Fish Clay Perspex – FaultyOptic
Jackson’s Lane – 30th October 2009
The streets of Highgate may fast becoming populated with masked faces and Dracula-a-like party goers, but there’s something much scarier and more exciting going on inside the North London gem that is Jackson’s Lane. And here FaultyOptic offer up something that will leave a stronger impression than a pair of plastic pointy teeth.
Presenting the first of the Suspense triptych, FaultyOptic’s Fish Clay Perspex follows three brief bittersweet stories of trials, tribulations and an examination of three bizarre and rather confused characters. The performance begins with a solitary old man picking up stones on a beach who soon finds himself with an over-sized fish stuck to his head. Next up, a seemingly psychotic potter who penchant for avant-garde sculpting that finds him slicing up an Elizabeth II resembling bust. Finally we see two ‘Pointy Pants’ men, stuck behind a Perspex sheet continually trapped by the ever-moving marker pens and masking tape. Hence the title, Fish Clay Perspex. Tying all three tales together is a simple piece of cotton wool that, taking on a variety of personas, draws each character from their world and re-presents them as a collected trio in what appears to be the afterlife.
The skill of FaultyOptic lies in the fact that while you can clearly see the puppeteers controlling their subject, they soon become almost invisible as life is seamlessly recreated before our eyes. Watching strong work like this Edward Gordon Craig’s theories about the value of the marionette over the actor become much more plausible. Because while it is good to watch an autonomous actor trippingly recite the lines of Shakespeare, the puppet show is much more effective and energising as we, the audience, are the ones complicit in making the action come to life.
We suspend our disbelief, we allow our imagination to take over and we believe that the inanimate object presented to us has a life and a will of its very own. And that is why this group is so haunting, so compelling and need to be seen.
Ruby Green
No comments:
Post a Comment