By Stal Gayheart
This is what I know about puppets:
Kami is an HIV+ Muppet on Takalani Sesame.
Kermit is banging Ms Piggy, but no one actually knows if they are married or not.
Sarel en Minna is kwaai en Wielie Walie had a bunch of trippy singing socks (hallo…!)
Punch and Judy is not only the title track of an album by the fabulous Tigerlilies, but also a couple of old school puppets who regularly get into domestics. (Santa se ma se poes)
Jeff Dunham and Peanut once made me laugh so much I actually weed in my pants but carried on laughing anyway.
And a blow up Pamela Anderson Baywatch love-puppet costs around R299.
So when 3Way called with the option for some legitimate WABing and told me we were going to a “puppet show,” I had to take a moment. Standing there in my studypants, clutching my second cup of Jolly Juice, I weighed it up, – all of the above listed points vs. jamming as much info on Watson & Crick down my brainthroat as possible so I can pen-vomit it into a blue feint-lined booklet for someone else to judge with a little red pen… Ja. The puppets won. What it also meant though, was that I so totally wasn’t expecting what I got. No bewigged piggy, no singing socks and no PVC burn on my tinkie, just a trippy marinated theatre experience that was weird and dreamlike.
So after a terrifying ride to the Baxter (3Way just got a motorbike) and a satisfying game of Spot the Errors in the Programme, the lights went hush and a flipping giant shadow-art-snake silhouette-thingy uncoiled on the cyclorama. Some beige people hovered onto stage and the next thing you know, I’m totally absorbed. Which hardly ever happens. (except for that one time a Bless Bridges impersonator gave me a rose at an impromptu concert at a Pool bar in Pretoria. We danced. It was memorable.)
Now, to write about the “puppets” doesn’t seem like enough, because they are full-on people. But not alive. But if feels like they are. The primary characters (2 of 16 puppets) are about 2 thirds the size of real people and they move in ways that confound the little man with the stick who lives inside your brain and says “this is not real you bladdy idiot.” And they don’t just “move”, – they dance, float, walk, run, jump and even get jiggy. Although the puppeteers are visible onstage, their presence is never an intrusion or a detraction from the magic that they so expertly weave.
The setting of the piece is a domestic one, (tea, beds, desks, cupboards) but by no means everydayish. On the contrary, Ouroboros is an evocative exploration, a tantalizing visual journey through a soulscape of memory, presence and desire that will leave you with a wonderfully serious case of what-the-fuck.
But a warning: If you do go, (which we think you should) remember to take your Dimension Goggles and set ‘em to transtemporal, or kookybalookytimewarpy mode– or even just go without the goggles, especially if the idea of past, present and future aspects of self existing in a common space-time continuum is something that tweaks your neuro-nipples. What I’m trying to say, I suppose, is that the narrative structure is non-linear, and more… spirally. Yes, spirally-narrative-structure with overlapping bits. Like a quilt! A spirally-quilted-narrative structure. But fear not! Reading the programme will help, especially if you’re the type who lives on a steady entertainment diet of sitcoms and sopies. Which is not to say that there isn’t a story. Because there is.
In a bombshell, Ouroboros is essentially about an interracial love affair between a poet and a dancer, about the nature of death and the power of love to transform the living. I can’t believe I actually just typed that. Usually that kind of thing is enough to induce a violent spontaneous bowel movement. But thank Dionysus, the play works well, and how could it not, with the likes of Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler of the multi-award-winning Handspring Puppet Company on board? (check out their awesome TED talk here)
There’s also a recurring text titled Aristotle by Billy Collins (Poet-Laureate etc etc) done in a husky voiceover by every phrenophiliac’s fantasy, Guy De Lancey, avec music by Neo Muyanga (sexily Tim Burtonesque at times). Animalations by Michael Clarke added an interesting dimension, at times suggesting a location, at others revealing the thoughts of the puppet characters, commenting on the action or encapsulating aspects of Aristotle. (included in the programme)
The piece is filled with archetypal, totemic imagery and notions of the unconscious abound like little bunny rabbits. I really liked the puppeteers sitting under the bed whenever the puppets slept, creating a sense that the life-force of the puppet had become submerged or was operating beneath the puppet in the unconscious realm. Deep. Which is also the effect the show has. I came out of the theatre and looked at 3Way, who looked back with bleary eyes and said “imagine if all thoughts were animals…” Ja. “Spacey”, “hypnotic” and “meditative” are words I would use to describe Ouroboros.
And about the title… I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t have any idea either. But the nice people at Wikipedia have. Apparently it’s a snake up its own arse, but with mythicosmic implications.
Some final words of caution: Ouroboros is not for children under 10 and if you’re asthmatic don’t sit in the front row. (a stinky thing briefly ontplofs). If you’re going to hang out at the swanky new Baxter Playbar after, be advised that prices are, um, “varied” and there ‘aint no signage, so ask what something costs before you swipe. (a little apple juice is R16 and a glass of rather average red is R20.) Best to take a hip flask, I say.
I give it 4 Tsars.
(3Way is drunk on the balcony as I write, “looking for fish in the sky”… he may comment later)
Stuff you might need to maybe know, possibly:
At: The Baxter Theatre
From: 1-11 June
Tickets at Computicket or the Baxter
Director: Janni Younge, with Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler of the Handspring Puppet Company. Puppeteers: Cindy Mkaza, Chuma Sopotela, Tali Cervati, Beren Belknap, Jason Potgieter, Gabriel Marchand. Shadow manipulator: Nieke Lombard. Music: Neo Muyanga. Lighting: Mannie Manim. Choreography: Mamela Nyamsa. Sound Design: Daniel Eppel. Animation: Michael Clarke.
