Denmark

It's been a busy period so I haven't had a chance to update my blog for a while. Hereafter therefore follows a brief and half-forgotten account of my trip to the Danish Children's Theatre Festival in April. This year the festival was held in the port city of Esbjerg on the west coast. And I'm not even going to mention about the ash cloud-induced trek through Germany on trains to get home three days late!

It was my first time attending the legendary festival and nothing can really prepare you for the scale of it all. There are hundreds of shows on and knowing what to go and see is as tricky as trying to figure out how and when to see the things you do want to see. During the week the performances take place throughout schools and nurseries. You make your own way to see these, which involves negotiating timetables and taxis. My favourite show from this period was Mak Vaerk (Botch Up) by Teater Refleksion. This was a really lovely little box (well cart) of tricks where one female performer told short stories accompanied by lots of magical tricks and gizmos from her cart. There was a hat that had some paper figures dancing around the rim and a very funny dance at the end where the performer came out with 4 legs!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q10Ld_8nP2w

We also got to see the fantastic 2-Dimensional Life Of Her by Fleur-Elise Noble. I had wanted to see this show at this year's New Territories festival in Glasgow but missed it so it was great to see it programmed here. Fleur is Australian and was one of only two international companies to present at the festival. The show is an exciting and original blend of live performance, projection, puppetry and animation - quite hard to describe, and quite hard to forget. Have a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46d8WVIPI5c

I also saw two shows by a very exciting company called Secret Hotel. They were very different performances. The first was called In The Field and was a performance lecture about how we live as human beings, how we are drawn to make connections either with people or geography and how varied our existences on Earth are depending on where we live. The show invloved the audience going for a walk holding hands, making a society out of cardboard houses with magical glowing lights, projections, concepts of time, and soup!
The other performance by this comapny was Fall Fall She Fell, a physical theatre piece about death. The male performer told the audienice about the lives of some people and how they were all connected. The people were represented by glass jars of liquid that had effervescent pellets dropped into them to bring their spirit alive as we heard about thier life. The interesting thing about this show (and actually also for In The Field) was that the company present the show for different age groups: 8+, 13+, and adult. I think this is an interesting way to increse your audience just by making some slight alterations. However perhaps it doesn't always work as the 8 year olds in my performance of FFSF seemed utterly baffled as the adult "artist" crowd laughed knowlingly at the abstract movement and complex themes. Definitely one to ponder over throughout the rest of my residency. Here is the companies website which includes some video clips:
http://secret.tekiela.dk/secret-hotel/?lang=en