The festival has done it again. What I originally believed to be a passive reading of plays at the little-known Venue 13 turned out to be something quite different, as I was enticed by welcoming practitioners into the venue itself. It became a clowning workshop utilising two freshly commissioned climate change plays from Climate Theatre Action 2025.
The first of these, Brackendale by Elaine Avila, encompasses two eagles’ adventures in the human world and their coexistence with us as a separate species. The second was The Penguins by Elspeth Tilley, which similarly explored the relationship between humans and nature. The Penguins inputted a human experience onto the penguins as they stumble across scientists in their homeland. Roles are reversed, and we are united as animals, together.
The workshop was well led by Tess Carruthers and Rosa Thomas and offered a welcome freedom of expression for us participants. We were guided through the two plays by clowning and natural expression. Most notably, the team used innovative workshop techniques and mystified us human beings by placing us in animal masks and speaking in gobbledegook to evoke the animalistic, unaware perspective of the human world. The pair, inspirationally, created a comfy and daring space to play and create, which is not easy to do with an entirely new audience.
Seated on beanbags in a space cushioned with images of trees and green light, I felt I could explore and interrogate the plays in great depth. I felt that I knew the group by the end of the session and had fostered some bold new clowning techniques which I could take with me afterwards. By placing the participants in masks, Climate Theatre Action 2025 conjured humorous yet poignant images of human-animal species, which was fascinating to explore as I inhabited the body of an eagle. The two practitioners pushed boundaries, made people feel comfortable and worked in and around the commissioned texts masterfully.
The two texts were less exciting for me personally. The first, Brackendale, seemed to lack an engaging or dynamic storyline, albeit some sections were humorous and unique in their style. The second, The Penguins, utilised reversal of roles as the penguins take on a David Attenborough-style role, commentating on humans. This did not seem a new concept, though it did work humorously. There was, I felt, too heavy an emphasis on scientific information in this specific text and, in places, it lacked originality or creativity. Although important tales, these could become provocative and unique calls to action.
