continued adventures with Japanese picture storytelling...

Last night I went to the Soho Theatre in London to take a seat in a cosy, dimly-lit studio along with thirty or so other audience members on fold out chairs. On stage was a black-painted plinth, illuminated with a lamp. Shortly afterwards, Spice Arthur 702 took their places on stage - a female narrator to one side, a pink-clad trombonist on the other side, and behind the plinth, a picture handler, with a wad of approximately 300 stacked cards with pictures on them.

During the evening we were told...no...given, no...assaulted with a series of stories created, primarily, with pictures. One picture would lead into the next and the next.....with each square piece of paper dancing, creeping, plodding or sliding eerily aside to keep the conveyor belt of images moving and to draw us further and further into the journey. It was quite simply hypnotic, whether or not accompanied by the endlessly entertaining trombone, or the broken English translation of the highly energetic narrator.

The picture 'handler', a manga-animator who had painted each image himself, displayed a fascinating relationship with his pictures, which started off as a heavy wad on the plinth and ended up as a carpet on the stage surrounding the performers. The simple act of revealing, and then discarding each image to make way for the next one allowed us to watch him 'perform' his paintings...to turn them into movement, to see the investment he had put into each of his designs transformed into a strange, symbolic dance. From the inexhaustable energy of the postman on his journey to a distant land to pass on a crucial message, to the agonising unspoken grief of two doomed lovers on separate sheets of card, suspended by one painted cord only to finally be smothered by a black-painted card whose significance we all understood...
...And all the while, the fast paced trombone, and the constant, brutal tossing of each image onto the ground once it had played its part.

My friend and I both commented on the energy this performance provoked in its very small audience - unbridled, hysterical laughter that I don't think I've ever witnessed in a formal theatre before, and a standing ovation at the end. People were bowled over by the simplicity and immediacy of the performance - heightened, I think, by the language barrier - allowing us to enjoy the kind of stripped-bare emotion often provoked by a clowning act.

Interestingly, the Kamishibai tradition of telling stories with pictures in Japan is very much connected to education, with the tradition often used in school settings (reminding me of the Rudolf Steiner quote I put in an earlier post). Whilst looking into this I found a blog about a teacher in Vermont, USA, who has been developing Kamishibai education techniques to fit in with learning in schools:
http://www.storybike.com/

My explorations in pictures, stories and learning continue...

'Picture consciousness'

from "Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to his Life and Works" by Gary Lachman

"One toy in particular he was very fond of, and the impression it made on him may have influenced some of his later ideas. Steiner was captivated by a kind of picture book whose figures could be moved by pulling a string. He tells us that he and his sister spent many hours with these, and that through them he took his first steps towards reading. In later life, Steiner would argue that a kind of "picture consciousness" formed the tyoe of consciousness of human beings during their "Old Moon" incarnation in the distant past, and that in the future, this would return and be integrated with our current rational consciousness to form a new state..."

A-wassailing..

I am beginning to learn that it isn't the precise realisation of my dreams that is important - it is the perseverance to take that dream forwards even if all doesn't go to plan, and dreams are warped by an endless rangle of potential problems. Finding new ways to just "carry on", to quote from the Crosby Stills and Nash song, leads to possibilities which previously never occurred to me.

On Saturday 9th October my toy theatre tree was back in action, as the centrepiece of an Apple Day at the Cecil Sharp Folk Institute in North London. Amongst traditional Apple Day songs, dances, games and storytelling children (and their parents, who, once they understood that the craft session operated without precise age restrictions settled down to some incredibly concentrated apple-crafting) spent the afternoon decorating their own apples to hang on the tree. I helped to run the workshop with Matthew Cowen, Cecil Sharp's 2009 artist in residence and, wonderfully, a fellow enthusiast of strange archaic folk traditions such as toy theatre, mummers costumes etc. By mid-afternoon our studio was a frenzy of parents tripping over their children trying to grab the paints and glitter needed to finish their apples (the children made some too) and by the end of the session the tree really had become a thing of beauty - adorned with glittering, multicoloured orbs and looking very much like some sort of pagan shrine...

At this point the tree was transported to the main hall, where some frenetic barn dancing came to an end and we all gathered around the tree to sing a traditional Wassailing song.

The strange and wonderful thing is that my original intentions for this 'transforming', hand-animated toy theatre scenery carried on into this event, but came about through completely unforeseen ways.
Throughout the afternoon, in the buzzing creative hub of the workshop room, children made their very own elements to add to the tree - elements which oozed their own unique creative choices and individuality. This process brought the tree to life in a way which was unpredictable and, for me, really exciting to watch.
But the most wonderful thing was that, after this workshop, the collective imagination, love and creative pleasure that children and adults alike had given to the tree formed one unified sculpture which a large audience was able to gather around and celebrate. By the end of it the tree had become a storyteller, and provided the visual aid to the final song of the event.

I had never previously considered that pictures could be formed to tell a visual story in this organic, collaborative and ritualistic way, and it has left my mind racing with possibilities...