Review: Spilt Milk

It was a sunny Open Day Sunday with a lot of people and balloons at the University of Melbourne… and I stalked two clowns for half an hour.

I need to point out that I’ve become wary of the creepiness of clowns over the years, but these two were not creepy at all. Josh and Bek were refreshing to watch. I noticed their clown act near the Union House – they were standing next to a skinny, slightly creepy, unfathomably popular Panda mascot. (I still don’t understand why there was a Panda on campus.) Josh and Bek were holding daffodils and wearing normal clothes, only they were each wearing a clown nose. I was impressed by their capability of being acutely present and aware of everything that was happening around them. It was clear that the show was largely improvised, from the immediate and spontaneous ways that they reacted to the people around them and to each other.

I watched them taking four balloons with such giddy happiness on their faces. They soon lost three of the balloons and turned into sad, sulky clowns that were disappointed and angry at each other. It wasn’t until Josh tried to tie the string of the last balloon around Bek’s wrist that I realized that they hadn’t been talking to each other. They made noises, but not words – they communicated through their body language, gestures and facial expression. They did it pretty damn well, too. One of the highlights of the show, for me, was seeing Josh and Bek go inside Wilson Hall and not breaking character at all when people tried to ask them some directions.

Spilt Milk wasn’t only an excellent performance, but also a courageous one. It takes guts to be committed in being playful and trusting the audience to make meaning of . It takes talent to be able to show a story, without words. As an audience member, I could figure out their relationship and understand the story they were conveying to each other, and to the people who chose to watch them closely and pay attention to them.

Given that Spilt Milk is a roaming performance, I was not sure whether I should follow them when they walked to another part of Uni, or just let them be out of my sight. I find that it’s one of the great things about the show, though. We get to choose when we want to stop being involved in watching it, as much as we get to choose whether we want to notice these clowns. I got to see the end of it, where Josh and Bek took off their clown noses and went back into the crowd as if they hadn’t been performing in the past half an hour. It was fantastic.

The last performance of Spilt Milk will be on Monday, 22^nd August at 12pm in Parkville Campus. I don’t exactly know where, but keep an eye out when you walk around campus and start paying attention. You may stumble upon them, or they may find you – either way, it will definitely be delightful.