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States of Play
States of Play:
Media and Function within Itim Ensemble’s The Big Bang and Ljubljana Puppet Theatre’s Sand Pit
by Alistair Maxwell
Despite a name that conjures up images of spiralling galaxies or exploding universes, Itim Ensemble’s The Big Bang is firmly rooted on terra firma, albeit one constructed entirely from old computer electronics. Parks are long green motherboards, circuit boards are Blade Runner-esque cityscapes and even the dogs are batteries. Ljubljana Puppet Theatre’s Sand Pit on the other hand exists purely in the abstract. In the beginning there was nothing, then sand pours from the heavens and the cast of four create patterns, shapes, chaos, and cities. What links these two non-verbal performances is the prioritisation of their chosen materials and also the sense of play that brings them both to life.
The director of Sand Pit Miha Golob has stated a fascination with children’s spaces as creative laboratories1 going as far to say that his previous show “Aquarium was a bathtub, which is one of the first spaces for children’s play… the sand pit was the next logical step”2. The sense of play within the performance is palpable, children in the front row were actively restrained by their parents to prevent them leaping onto the stage and joining in. Although, the first half of the piece the cast took a more sedate approach, they tended the sand stage like a huge Bonseki garden, even employing a bucket with a whole in it to sculpt patterns like God’s own spirograph.
The Big Bang, appropriately enough, starts with more oomph. A digital neon clock appears on the back of the Grand Stage and counts us down from the time of performance (25/09/2022 11:00), through the AD’s and the BC’s all the way back to the beginning of time. As the cast of three scrabble around in the piles of wires, cables, plugs and all manner of computer scrap, one of them produces a camera and live-streams the minutiae onto the back wall of the stage. Now visible to all, The Reptile Age: A brief sketch about a nest of savage little plugs and their triffid like neighbour plug, all spindly limbs and “hur-de-dur” noises. It was obvious to all that the cast were having a great time and had found a show by throwing themselves into their materials and running with whatever, they had found the most fun.
A brief lighting change in Sand Pit indicates the shift from the installation like first half to the more animated second half. What follows feels like a series of games and exercises. The sand leaking bucket which hangs from the ceiling is given a good shove and becomes a dangerous pendulum threatening to decapitate any who stand in its way. One by one the cast dodge it until they are gathered in the very centre of its arc, and one by one they make a narrow escape. It’s a game as simple as a skipping rope but elicits the same feeling, that participation would be more fun than just watching. Far more tense and engaging is when the cast bring on a series of simple wooden blocks and cubes, from which they begin to build towers, all within the destructive sweep of the bucket. The audience shifted in their seats and craned their necks to get a better look at the inevitable tower-toppling. When the bucket wrecked the little city like a miniature Godzilla there was palpable sense of relief and joy.
Back on the planet of the scrap electronics we’re introduced to Ki, who will turn out to be the protagonist of the show. He’s a thumb sized rod puppet with an endearing little plug face and a nine-volt battery dog called Bati. The remainder of the show will follow their journey through their wonderfully devised little city, Ki’s computer case bachelor pad, the rolling greenery of a circuit board park and the hustle and bustle of the busy streets populated by friendly USB cables. There’s certainly a lull as the audience realises that they won’t be seeing any other planets created by the titular Big Bang. However, the frenetic energy, silly noises and skilful manipulations of the puppeteers are still joyous to watch. The structure of the show hinges largely on little interactions and skits, not quite exploring the world but spending enjoyable time there. On stage though, there isn’t much to watch. The sets are all too tiny for the audience to see and the performers hunch over them, preventing anyone from getting to watch these masters at work. Instead, the main attraction is the live-stream, which raises the question, why theatre instead of film?
The question of medium raises its head in Sand Pit too. It would have been very easy for this show to have become an installation, with a big enough cast and a sensible schedule of breaks the show could have gone until they ran out of games. But there are as many things to do with sand as there are grains of it. Substituting narrative for a series of games stitched together leaves both productions with one big issue though: a lack of a natural ending. The issue with play is that doesn’t end. A children’s playtime may end mid-game with the school bell or a parental beckoning, but the act of play is merely paused until the next opportunity: lunchtime, after dinner, or the next day. Therefore, both productions, built by what the companies have found fun are forced to bring in outside forces to call their productions to a close.
What brings both shows to a close is the introduction of sand’s constant companion and the microchip’s sworn enemy: water. In Sand Pit it starts as a river, dissecting the landscape, then as a flood once a cast member drops a bucket. In The Big Bang it’s a more ominous presence, looking like a great storm or a thinly veiled climate change allegory, one by one the LEDs go out and Ki and trusty companion Bati are forced underground to survive the apocalyptic torrent.
After Sand Pit’s great flood, they begin to sweep up what is now mostly mud, clearing the stage of the ephemeral sand worlds and bringing everything towards a final pile in the centre of the former landscape. More elaborately Ki and Bati fly away in a former hi-fi woofer turned spaceship.
And just like that the games are over; the play has finished. The sand as a material has been transmuted into something else, its possibilities have been explored and it has now been packed away. The puppeteers have left with Ki and Bata so there is no one left to animate, explore or play on the devasted electronic world.
Both of these pieces throw their all into their desired medium: Sand Pit takes through a Nazca line style pre-history to civilisation to a great watery end and The Big Bang shows us the bookends of the reptile age and the end of the electronic age. The structure of both pieces seems to have come from a sense of play, and of stitching together scenes of play, whatever the cast enjoyed playing with, they hoped the respective audiences would enjoy equally too. They weren’t far off the mark, both pieces were charming, beautiful, funny and playful. But rarely were they capable of consistent engagement. Such is the problem with playing in these gorgeous innovative worlds rather than exploring them. When Sand Pit ended and the cast left the stage and the lights came up, the children leapt onto the stage to play with what was left of the sand. When the lights went up on The Big Bang most of the audience walked down to the front of the stage to see the electronic world up close, hoping to see more of the world that they’d only been able to see on screen. But no matter how hard they squinted at the piles of circuitry there was no sense of ending to be found.
1 https://www.contemppuppetry.eu/aktualno/miha-golob-djeci-je-svijet-poput-lunaparka-kojeg-promatraju-i-kojim-se-odusevljavaju-bez-kalkulacija-intervju/ 2 https://www.contemppuppetry.eu/aktualno/miha-golob-djeci-je-svijet-poput-lunaparka-kojeg-promatraju-i-kojim-se-odusevljavaju-bez-kalkulacija-intervju/
