"Ring A Ding Ding!" - the opening - (wrap-up) - Francis - Dec 3, 2011

‘Ring A Ding Ding!'

Great joy, (after being immersed in the production process for the last 3 weeks), to arrive at the end product of Oily Cart’s ‘Ring A Ding Ding’ show and finally have a real live audience of kiddies in for the opening.  A real sense of delight and sparked imaginations - and a chance for me as a theatre-maker to experience a more unique sort of “complicity” between the performers and their young audience than I’m used to...

From the moment the kids arrived in the foyer and the 3 actors & 1 musician greeted them and invited them to don one of the handmade recycled hats to wear for the show, it was apparent that the invitation to the kids to “play alongside” the artists was genuine – and quite different to most children’s theatre.

What struck me was that there was little fanfare made of this invitation to play, but that it was presented  more organically. So, for instance, before the show had even started, when the (extremely talented) percussionist, George, sat happily to one side of the foyer playing his purpose-built  tubular xylophone-contraption, smiling quietly to himself, (almost like when you see small children at daycare absorbed in their own solo-imaginative play), and simply allowed the kids to approach him (or not) at their own pace - it reminded me of observing my own kids in a playground when they start naturally playing with unknown kids without introductions or stating names or intentions – they simply begin interacting. It’s like a secret language of ‘play’ that most kids just seem to know and use with each other. Observing Oily Cart’s approach to immersive interactive performance made me feel like I was “in” on this secret.

I also realised that even though the majority of this particular audience didn’t have disabilities, this natural unenforced invitation to participate is key to our own interactive work with kids with special needs. So often in a special needs environment, with the best of intentions, workers, educators, and artists like ourselves can be so keen to ‘enable participation’ of the child – admittedly, to give them experiential opportunities – that they end up almost ‘forcing’ the experience onto them – which I’ve been realising is actually contrary to most forms of childplay which are usually exploratory (ranging from cautious & tentative through to wreckless abandon) – the underlying principle being that the child determines for themselves their own pace or level of engagement.  (I’ve really got to go back and read some Rudolf Steiner – certainly the stuff around early years play that Oily Cart’s work has got me thinking about has strong resonances for the work we’re attempting to do for kids with learning difficulties...).  In the end, with theatre, you’re always going to be treading a fine line between “inviting” and “coercing” if you’re  making this kind of theatre for kids, because as the makers of the experience I guess you are the instigators of the creative imaginary play – but it’s worth being mindful of this line so you don’t unwittingly cross it. Experiencing one of Oily Cart’s shows in the flesh as an audience participant rather than merely watching a you-tube clip has really made me aware of this – and of the extraordinary power and magic of ‘unenforced play’.

Hats on inside the theatre, the actors lead the kids through a maze of hoops around the perimeter of the space before gently leading them by the hand to take their seats around the central circular-ring stage. Again, it kind of sets a tone of controlled freedom and the performance space as a friendly zone that doesn’t require absolute reverence. By the time the story actually starts, the kids have each been personally addressed by the actors, held their hands through the maze-like trail, and joined them in dressing up. They have become playmates in that ‘natural’ way of the playground I described.  (Often, after a fun romp in the park with newfound friends – particularly on this trip as we’ve been travelling – I’ll ask my kids what their newfound friends’ names were and they’ll answer “I dunno”, but they’ll clearly remember the details of the game they played and the story they made together).  So – performers as playmates...

This particular show as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in the blog is far more narrative-based than Oily Cart’s disability-specific shows – a large part of the immersive interactivity of this show being that the performers, props and puppets were only inches away from the kids noses at the edge of the circle (and yes, they do get sprayed by real water when the dog in the story rides past on a motorboat, and yes, the whole cast and audience are enveloped in smoke when the characters get lost in fog at sea) – but what was also noteworthy for me was the way that the show was broken up by participatory segments at just the points where the very young audience (2-6yr olds) might have been getting fidgety. So, at different points (as mentioned in an earlier blog) we all went on a treasure hunt through the theatre for provisions, rolled out a super-long bell-rope together, or even joined the man on the moon for a moon-dance party, circling the space holding hands to do a kooky conga together. Each time, after a little energy dispersal, the kids were ready to sit back down (lead by the actors, again by the hand) and be absolutely present and attentive for the next part of the story. (Makes me appreciate how we managed to keep the profoundly disabled kids back home engaged for 45-minute stretches of theatre with all the sensory participation our show provided).

A brief chat earlier in our stay at Oily Cart with their General Manager comes back to me at this point: he spoke of making this kind of theatre – especially the stuff specifically designed for the special needs audiences – as being like composing Jazz; it needs a strong integrating structure underneath it all, but then it also has to have room within it to improvise and simply “riff”...

All the other adults I spoke to (and the other members of the production crew with us who hadn’t seen/experienced the show in its entirety before the opening preview performances) all remarked on how wonderfully childlike being part of it all made them feel – the exhilaration of being part of the magical story as it unfolded around them – literally being swept along by it. My kids (Fidel – 4yrs & Emil – 5 and a half yrs) LOVED it. As did Michelle and I. Very much.

Oily Cart impressions - pre-production to tech rehearsal

Very inspiring to be around a company like Oily Cart who have been producing theatre for early years and special needs audiences for over 20 years. Initially we were concerned that the current show they're working on - "Ring A Ding Ding" - wasn't specifically a 'special needs' (pmld - profound and multiple learning disabilities) show, but aimed instead at a general audience of 3-6yr olds (with special needs kids welcome), but observing their rehearsal process and taking in director Tim Webb's narrative & directorial choices and designer Claire de Loon's (aka Amanda Webb) aesthetic decisions has confirmed our suspicions that the overlap between creating work for these two types of audiences can be very strong. 

Just about any review you read about Oily's work talks about how "inventive" they are , and while it's an overused term, it's very very true about this company. 'Ring' takes its design starting point from puppets based on the kind of recycled tin toys made in South Africa that you find at the Oxfam shop,(Amanda collaborated with a South African maker), and so the recycled aesthetic extends to every element of the shows props and sets that we've been helping them make at their workshop headquarters in South London. Stars are made from bottle-tops and the milkman's miniature trolley is literally a plastic bottle-rack-basket on wheels, and when one of the actors transforms into the salty old sea-dog "The Captain", his beard is made from roughly strung together bright orange nylon ropes - like a bristly old broom stuck to his chin...

It's not so much that a completely cohesive design aesthetic is a new concept to me - it's more the notion that every design choice is informed by the same kind of "interactive" imaginary play that kids engage in their own make-believe game-playing with say, shampoo bottles in the bath at home. So, for instance when the audience arrive and are invited to don head pieces made out of pot-scourers or hand-made party hats to watch the show, the party hats are all made from old comic books (and even though they've been expertly made in the workshops to be durable enough to be handled, they look almost as if a kid just rolled up some paper the way you would at home). It's hard to describe it properly - but I guess it's more like having a whole childlike mindset behind whatever it is as a theatre-maker that you're creating.

In this show, the audience of kids sits in a circle  around a large donut-like stage with the 3 main performers in the middle handling puppets and props and placing them literally centimetres away from the kids' noses on the revolving "donut" playboard which swivels around throughout the show (the amazing musician George cycles around the outer perimeter of the audience on his wonderful recycled metal gamelan-style musical instrument bicycle playing the beautiful bell-inspired score by long time Oily collaborating composer Max Reinhart). A hills-hoist-like whirly-gig tree stands in the middle of the stage ring onto which different objects are hooked on and off, and which also swivels around. Thus, a plastic lid with eyes and clothes-peg "beak" flies around on it like a bird. It's not as if I haven't seen skilled puppeteers manipulate found objects to life before, but somehow this performance-mode is less like a "clever" puppeteer turning a mop-bucket into a turtle, and more like my own kids mucking about with household items when they're pretending at home.

Tim told me that actually they mostly don't use puppets in a traditional way - especially in pmld show - (in that way that professional puppeteers give all their focus to the puppet and let the puppet "look at' the audience), because - as we both agreed - most pmld kids respond much more directly to the actor's faces. (Infact, faces are one of the best tools for communication with these audiences).

True inetractivity for the audience is the hallmark of this kind of work - and this company in particular. So for instance, when the main character Alice has to go on a sea voyage to find her lost dog, the actors leave the central donut-stage space and take the kids out of their seats to find "provisions" elsewhere in the theatre for the characters to take on their voyage - or later, when the puppet-ship gets lost in the fog (smoke machines that envelop the whole audience) the Captain gets the audience to help him unfurl a very long rope of bells that the kids pass along the whole circle perimeter of the stage for everyone to join the characters in ringing together to get the ship back to safety through the fog. it's the way the audience is included in the action of the story as active participants rather than just passive recipients that is key. VERY inspiring in terms of future Sensorium shows...

Roger, Oily's general manager, remarked to me that he's never heard Tim say "This shows about X" - so, for instance, with this show, Tim's starting point was simply thinking about how kids experience everything from a physical point of view that's close to the ground - which informed  the subsequent development of this show... Extremely interesting to us as devisors (and particularly to me with my writer's hat on) to think about considering children's physical experiences of their world as a starting point for story-making. Tim later told me that the starting point for their highly successful pmld jazz/blues-infused show 'Blue' actually came from him contemplating the fuzzy blue static screen of an untuned TV set.
Mostly, what I'm getting from all of this is considering new ways of thinking...
Francis - Wednesday November 30

getting blogging...

After a whirlwind week of London living we're finally getting our travel blog up and running...
Feels like we're happily settled in our little flat in Kennington and have our travel cards organised and know which tube to catch to work etc etc.
Working with the fab folk at Oily Cart Theatre really does feel like an incredible opportunity. We felt a bit special turning up to work on our first day and presenting at the stage door of The Unicorn Theatre in the shadow of London Bridge - but were quickly humbled by the revelation that Director, Tim Webb, was going to be late because he was at Buckingham Palace receiving an MBE from the Queen for his services to kids with special needs!!
Tim arrived full of good humour and gently down-played the momentous occasion before greeting us warmly and getting down to work on rehearsals for their upcoming show "Ring a Ding Ding".  We were in there straight away, and found ourselves with tech-guns in our hands working on the set within minutes, and by the second day of rehearsal Tim and company were including us in their collaborative process... Since then, many magic moments and flashes of insight have popped out and here we are, culture shock and jet-lag finally fading away enough for us to start recording everything a little more fully. We'll catch up with ourselves over the next few days and get pics and more detailed blogging happening... Short version is: WE'RE HAVING A BLAST!! Soooo lucky!
Francis