Food Chain

Falling slowly...

Last weekend we did something out of the ordinary (for us, anyway): we went to the theatre. Thoroughly fed up with my hermetic leanings, Jenny had secretly booked a couple of tickets for a show at the Sydney Festival. That show was Food Chain – part stand up comedy, part shadow puppetry, part contemporary dance, part moving art, part philosophy, etc.

It was largely a commentary on the human being as an animal, with the overarching narrative featuring a couple of bears at a human camping site. I have only a very basic appreciation of art, so most of the stuff like the interpretive dance went over my head (especially one that I dub “sex with bear”)*, but the staging itself was very, very imaginative and creative. The team were able to create several very different scenarios out of little more than creative lighting, a few stuffed animals, a tent and – the centrepiece of the set – a large tree. The final part, which I can only think to call “falling” since it consists of the actors continually falling down the tree in slow motion in every conceivable way, accompanied by a mellow piano piece – was exquisitely choreographed. But it went on for too long.

Nothing like a bit of bestiality to liven up an art piece.

Overall, a brief but interesting flirtation with the Sydney Festival.

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* As best as I can tell this is what happened: there’s a sub-plot involving one of the female characters, who the bears lure into the tent presumably to eat her. She’s rescued by another guy in a (different) bear suit, but then in a scene told entirely in shadowplay he becomes a man and they have sex, during which he turns back into a bear. Later on that same character is seen doing a dance where she props up a bear’s head, using her foot or whatever, and schmoozes with it. Weeeeiiiird.

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