The London Jungle Book Transformed goes to Spain
A group of Rose Bruford students and staff were invited in November 2009 to exhibit and perform their experimental mechanical theatre production, The London Jungle Book Transformed at the Parque de las Ciencias, Granada, as part of the Teatro Mecanico exhibition, which included Cabaret Mechanical Theatre and Sharmanka. The machines and performances were based on The London Jungle Book by Bhajju Shyam, an Indian Gond tribal artist.
The book is a remarkable travelogue of London seen through the prism of Gond mythology, style and symbolism: London buses become dogs, Big Ben a cockerel, Londoners turn into bats, tube trains into snakes. Rose Bruford's mechanical theatre production lifts Bhajju's creations from the pages and transforms them into a menagerie of machines. Students made the machines and performed alongside.
The project was a collaboration between 2nd year Scenic Arts and Theatre Design students to produce a performance based around machines or automata. The Parque performance also included a student - Kat Louis - from European Theatre Arts, who as a Spanish speaker could narrate the Spanish translation of the text.
The Parque de las Ciencias is all about the intersection of science and art, and under this umbrella the Teatro Mechanico exhibition is about the particular intersection of machines and theatre. Machines performed to visitors at the touch of a button or at set times, and uniquely in the case of Rose Bruford's machines, the machines performed with humans.
Students got their first taste of running workshops, a mixture of highly frenetic and excitable workshops for children, and those for teachers and the centre's own staff.
The Parque was very interested in learning from Rose Bruford's expertise in mechanical theatre and related workshops, and from it they created an education package for schools. When students left, the machines remained, and would be the focus for workshops organised by the Parque.
Students met local teachers and discussed projects that could be achieved in their schools in partnership with the Parque. By the end of Rose Bruford's visit, several local schools had signed up to a mechanical theatre schools project, which would culminate in schools' work being shown in the exhibition before it closes in January 2010.
The Parque's exhibition halls are housed in a massive, beautifully designed building where slopes rather than stairs create a fluid sense of movement and light. Futuristically, maintenance staff whizz around silently on Segways. The trip offered Rose Bruford students a glimpse into science centres as an alternative venue for theatre, creativity and future work possibilities.
In fact, some might be back there very soon, as the Parque was so delighted by their work that Rose Bruford has been invited back to do more workshops and join the closing ceremony in January 2010.
YouTube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pid5wYzq8w
11/01/2010