Monday 12 September 2011

Everything Speaks!

It was the perfect day to be out and about; a blue and gold day, the temperature a lovely 20 degrees, the birds were singing, the bushes were exclaiming about the wonders of being green...

This was “Everything Speaks”, the creative brain-child of street performer Hannah Roe of Scratch & Sniff Theatre. She had successfully pulled together a diverse crowd of twenty-five students who were to take on the task of being inanimate objects on Concrete Lawn. As the reviewer, I wasn't sure if this was to be a social experiment or street-performance. It turned out to be both. I sat down between the moaning tree (it had beckoned me to use its branches as protection from the sun, so I politely obliged) and the babbling rubbish bins, observing the bemused expressions of the passers by. Some looked liked they had fallen into a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest, and walked as fast as they could into the safety of Union House. Others only nodded and smiled, yes, this was what student life was supposed to be about. Only during this short lunch break was it acceptable to dance around with a balloon, channel the sound of tent plastic, or examine what it felt like to be a satchel bag.

It has been said that there is a fine line between art and insanity. The participants of "Everything Speaks" successfully walked that line. This is student theatre. This is losing oneself in being something else. Walking amongst the cacophony of sounds and watching students quickly lose themselves in their characters (a bike, the pavement, a pole), I got a feeling for what it might for what it might be like to be an actor. My only regret is not joining in.

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