Swamp Juice

little review moment from last saturday...

Swamp Juice is on at 2:30 on the weekends and Jeff-Canadian-Jeff (as we so often say after someone asks 'Jeff who?') bumps in as we are bumping out Kapow.

I saw his show Sticks Stones Broken Bones a few years ago and I have a single vivid happy memory of a shadow horse running on shadow grass. Me laughing as it galloped.

Mr Bunk (Jeff) shows you everything he’s doing, holds up the puppet to demonstrate before he turns it into a shadow. Silly voice, gruff sound effects into his lapel mike. Such an appealing, ridiculous character of a man pointing things out, proud and amused by what he’s done, and occasionally cranky when the audience doesn’t do their job right.

Each image is lovely. The curious snail taking great mouthfuls of a tuft of grass – the shadow of Jeff’s balding head. The tiny rodenty creature with delicate paws and a dot of a nose that snuffles the air.

But (SPOILER ALERT) nothing is as fabulous as the end. Jeff hands out a bunch of cardboard boxes – “Take one, take one, pass on, take one” When the box arrives on my lap I realize that we are being given 3D glasses.

There is a long shuffling moment of pause while the audience each deal with their specs. I am one of the last and I miss the opening moment of 3D – instead a blur of red and blue on the screen. Then I have it.

Jeff has made 3D shadows.

A bird flies out towards our faces and all the children reach up to grab on it’s intangible way past.

A tiny man in a gorgeous flying machine: a skeleton frame with propeller and square wings zooms over our heads. I can’t help saying, “Ooooh” out loud.

Each shadow has become an object – only in black, but clear edged and perfect. Such a stunning combination of ancient and new technology.

My insides are sweet with how clever it is.

Jeff's website...

Raoul

All my friends are performing in the evenings so tonight I take myself out to the theatre. The show in the International Festival that I really want to see is Raoul, by James Thiérrée, grandson of Charlie Chaplin, amongst many other things.

I deck myself in a polka dot dress and high heels, tie up my skirts and swing my leg over my bike. Cycle in to town readjusting my cleavage. Lock up my bikes on the Adelaide Festival Centre stair-rails and find my seat between strangers.

Massive white-patched curtains that have been repaired and repaired. They hang criss-crossing the stage like a cubby house, like a ship after a storm, like drunken washing lines. Brown stains settle into them illuminated by the yellow light behind. Mist rises smokily.

There is a sudden sweeping lift as unseen machinery pulls the curtains up, they hoist and billow and settle into place to frame the stage – a drift wood teepee of netting and poles.

The man, like a WWII pilot lost in the desert, swings his coat wide out behind him. He is dirty and beautiful and he knows it, holding his shoulders like a dancer, like a soldier, like a man who is angry and entitled to the thing he wants.

He calls himself out. “Raoul! Raoul!”

But Raoul doesn’t want to be found.

The duality of Raoul. The appearance from no-where, the double behind the curtain, the mirror where his hands meet palm to palm.

It is so bitsy. “French” Christy says; that’s what the French do – create a series of beautiful images. I am almost desolate as an image disappears, never to be returned to – so many resources have been used to create each and I feel like you could build a show around every one.

The pleasure of watching a body that is so highly trained. The unexpected flight that I wish would go on and on. I watch so many circus shows and I am hideously jaded about aerial acts. Things don’t catch my breath anymore and I am usually bored of them before they finish. Not this. Not him. I want him to fly forever.

I shuffle out of the theatre with the crowd, walking carefully in my absurd shoes. I’m not left with a feeling, like sadness or hope, or a particular idea that he was trying to tell me, but with memories of beauty that I want to capture and visit again and again. Like a painting I can hang in my heart. 

stupid-happy-doggy-happy

This week we get the best review so far. My new friend Max is ten years old, the son of one of the other performers in the Garden. He finds me at my window in the box office and hands this over to me.

the best kind of review

Saturday morning. It’s the Clipsal 500. The world has gone mad with men wearing Holden merchandise and the air is a constant whine of V8 supercar engines that aren’t far enough away.

In the dark before the show I sit stretching on the astroturf listening to the engines and feeling a little sad. Bubblewrap and Boxes did much better than this in terms of ticket sales last year. We think the reason is that previously the Garden put out a “Kids in the Garden” guide and the program itself was arranged so that it had a family section. Finding us is much harder now. We have had more promo and done more work flyering than ever before. But it does feel a little bit hopeless.

As Alison opens the house and our little audience enters through the tent flap the Australian Defense Force Air Show (highlight of the Clipsal) begins above our heads. The booming roar of a plane flying so close it shakes the tent walls, so loud you couldn’t hear your own voice screaming over the top.

Then it’s gone and the children are crying.

There’s another plane. And another. Each one feels as though its about to crash land on top of us it’s so loud.

I feel as though there’s no point going on. I hope and hope and hope and then thank all the gods of circuses and clowns and aeroplanes when they stop, just as the lights come up on the start of the show. 

The Beyond the Wall crew are there, in one corner, eyes smiling. It’s so nice to run out onto stage and look them in the eye – I know that I show all the stupid-happy-happy-doggy-happy I am aiming for because of how pleased they are to see me. Throughout the show, they laugh so much louder than everyone else in the audience.

At the end, after we bow, we kneel by the exit path so people can talk to us on the way out. A child totters up to me (they’re so tiny and wide eyed these children, it breaks my heart) She stands for a moment looking straight into my eyes and then says: “I love you.”

Nothing beats it.