Shaun Parker’s latest work has its world premiere at the Sydney Festival .

Happy as Larry explores “What makes us happy?”

Shaun’s latest dance theatre work explores the question through nine characters (performers) developed from the Enneagram – a psychological system that maps nine personality types.  

Photo credit: Prudence Upton 

We asked Shaun where the inspiration to look at the Enneagram as the basis for the work came from.  Here’s his response:

“The impetus for the creation of Happy as Larry came from my thoughts on happiness.  I had become startlingly aware that people around me were perplexed by the elusive nature of happiness and its possibilities. This quandary also seemed to generate extremes.  Was the unrelenting search for happiness an unhealthy preoccupation, or had happiness been completely forgotten? For some, perhaps, all connection with happiness was seemingly lost or had become distorted.  I found myself asking the question ‘Do we know how to be happy anymore?’

I had been studying the Enneagram for many years, consulting with my Kinesiologist Kim O’Brien (herself a student with Claudio Naranjo), and I immediately drew a connection -: How do the different personalities found within the Enneagram inhabit the idea of happiness?  This connection formed the spring-board for an investigation into the concept of happiness. 

The Enneagram maps nine distinct but interrelated personality types.  Oscar Ichazo and Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo integrated the basic Enneagram system of personality with modern psychological knowledge.  The nine personality types described in the ‘modern’ Enneagram model are The Perfectionist, the Seducer, the Performer, the Tragic Romantic, the Observer, the Devil’s Advocate, The Optimist, The Boss and the Mediator.  These nine characterological points offer an insight into human behaviour on a broader scale, and have informed the development of the nine performers’ characters and their individual quest for happiness.”

 Photo credit: Prudence Upton

As well as the commission by the Sydney Festival, where Happy as Larry will be performed at Parramatta Riveside Theatres, and also a season at the Seymour Centre, the work will tour to the Perth Festival, and the New Zealand International Festival as well as a showcase at the APAM Arts Market in Adelaide in late February.  

The work is accompanied by a vibrant electro-acoustic score from Nick Wales and Bree van Reyk.

So – has the creative process for this piece given Shaun any clues as to ‘what makes us happy’?

Shaun’s reply -

“My dramaturg, Veronica Neave has written something inspired by our rehearsals, and I find it resonates so perfectly with what we have discovered perhaps within the work…

Happiness is our most singular human pursuit. 
It is seemingly so conditional, randomly regulated by external influences.
Through the theatrical glasses of objectivity we see how absurd, futile, complex and perplexing our efforts are to hold onto something that is so elusive yet is as available to us as the air we breathe.
Veronica Neave, Dramaturg

Happy as Larry is at Riverside Theatres 22 Jan (preview) to 24 Jan and the Seymour Centre Jan 27-30.  See What’s On for more details.