of (as in from or by) children. This realisation along with the depiction of a pregnancy or termination was poignant and profoundly haunting.

The Expectations of Death segment is much more lighthearted, addressed in the form of an uninhibited dance to uptempo music. In the style of performance artist Marina Abramovic, Sanders gives consent to the audience to watch or not watch her dance, although she gives cues as to her wishes. Observing how members of the audience respond to this was interesting in itself. Sanders also gives the power to the audience to end her performance.

Sanders takes the audience from laughing-out-loud moments to reverent silence, enabling small, unspoken (the only thing that was unspoken) choices along the way. The script is clever, witty and manic and Sanders delivers both the theatrical and the dance elements with energy, presence and subtle emotion. Consent, power, an overwhelm of information and what it all really amounts to in the end simultaneously depicts the taking and abandoning of all responsibility.

Manage Your Expectations is a thought-provoking and entertaining journey into the overload of information that can, in this case intended, lead to a disappearance up one’s own backside. “We have to laugh at ourselves and take silliness very seriously,” Sanders says, as she dances until an audience member chooses to end her performance.