Care Instructions Review by Grace Davidson-Lynch

The Telehealth queue is not the usual fodder for creative inspiration, but CARE INSTRUCTIONS, Alison Eaton’s latest one-woman work-in-progress, is not your usual piece of theatre. It is a funny, often uncomfortable performance that succeeds in exploring the gulf between receiving treatment and needing help.

In CARE INSTRUCTIONS, Eaton portrays a zealous worker attempting to follow their directives and ensure that all the human beings in their jurisdiction are maintaining efficiency. The worker, a strange clown-like character garbed in a mesmerising costume that blends a beige powersuit with a brainstem, takes the audience through an auditing process that is hilarious at times, cringeworthy at others, and thoroughly weird throughout.

Despite following The Instructions to the letter, I did not find myself feeling ‘better’ at the hands of the worker- but I did find myself confronted with that strange feeling of depersonalisation that care seems to come with in the modern world. Resources, support and attention is apparently available all around us, yet we are less well than ever before.

The feeling of completing each step of The Instructions is not exactly fun, and the chirpy insistence of the entire endeavor might prevent some audience members from being pulled into this work. But if you push your way through that strange and shiny veneer, you will find your own experiences of inadequate care reflected back.

Anyone who has experienced perpetual suffering, like mental illness or a chronic health condition, will recognise the feeling of eyes that don’t really see. CARE INSTRUCTIONS will likely evoke, for some, that unmistakable discomfort of calling out into the ether and hearing the only sound worse than nothing- empty platitudes.

CARE INSTRUCTIONS exposes the clash between the titular checklist of requisites deemed appropriate for the treatment of the human condition, and the reality of needing help. In contrast to the enthusiasm of the worker is a disembodied voice repeatedly making phone calls into the unknown. But the request for help is non-specific, and the problem itself is vague, which should be familiar to many. That is the tension at the heart of this piece- that care is good, but it requires connection, and connection requires vulnerability, and vulnerability doesn’t feel good. It’s a tension of not booking the follow-up appointment, not refilling the prescription, not caring enough to care properly.

Eaton’s worker persona, and their strange rituals of care that include flung checkmark cards and plenty of pelvic gyrating, is the strange driving force that allows the nuances of CARE INSTRUCTIONS to unfold without openly condemning our broken systems. As I stared into unblinking eyes as the worker encouraged us to hold our breath for far too long during a moment of mandated box breathing,

I couldn’t help but think that sometimes this version of care was more uncomfortable than seeking help. CARE INSTRUCTIONS, without wallowing in the misery of falling through the cracks, evokes the small frustrations of dealing with health systems that often don’t feel like legitimate reasons to avoid care, but so often are. The failures of these systems are hard to investigate through performance without becoming sanctimonious, but Eaton succeeds here.

CARE INSTRUCTIONS is political theatre as entertaining as it is eye-opening. For a work in progress, there is already so much here that is moving, hilarious, and profound in its discomfort. I would highly recommend seeing this work in its current form, and feel strongly that time and further development will only improve this theatre experience.

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Grace Davidson-Lynch attended Care Instructions at Erskineville Town Hall on Saturday 5 September.