Author Archives: Dorothy Max Prior

About Dorothy Max Prior

Dorothy Max Prior is the editor of Total Theatre Magazine, and is also a performer, writer, dramaturg and choreographer/director working in theatre, dance, installation and outdoor arts. Much of her work is sited in public spaces or in venues other than regular theatres. She also writes essays and stories, some of which are published and some of which languish in bottom drawers – and she teaches drama, dance and creative non-fiction writing. www.dorothymaxprior.com

Fierce 2015: What Will Be, Will Be

It’s a Wednesday night in central Birmingham, and we’re heading to BOM (Birmingham Open Media), a venue and artists’ studio close to New Street station which is the designated hub for Fierce Festival 2015, a five-day bonanza of live art, experimental theatre, installations, screenings and parties. We pass old-school Chinese restaurants with red dragon signage; a gaggle of girls with bare legs and massively high heels who are cheerily falling out of a taxi; a pub with peeling purple paint offering a special Monday night beer and curry deal (on a Wednesday?) And here we are. A blue neon pin-up girl announces Adultworld, the ‘gentlemen’s club’ opposite, illuminating the small group of smokers in animated conversation standing outside BOM. I’m reminded of an action Katie Etheridge did at the National Review of Live Art many years ago, in which she issued non-smokers with fake fags so they wouldn’t miss out on all the best conversations.

For Fierce, like the dearly departed NRLA, is more than a festival. Or perhaps it is a festival in the original sense of the word. A gathering of a community to share a space and celebrate. In this case, a community of artists, writers, musicians and thinkers from Birmingham and beyond – Fierce is both determinedly hyperlocal and ambitiously international (and all things in between). Of course there is a wider audience – particularly as much of the work at Fierce over the years has been presented in public spaces; and collaborations with partners such as Warwick Arts Centre, macBirmingham, and DanceXchange lock into their audience bases – but there is a core group of attendees who are fellow artists, creators, and cultural commentators of all sorts.

So this evening is the official launch of Fierce 2015 – although things actually kicked off the night before at Warwick Arts Centre with the opening of the new Chris Goode show Weaklings, which is a corker of a show inspired by the blog of cult writer and artist Dennis Cooper (reviewed here).

At BOM there are all the usual things you’d expect at a festival launch – glasses of fizz, thank-you speeches, hardcore networking – there’s more to it than that, as many of the installation works presented at this year’s Fierce are sited here – so people like me who hate networking and always spend time at launches talking to people they already know can actually see the work being talked about.

One Five West :Code and Carpentry. Photo by Meg Lavender

The basement space has been taken over by Birmingham-based One Five West, whose Code and Carpentry is a ‘series of interactive objects’ encouraging ‘tactile creativity and play in a digital age’. The space has the feel of a fairground sideshow or an old-fashioned games arcade, repossessed and radically altered. Low tech is the name of the game – reclaimed and customised furniture meets schoolboy (or in this case, girl) electronics kit. There are glass-topped boxes on legs (think pinball table) that change colour when you approach them, hall-of-mirrors screens with in-built theremins, and love-seats lit with miniature LED lights that are touch sensitive. When I first enter I’m alone, and enjoy the awareness that I am shaping what I’m seeing and hearing. As the space fills up, there’s a different enjoyment, feeling part of a big moving mechanism of people and machines; everywhere a mash-up of sounds, lights, and shadows with it hard to tell who is instigating what.

Meanwhile upstairs, there’s a screening of Orange Bikini, a film by Emily Mulenga, who uses video and digital art ‘to explore ideas around the (female, Black) body in the Internet age’ . Like One Five West, Emily Mulenga was a Fierce FWD 14 artist – Fierce FWD being a scheme that supports emerging artists from or based in the West Midlands (in Emily’s case, Burton-on-Trent).

In Orange Bikini, Emily’s avatar is seen moving through a series of brightly coloured and fast moving landscapes. It’s somewhere between a girly Disney movie, a Japanese anime, and a quest-based video game – a kaleidoscope of fast-moving mutating landscapes in which our heroine poses, twerks, pole-dances, drives and swims. Here she is shaking her butt in skimpy white shorts and afro hair, a Blaxploitation movie star with a tiny waist and big curves. Now she’s whizzing along a multi-coloured cityscape in her Cobra sports car, long sleek hair streaming in the wind. Then she’s sitting on a tropical beach at sunset, the screen a rainbow of hot orange tones, which shape-shifts into a field of daisies, our heroine sporting My Little Pony pink hair. Next she’s swimming with dolphins, her floating turquoise hair longer than her body. This is a world of unfettered freedom and happiness, in which the self can be anything the artist wants it to be – a body moulded by the mind to absorb, reflect and contradict the oppression of cultural expectations heaped upon young women of colour. Orange Bikini is very lovely piece of work, stating its case for self-determination with humour and joy.

Emily Mulenga: Orange Bikini

Emily’s work can also be seen in the magazine Contemporary Other, which is launched at the Fierce opening. The editor is Demi Nandhra, who is another of the Fierce FWD 14 artists. Contemporary Other is an actual print magazine – hurrah! – 36 A4 pages of quality heavyweight paper with perfect binding. Before I get to any reflection on content, can I say how much this pleases me. What we find inside is creative and critical writing, hand-drawn illustrations and digital artworks. The theme of this launch issue is ‘feminisms’, and the edition includes poetry, poetic prose, manifestos, presentations, essays, and statements – I am Not a Feminist by Zoe Samudzi, and An Open Letter to a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist, to pick two examples, are provocative and polemical, addressing current issues in contemporary feminism of white supremacy and the acceptance (or otherwise) of transwomen within feminist communities. I’m personally more drawn to the visual arts work, which manages to be strongly political without the polemic. Joiri Minaya’s DWGS postcard series gives us a beautiful collection of portraits that reclaims and updates the sort of imagery used by painters of the ‘exotic’ female form, such as Gauguin. Kamal Badhey’s I Must Remind Myself is a series of photos in which faces or objects are overlaid with texts: a chest-of-drawers with clothes tumbling out bears the words ‘imprints of cruel memories’. Emily Mulenga’s contribution is a photoshopped and digitally enhanced self-portrait – skin made paler, hair changed from black to blonde, waist impossibly slim, breasts ridiculously large, pubic hair airbrushed out. Written on the image are the words ‘the tan lines will fade but the memories will last forever.’

Selina Thompson: Race Cards. Photo Meg Lavender

Key to Emily Mulenga’s work is the notion of a safe space – an idea with a great deal of currency in the debate on ‘contemporary otherness’. It is therefore unsurprising, when entering the room for Selina Thompson’s Race Card installation, to see the phrase ‘safe space’ cropping up numerous times on the 1000 questions she has written and posted all around the walls. Here’s the idea: you enter the room, alone. You read the cards in numerical order, and you stop when you reach one you want to answer. You’re advised to try to pick one that isn’t too easy for you. You write a response and pin it on the wall, so others who enter the room can see your answer. You then pick another question that you can’t answer, and copy that one out on a new card which you take home with you to reflect on.

Here are some of the questions, all of which relate to enquiries around race and cultural identity:

How do you go about exposing white supremacy in liberal arts spaces?

Do you feel comfortable using terms like ‘black’ and ‘white’ to describe race?

What does it mean to be black?

What does it mean to be white?

Whatever happened to multiculturalism?

How can I be more like Grace Jones?

Who is Live Aid for?

What will freedom look like?

When I enter the room, there’s an immediate practical problem in that the early-number questions are up high, written in small and difficult to read script, white on black, set in a dim space – there’s no way I can read them. So I immediately disobey the rules and start reading things in a random order. Inevitably, I spot things that push buttons for me: ‘Who is more problematic, famous racist Nigel Farage, or the liberal journalist politely asking questions?’ promotes a bout of inner rage as I rail against the idea that we can’t ask questions of, or listen to responses from, people we don’t agree with. I decide not to answer that one. I also note ‘Why do we have borders?’, ‘Is immigration traumatic?’ and ‘What will it take to stop Katie Hopkins?’ as they relate so strongly to current work I’m doing with people who have migrated to the UK. Aware that although I’ve been told to take as long as I like, there’s a queue outside, I stop dithering and pick ‘What labels does your body wear?’

Race Cards is a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece of work, but there are flaws in the execution: those up-high cards you can’t read; the fact that you are told to write your reply in red ink, but there is only a black biro available which is confusing; the ‘take as much time as you like’ directive which just makes you feel stressed when there are a load of people waiting outside – I’d prefer a fixed time limit. But these are things that can be easily readjusted. The main thing is the core intention and content of the piece, which is sound and good.

Ria Jade Hartley: Spit Kit. Photo Meg Lavender

The labels my body wears – and whether I accept or reject them – ends up tying in neatly with my experience the next day (also at BOM) of Spit Kit by Bristol-based artist Ria Jade Hartley. In this, you are led into a room upstairs that has been converted into an art-sci laboratory. Vials containing tiny samples of saliva are lined up on shelves, a glass-fronted cabinet contains a selection of scientific and medical instruments, and a number of lines are pegged with photos of human faces and bodies adorned in exotic decorations (white clay, feathers, painted lips…). There is also a wall of pictures of the artist enacting earlier works from the Genetic Body series, of which Spit Kit is the latest strand.

I’m greeted by Ria, invited to sit down, and then presented with the sort of official document we are all familiar with, in which questions of nationality, cultural identity, and race are ascertained. I go for my usual replies: Anglo-Irish. Mixed other. Prefer not to say. We talk about these answers. A sample of saliva is taken, prompting a discussion on DNA testing and ancestry. I’m told my saliva won’t be tested, just added to the museum of samples. I’m asked if I can go back six generations. I can only manage three – parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. This already takes us back to the mid 19th century. Irish. English. Eastern European Jewish. The conversation takes us to a discussion of intermingling cockney London communities, Portuguese sailors arriving in the Irish port of Cork, and the Norman invasion of Hastings. The final stage of the piece leads to me embracing the term I’m happiest with to describe my race, ethnicity, and cultural heritage. I decide on ‘human’ – which is, as well, the only label I was 100% happy for my body to wear in Race Cards. Ria Jade Hartley’s Spit Kit is a great experience – a well-structured, warmly embracing, and thought-provoking work.

Neil Callaghan & Simone Kenyon: Permutations in the City

Meanwhile, on the streets of Birmingham, Permutations in the City continues its investigation of movement in public spaces, partly choreographed and partly improvised around a structure, and inspired by Stefan Jovanovic’s provocation: How can bodies be used to alter the social scripts inherent in public space? Friday is day two for choreographers Neil Callaghan and Simone Kenyon and their team of guest dancers. On Thursday, I watched two of them work their way around the grimy urban environment of a motorway underpass. Although the movement work was fine – simple, slow encounters between two bodies negotiating their way along the inside edge of the boundary wall – I felt a little bored. Partly, I think, because I have seen so many choreographic works in cities that seemed to have an identical intention. (Although I realise that I am very old, and have seen a lot, and that young artists need to feel that they can discover things for themselves.)

I have quite a different reaction on Friday, when I see another pair of dancers in the busy Victoria Square in the city centre. Here, the piece is less about a response to urban architecture, and more about the social space. In the underpass, the dancers negotiating the concrete walls and floor were watched by a few Fierce aficionados, with an occasional passer-by scurrying past uninterested. It seemed a pretty insular affair focused on the bodies’ relationship to the physical environment. In the square, there are people who are here to enjoy the autumn sunshine, to take a cigarette break, leaving their offices for a take-away coffee, or sitting on a bench with a lover. People who become slowly or suddenly aware of the two figures standing still and leaning against each other. There is a strength in the fact that the dancer’s bodies are locked in to each other, with movements mostly a slow and cautious embrace and unwinding. A pair of builders walk by looking a little bemused, glancing back over their shoulders; a group of charity workers stop their drill when they realise they have competition; a man asleep on a bench with a copy of the Sun over his face sits up to ask me if I know ‘what that’s all about’. As is oft the way with work in public spaces, I enjoy watching the incidental audience as much as I enjoy watching the performers. ‘But what’s the point?’ says the Sun reader. Just being there, doing it, is the point, I feel.

The performers unlock their hold and walk off, moving off to their next site. Sadly, my time is up and I have to go too, to head for the train station. I leave Birmingham regretfully, knowing that I will be missing a fabulous weekend of work that will include terrific new shows by Ursula Martinez, Fernando Belfiore, and Kate MacIntosh. I’ll miss the Saturday night Club Fierce featuring not only Gazelle Twin but also Miguel Gutierrez. I won’t get to bring my own record to Montreal company PME–ART’s Bring Your Own Record Listening Party. I won’t get to Sleep with a Curator. I’ve missed my chance to see Tim Etchell’s neon Will Be – in which the words The Future Will Be Confusing will shine out from the historic frontage of the Moseley Road Baths, a foreshadowing of which was seen at Chris Goode’s Weaklings, which ends on those very same words. A zeitgeist thing, or are they in collusion?

This is the last year that Fierce will be curated and directed by Laura McDermott and Harun Morrison. The call is out for a new artistic director – and we can only hope that whoever takes up the post brings as much verve, energy, and ambition to the job as these two, who now move off into their own futures, confusing or otherwise. What will be for Fierce Festival in the future we shall have to wait and see.

Tim Etchells: Will Be

Featured photo (top of page): Emily Mulenga Orange Bikini. Photo courtesy of artist.

Fierce is an international festival of cross artform performance centred in Birmingham. The festival embraces theatre, dance, music, installations, activism, digital practices and parties. Fierce fills the city with performances in theatres, galleries and other out-of-the-ordinary spaces. Fierce 2015 took place 7–11 October. www.wearefierce.com

Dorothy Max Prior attended Fierce for Total Theatre 7–8 October 2015.

Chris Goode and Co: Weaklings

The future will be confusing. This is how it ends – there are no answers, no conflict resolution. In this, it could perhaps be argued that Chris Goode’s latest work, Weaklings, is less a piece of theatre than a multi-artform installation of texts, sounds and images, inhabited by four performers who activate the space. But that wouldn’t be telling the whole truth, because Weaklings is brilliant, beautiful, and dramaturgically sound, theatre. A play, you could say, that playfully deconstructs the world of an interactive online space – writer Dennis Cooper’s Weaklings blog, a magnet for every outsider in the blogosphere – and somehow, marvellously, miraculously, reconstructs it on stage.

He takes everything we know about online space – the overload of information vying for our attention; the multitude of voices all speaking at once; the constant flow of images coming at us; the weird juxtaposition of cheery cartoon characters, pop videos, and porn all one click away from each other, whizzing past in fast succession; the mix of static and moving images; the interplay between text read and text heard; the anonymity and the exposure; the freedom to be whoever you want; the need to to be heard; the sharing and the shaming – and feeds it to us in a dazzling display of cut-ups and montages, all informed by a desire to move queer culture into revolutionary new territories. If William Burroughs and Brion Gysin were doing their thing now, this might be what they’d do.

The stage is set with an extended cage-like wire structure taking up a lot of the floor space, the site for the projection of texts, still images, and video. Three male performers move in, through, around, and in front of, this structure, sometimes alone, sometimes in relationship with each other. Their bodies (clothed or otherwise at varying points in the piece) become another site for the projections. There’s the intense intellectual one, played by Christopher Brett Bailey, who reads fast and furious tracts from his laptop. Nick Finnegan is blond and boyish, a picture of innocence, ripe for the taking. Craig Hamilton is a Joe Dellasandro for the modern age, flexing muscle, running, posing with hair falling into his face, a sullen come-on look in his eyes. Fantasies of bondage and rape, confessions of murder, harrowing tales of tormented childhoods, and heartbreaking pleas for love and understanding are played out by these three, augmented by onscreen contributions from actors and from real-life (whatever that might be) users of the Weaklings site (who contribute to the discussion forums using pseudonyms such as Tender Prey, Lost Child, and Atheist). My favourite is a very affable man called Thomas Moore, who I see as a portal or guide into the blog for uninitiated people like me.

Above all this, at a work station positioned on a kind of mezzanine level above the cage, is the actor playing Dennis Cooper himself. The instigator, the puppet master, the Deus ex Machina, the controller, the mediator. A reluctant god, we learn early on in the piece: he starts the blog at the request of his website visitors, having asked them what would most improve the site. A message board would be better, he grumbles, before devoting himself selflessly to the task of replying to every single comment with a religious devotion that takes up an enormous chunk of his life. As Dennis speaks, a large image of ‘his’ face is projected onto the front of the cage, so we see, simultaneously, the live and mediated image of the writer at work.

And here is the stroke of genius. Chris Goode has cast Karen Christopher (the enigmatic ex Goat Island performer) in the role. Having a woman – particularly such a talented and charismatic one – playing Dennis Cooper is perfect. In a show that is about mediation, about roleplay, about questioning what is ‘real’ and what is ‘fantasy’, this is just what is needed. Every time Karen speaks Dennis’ words, we are reminded that everything we see and hear – here on this stage, there on the internet, and elsewhere in the wider world – is only one version of reality. All life is a game, don’t take things at face value.

It is also great to have a strong female presence onstage throughout the piece – the easier decision would have been to have all-male casting, but that would make it something else, something less compelling. Inevitably, most of the site users are male – although we meet a couple of women onscreen. We also meet Dennis Cooper’s associate director Jennifer Tang, who confesses with complete honesty that as a ‘straight woman’ (her definition of herself), the site is not talking to her.

There are times when this reviewer also feels that she is meeting a world that is not hers. As I often have throughout my life, I find myself wondering why men get so hung up and obsessed by sex, which is (after all) only sex. And it is hard not to be disturbed by some of the extreme Slave and Master confessions regardless of whether they are pure fantasy or actually enacted in some way. In the post-show discussion, Chris Goode talks of Dennis Cooper as a ‘profoundly moral’ person, who again and again ‘stays with’ people in a vulnerable place, acting as a non-judgemental witness. This, I feel, is what Chris Goode has brought to the stage. He asks us to be non-judgemental witnesses, to be there for these often difficult and disturbing ideas and images.

Although occasionally alienated or disturbed (and that’s OK – these things are disturbing) I find myself drawn into a fantastical world of extraordinary and exciting words and images that jostle for my attention in the best possible way. Often, there is a beautiful contrast of speed and stillness between the projected texts and images, and the pictures created by the human bodies that stand frozen in the light, or move slowly and rhythmically in the space like living sculptures.

A word of praise here for designer Naomi Dawson, who has worked with Chris Goode to create a powerful scenography for the piece; and also for lighting designer Katharine Williams – the strong reds and blues, placed to the side and giving a suggestion of light from stained glass windows, and the sea of tiny red lights placed around the stage by Craig, suggest a sacred space. Original sound is by Scanner – although that is mashed in with clips, samples and soundbites galore.

This is the first outing for Weaklings, presented at Warwick Arts Centre (who co-commissioned it) as part of the Fierce Festival 2015. It is a technically complex work, and the performers all did a sterling job, working with the technology to create a cohesive whole. It could, perhaps, be slightly shorter, and there are a few odd lulls, and towards the end moments where it feels as if we are coming to an ending, then don’t. But this is all to be expected so early in the life of a show, particularly one as complex as this. Hippo World this ain’t…

Shared Space and Light: Talking Posts

The Old Market sits in a moody cul-de-sac in old Brunswick, which bridges the gap between Brighton and Hove – a splendid building illuminated by its own wall-mounted lamps, and additionally by two large lamp-posts standing proudly on the paved area in front of the building. Are they always there? They look as though they could be. They are set off-centre rather than on either side of the main door, which gives an edge of unreality, and an interesting asymmetrical air to the architecture. One of the posts has a bicycle tied to it – these are proper, solid lamp-posts which when struck produce a satisfying metal ring. But they are no ordinary posts, they are the means of transmission of a number of ghost stories, presented by an evolving series of disembodied heads seemingly trapped inside the lamp-head. As each story is told, it is augmented by sounds from the other post: booming thunder, crashing waves, howling wind, squeaking doors…

Talking Posts has been created by Brighton based multi-media / cross-artform company Shared Space and Light, who have brought to fruition a number of renowned design, film, and video-mapping projects over recent years. The design and visual arts elements of the piece are beautiful – the lamp-posts themselves, and the integration of the moving image and sound into the posts. It is a plus of the piece that the technology is harnessed in the service of the art, which is how ithings should be.

The stories are local, telling tales of all sorts of supernatural happenings, from the horribly harrowing to the mildly amusing. The Old Market itself is the subject of one them – an odd little story of horses neighing and whinnying in the basement (the building used to be a riding school, apparently). Some are from recent times, such as a story of a kindly ghost who hangs around the Sussex County Hospital at visiting times – the other-worldly visitor (seen as a sort of guardian angel loitering by the beds) sadly lost along with the old wards when the hospital is re-developed. Many conjure up a long-lost Brighton from many centuries ago, a rough and ready town populated by sailors and smugglers and serving wenches – although we recognise the names of roads in what is now called The Lanes (the original city centre). One of my favourite stories is set around the town’s parish church, St Nicolas’, and features a truly spooky and unnerving tale of a sailor lost in a fire at sea, his demise (and that of the whole ship) witnessed by his beloved, who has climbed to the top of the spire, and who then falls with shock – or perhaps jumps to her death. Every May, as the anniversary recurs, her screams of terror can apparently be heard, and if you’re very lucky, the burning ship itself can be sighted off-shore. Move on a few centuries, and we hear the story of a seafront tea-room in which the waitresses serving the scones and jam repeatedly trip over some unseen obstacle in the room. Haunted homes and hotel rooms naturally crop up a few times – a story of a typewriter that clatters along all by itself is very lovely; and the tale of a child who feels the hands of death around his throat is truly frightening.

These classic tales have been reworked into first-person narratives by playwright Sara Clifford, who has done an excellent job, giving enough shared style to offer cohesion to the whole piece, whilst yet allowing for individual narrative voices to shine through. The actors include Brighton luminaries Ivan Fabrega, Merry Colchester, and Darren East (who tells the tale of the tripping waitresses with a cheeky ladies-man raise of the eyebrows), through to veteran TV actress Shirley Jaffe (who brings her wealth of experience to the job). Some of the team of thirteen (of course!) storytellers in this hour-long cycle of tales have evidently more experience than others in delivery to-camera. Some seem to be natural storytellers, whilst others are a little too actorly. In some stories, cuts (where we presume the text hadn’t been delivered in one take) are a slightly awkward distraction. It is unclear if a director has been employed – some of the actors look as if they could have done with a little more time and direction – and if there is an opportunity for more artistic development on the piece, it would be great to have time allocated for further rehearsals and re-recordings.

Talking Posts, though, is a success – a very lovely concept, well realised. A shivery, shadowy experience perfect for melancholic autumn evenings.

Talking Posts was commissioned by The Old Market as part of their Industrious Creatives programme (funded by ACE) and presented as part of Brighton Digital Festival. Photo by Scott Ramsey.

Komische Oper Berlin | 1927: The Magic Flute

A chorus line with wolf heads and cartoon gartered legs; a dazzling psychedelic explosion of flowers, fairies, and butterflies; and Terry Gilliam-style cog-filled heads. Chinese dragon-serpents chasing their own tails; spear-carrying monkeys; and an aria-singing spider woman.

Welcome to the crazy world of Komische Oper Berlin’s The Magic Flute.

Co-directed by Barrie Kosky and 1927 theatre company’s Suzanne Andrade, with animation by 1927’s Paul Barritt, the work bears the immediately recognisable signature of that enterprising company’s work. A magical blend of live and screen action, the performers interacting with surreally funny animation, so that they become part of a live comic book; silent-movie style titles, replacing dialogue with beautiful black-and-white graphics; and a countless number of nods to the 1920s Hollywood heyday, with homages to Buster Keaton, Nosferatu, and Louise Brooks built in.

It is almost three hours (with one interval) and it is both exhilarating and exhausting. Paul Barritt excels himself with animation sequences that at times make your eyes ache; and the stage is agog with opera singers fighting off shadowy wolves, popping their heads through holes in the screen to sing perfect top ‘c’s, or donning beards and dashing up to the boxes to sing the choral parts.

I’m no opera expert, but I know that Die Zauberflote / The Magic Flute is Mozart’s last great work; that its bizarre and incredible (even to fans of fantasy) storyline remains a puzzle; and that it is often played with vaudevillian pizzazz. Although perhaps never more so than in this case. The music sounds fine and dandy to my untutored ears, with Olga Pudova impressive as the Queen of the Night spider woman, Dominik Koninger a winner as the Keaton-esque Papageno, Allan Clayton doing a great job as the pale-skinned kohl-eyed Tamino, and Brooks/Andrade lookalike Maureen McKay rising to the demands of a very physical rendition of her role as Pamina.

The story is so batty it hardly bears telling: a daft and convoluted fairy tale of lost voices, magical musical instruments, and trials of temptation, which features a lost prince, a bird catcher, a giant serpent, a witchy Queen of the Night, and various lost and found loves. But no one cares how silly it all is – in fact, this is celebrated in a production that exploits the ludicrous possibilities the bizarre imagery of the libretto offers. It also tightens up the stage action by replacing dialogue with titles.

The interaction between live and screen action is understandably far less sophisticated than in 1927’s own shows – these are opera singers, not physical theatre performers – but there are clever shortcuts and tricks to show them to best advantage. And of course, no expense is spared. This is opera budgets, not experimental theatre, we’re talking.

There are criticisms, from the perspective of someone who has followed 1927’s work since they won the Total Theatre Award for Best Newcomer at the Fringe a mere eight years ago. I don’t feel that comfortable with the company cannibalising their own work. Or perhaps it is director Barrie Kosky who has encouraged them to do so? In the programme notes he declares himself a fan of their first show, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

I find it uncomfortable seeing imagery from that show and its successor, The Animals and Children Took to the Streets, regurgitated here. For example, the image of Papageno running on the spot with cartoon animation legs is a direct lift from the image of Esme Appleton doing that very same thing at the beginning of Between the Devil. And the wolf-dogs, cats, moon rising over the roof are familiar. The chorus of women looking just like Suzanne Andrade’s character in the first show is surreal, and not necessarily in a good way. Perhaps the company would argue that these are visual motifs that they choose to repeat from show to show – and fair enough, close on three hours is a lot to fill!

But I’m personally much more comfortable when the imagery moves clearly into new territory unique to this production – and there are some staggeringly wonderful things. Gorgeously drawn tarot cards, knife-throwing spiders, flowers that sprout heads, exploding hearts, steampunk elephants, whirring insects… the images tip out one after the other. The one animation sequence that confuses me is the Pink Elephants on Parade homage to Disney’s Dumbo. It’s clever – but hard to understand what it is doing here.

And I have to say that whilst I commend the company taking up offers to move into new territory, I really do miss composer/musician Lilian Henley’s lovely presence. The production is on one level very 1927 – but on another level, it feels incomplete, and occasionally a pastiche of itself. I suppose that’s because the extraordinary vision of 1927’s three shows (the two previously mentioned and current touring production Golem) comes from the unique combination that is made by all four of the core company members working together, and the input of regular collaborators such as costume designer Sarah Munro (from The Insect Circus – a lot of her influence is evident here too). Or is my slight discomfort something to do with being in on something at the start and being startled by seeing it go mainstream? I will own up to a little of that too…

Yet still – an extraordinary and dazzling production. It all goes with a swing, and the packed audience at the Festival Theatre for the Edinburgh International Festival opening frequently bursts into spontaneous applause, rising to a standing ovation at the end as the company, directors, animator, and conductor take numerous curtain call bows.

Tim Spooner: The Assembly of Animals

It’s like a 3D dogugaeshi as the red curtains slide back, revealing more and more in the depth of the space. But in place of painted Japanese screens, we get a ’performed sculpture’; an assemblage of animated objects and automata whizzing and whirring on little tables.

It starts with a sheep – a funny little mis-shapen lamb with button eyes that stares out at us with its head cocked. A handle is cranked and the sheep walks, although never getting anywhere. As the space opens out, more sheep appear. Or maybe they are dogs. Or – well, pick your animal. I see sheep. Big sheep, little sheep. Sheep with ridiculously long legs, or great long sausage bodies and little legs. Enormous sheep that emerge from deflated plastic bags. Teeny weeny sheep that are no more than a couple of metal rods and a battery.

As they are created, the creatures are set up, then pulled apart and reconstructed, or swapped from table to table around the space, fitting in to the landscapes of clunking and fizzing lo-tech machinery. It’s a visual feast, and totally fascinating. And the sound! There’s a stylophone stuck on a one-line tune, a Clangers-esque swannee whistle, a drill, a fan. What exactly this is, is left to the imagination of the viewer. God creating life by trial and error? Mad scientists making horrible hybrids? Factory farming, even? It’s a show pitched to appeal to both adults and children, and will be appreciated and interpreted differently by audiences.

The animation is fantastic – varying from minimal manipulation (one lovely moment sees a whole little herd of pieces of paper curl up when they get warm) through to Heath Robinson type complex contraptions, messes of cogs and wires and pumps and cranks.

The Assembly of Animals (presented at the Small Animal Hospital in Summerhall – yes, really! )is created and co-performed by Tim Spooner – a multi-talented artist who works in the space between visual and performing arts. At just 30 minutes, it is a wonderful experience – I left dreaming of electric sheep, and buzzing with joy.

The Assembly of Animals is presented at Summerhall as part of the British Council Edinburgh Showcase.