Sunday, February 13, 2011

Getting lost in The Woods

Thursday my fellow MA-er FA and I traveled to Birmingham to see our friend, another MA-er Sara, in a show she helped devise called The Woods, playing at the Midlands Art Centre (MAC). After a 2-mile walk from the train station, during which we encountered a dead empty park, a lost scarf and a rubbish bin we made it to the tucked-away mac centre where we enjoyed a nice cuppa and a scone.

The Jane Packman Company transforms the art gallery into an installation complete with a bark covered floor with leaves and opaque green sheets hung round the setting, the dank smell of moist earth and bark immediately hits your senses. The actors greet you as you step in (two guys and a girl), taking your coat and offering you a hot drink. We all participate in a few toasts and then it begins. We are encouraged to help cover the female character with leaves and then the elder of the men has us follow him around the perimeter and then enter the woods - a mixture of bark, wooded chairs, a wardrobe, a sink, a bed, a table, a lamp. There are two realities at play here - the elder gentleman tells of the life cycle of the woods, a cycle that relies on death; while the other is of a couple. We see their morning ritual:  he wakes up, makes their tea, washes his face, wakes her up, takes away the duvet, they make a play of animal noises, she gets dressed, kisses him goodbye and leaves. Remnants of this ritual remain and slowly dissipates as the man copes with losing the love of his life.

One scene has the woman wearing layers of clothes, there's a stunning choreography as the ghost of the woman interacts with the grieving man as he slowly takes layer after layer of her clothing, smelling and trying to hold onto her scent. His anguish and grief goes even further as days become indistinguishable and the grief cycle becomes more desperate.

With such a sparse setting, the details are really touching and the carefully crafted slow pace is beautiful -- how the two worlds interact; inviting us to touch the earth on the ground; the man starts using the woman's tea cup -- little details like this do not go unnoticed. The sound design too is nice as it goes back and forth from the woods to the city, allowing our auditory senses to travel in between the two realities with ease.

Here's a trailer of the show:


I think a lot of this resonated with me particularly because of the piece we've been devising at Son of Semele called Wallowa which explores the true story of a 76-year-old woman who was lost in the Wallowa Mountains in eastern Oregon for two weeks and found alive, albeit without a memory. A lot of things we've been exploring was touched upon in The Woods - especially the idea of quantum entanglements where we explored how two people are connected even though they are far a part - something this show plays with beautifully.

No comments:

Post a Comment