Play
To Your Heart’s Content!
What a crazy first weekend of July! I got a lift from some people I met at the
fire twirling meets on Monday nights in the Meadows in Edinburgh
down to the Play festival near Shrewsbury in England. This was the second year running of this
annual, unique and purposefully small festival, the focus of which is a
conference for jugglers of everything from knives to tea cups to fire. Any ‘toy’ you could possibly play with, from
fire twirling equipment to juggling clubs to a trapeze, was exhausted over the
weekend. My mind was boggled
continuously by what people could do, what they could invent and reinvent in
their own backyards. Everyone was
boggled! It made for an amazing
community atmosphere of encouragement, learning, wonder and support. Anyone and everyone was encouraged to bring
out their original ideas and toys, performances and exhibitions, even if they
were not sure it would work, and run it by as many other people as possible. Onlookers were continuously amazed, enthusiastic
and most of all, appreciative of the intricate skills and devotion involved in
the creation and implementation of each new idea, whether it was fantastic to watch and worked first
time or merely showed promise.
I’d been laid up for weeks before I arrived at Play due to a
bad back, but with the help of some ibuprofen and sheer adrenaline boosted
excitement (spying a full size circus tent at one end of the field, a trapeze
at the other, and people playing with firetoys and juggling equipment in
between) within fifteen minutes of arrival I was three foot in the air jumping
about on kangaroo stilts! Kangaroo
stilts are a recently invented kind of stilts modeled after the structure of a
kangaroo leg, which allows the stilt walker to jump and bound up, down, around
in circles or at up to 20kph across country.
I was unsteady and unsure bouncing that far off the uneven grass, but it
was immense fun! Tired from the journey
and chilled from the English night, I crashed early so I could wake up warm and
refreshed the next day.
Early the next morning I wandered stiff and bleary eyed up
to the organic and vegetarian coffee and food stall and got sidetracked by the
odd couple queued in front of me: they were rolling contact balls between them,
across their arms, down their backs, across their chests, a hop up from foot to
elbow, a hop from elbow onto fist … smooth as water. As I watched in ashamed disbelief (after
years of practice I can barely roll a contact ball up my arm!) one started
playing with her tea cup, rolling it up and down her arms in sync with her
rolling ball until finally, the ball dropped - straight into her tea cup. I was astonished and wanted to clap, but they
were just passing the time waiting for their coffee refill. It wasn’t until I later pointed them out to
an organizer that he laughed and told me they happen to be from a troop of
world class contact ball performers … (oops, their performance name eludes
me). Minutes later I was in the midst
of a circle of twenty festival goers all twirling poi (one chain with a
ball/weight attached the end held in each hand), swapping ideas, coming up with
new moves and teaching each other more obscure variations. From about 10am to 6 or 7 in the evening
there was a steady stream of workshops, three at a time, offering lessons in
everything from knitting, to balloon art, to various forms of fire twirling to
trapeze. Every evening there were
professional performances, which demonstrated how the toys that we were playing
could be transformed, with a little fairy dust and some positive thinking, into
jaw dropping performances by professional ‘players.’
I was extraordinarily fortunate to be at this little
festival; I had found out about it only a week or so before through a friend
from Australia
who was volunteering there on the gate.
I checked out the website on the net and decided it was an opportunity
too good to miss, so I contacted the organizers as soon as I could via a very
chirpy email, offering my services as a First Aid assistant volunteer, in
exchange for my ticket. They were very
friendly and were glad of any extra first aiders they could call on, especially
considering the encouraging and experimental nature of the festival.
At the festival, I was not only on First Aid, I also held a
discussion about the emergence of sustainability in Western culture, and how to
be economical and ecological at home. My
discussion, however, was hijacked by an acrobat in the midst of mental turmoil,
trying to figure out what the significance of acrobatics was to society, or if
it had any integral virtue at all. The
discussion largely turned towards the history of circus and the inversion of
reality (grotesque theory) in society, the freak side shows of the nineteenth
century and their connection to the sudden boom in anthropology, which many
believe led to Western theories of equality, the civil rights movement and the
rise in respect for alternative cultures and philosophies over the twentieth
century. We eventually concluded that by
pushing the boundaries and norms of society, the inversion of reality, such as
is seen in many circus performances and at festivals like Play, were designed
to broaden minds, encourage people think outside their boxes and to reinvent
themselves and refresh their ill tested perspectives. The acrobat was very pleased with this and on
the whole, I think the discussion went well, despite the sidetrack.
The greatest highlights of the festival for me, besides the
enormous fun, the people and learning new ideas, were the Play Olympics, the
Guinness Fire twirling attempt, and the final night Renegade performance.
The Play Olympics held many competitions, such as juggling
three balls, five balls, clubs, balancing anything on the end of whatever body
part you wanted for the longest and hoola hoop races, to name a few. I’m proud to say I came second in the juggle
three balls event, but placed no where anywhere else (but I took lots of cool
photos!).
The Guinness Book of Records Fire twirling attempt was an
attempt at trying to get the largest catastrophe of fire twirlers to perform a
choreographed show. At first I was at
patriotic odds about participating: after all, I was helping England to
outdo the Australian record. Then
someone pointed out that if England
gets the record, Australia
will have to meet the challenge by making their next Guinness attempt even
bigger and better. That settled it: I
helped England
get the record by two! The night cleared
away a threatening storm without even a whisper of thunder. We stood under the stars at the ready, wicks
soaked in paraffin and the air smelling like an excited petrol station. The circle was so large that the message to
light up and start had to be sent from one end to the other by broken
telephone, but the results were breathtaking!
A wheel of fire spun from the inner sanctum of the crowd of twirlers out
towards the edge in twirling streaks of bright fire balls and back again. Obviously I couldn’t take photos while
participating, but the excitement left hours of fire twirling in its wake, of
which I did take photos (see gallery).
Finally, the Renegade concert was a steady stream of unusual
and eye opening short acts which lasted until the sun came up. It was held on the last night of the festival
and anyone and everyone was encouraged to get up on stage and show what they’d
learnt at the festival, or what they’d been working on at home. It was astonishing: there were demonstrations from the UK junior
juggling champion, to a tissue aerial performer, to contact fire staff and even
Japanese bondage art!
But the most special aspect of the entire Play festival were
the people who arrived child like: wide eyed, enthusiastic and in the spirit of
playing. They arrived ready to teach,
learn, participate and share their skills open heartedly! By the end of the weekend, my mind boggled
with new friends, toys, tricks, tents, performances … I could barely lift my arms for two days
afterwards from playing so much!
