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Bruce
The magic of the Edinburgh Fringe is the potential for companies to find an unexpected and enthusiastic audience for works that step away from the predictable: while it remains a difficult place to gain attention, due to the sheer numbers of shows, The Last Great Hunt had considerable success with their Adventures of Alvin Sputnik, It’s Dark Outside and Bruce. The last of these shows was an idiosyncratic, charming and emotive piece of lo-fi puppetry, which demonstrated how the manipulate of simple object – in this case foam – can build a fertile connection between audiences and animated inanimate materials.
Co-creator and performer Tim Watts explains that Bruce began with ‘an object - the block of foam that is Bruce inspired the show. We started with nothing and improvised in front of a mirror for four weeks until we had a show. Everything that came out of those improvisations and experiments came from Wyatt (Nixon-Lloyd, co-creator and performer) and I playing with that object, and two white gloves for hands. It led to ideas that we took further, but it certainly started with the object.’‘We actually started making Bruce back in 2008. We made the puppet and started performing sketches at stand-up comedy nights. We would make the sketches by improvising wildly (often just hours before going on-stage) in front of the mirror making each other laugh, then once we had rough idea we would refine the best bits into a sketch that worked as a five minute scene and drill that as best we could till we went on-stage.’
Coming from Perth, Australia, Watts and Nixon-Lloyd recognized that the Fringe is an exciting potential marketplace for performance, with Watts acknowledging that, in comparison to their other work, Bruce speaks to a more rough hewn and immediate aesthetic. The emphasis on improvisation as a generative process in the rehearsal studio relates to many other companies who have brought puppetry to Edinburgh and August.‘This show in many ways is very different to the previous shows I have taken to Edinburgh,’ Watts says. ‘Visually it is much more simple, and a bit more 'fringey': a block of foam and some floating hands pretending to be a bunch of different characters for an hour. It’s a funny and heart-warming show that is a joyous head-fuck. Audiences can expect to laugh, and maybe cry and be delighted by their own imagination as they dream in all the blanks. I hope they leave feeling full of joy and wonder.’Looking across the various interviews with companies who have arrived in Scotland, the interest in the audience’s power to develop their own interpretations appears consistent. What could be seen as a certain ‘looseness’ in defining the meaning of a production becomes a positive invitation for the spectator to become a co-creator of meaning: a very different approach to the focus on the director’s vision found in many versions of canonical scripts such as Shakespeare.
This open-ended dramaturgy, rooted in improvisation but recognising the role of the audience allows Watts freedom to adapt and reconsider the performance: ‘the beauty of theatre is that you can always change it,’ he continues. ‘Unlike a book or a film or painting, where once it’s done it’s done (except in certain cases), you can listen to the audience, see what they are responding to or are confused by or want more of and make changes to make the show better.’
‘My shows are experiments, and until the audience is in the room it’s just guess work. So I would say that once a show is open, it becomes in a sense all about the dramaturgy, trying to sculpt the best show possible out of what you have.’
Placing their work within traditions of puppetry, animation and mime, Watts notes the connection between these disciplines, which permits this particular aesthetic. ‘I feel a real overlap between them all: they are all deeply rooted in play, and create a real magic through imaginative engagement with an audience,’ he adds. ‘That sense of wonder and magic has always inspired me, and it's what I hope to bring to others. I love magic in theatre. I love it when what is invisible becomes visible, and what is visible becomes invisible. I think it’s when the audience is imaginatively engaged that they become more emotionally engaged.’
‘There is a humanity to the comedy of clown that I am addicted to, and simplicity to physical comedy and mime that lends itself so beautifully to puppetry and animation.’
