Clowning duo Ruxy Cantir and Sarah Rose Graber are taking their fun-filled family show Two in a Barrel on a tour of Scotland this Spring, presented by Scissor Kick!
This vibrant and lively production explores our relationship to rubbish and the environment through physical theatre, clowning, and puppetry, and investigates how climate change and plastic pollution impacts our lives. Two in a Barrel promotes an awareness of consumerist habits and addresses working together to tackle big climate crisis problems. Exploring their extensive backgrounds in clowning, Ruxy Cantir and Sarah Rose Graber present a production filled with humour, colour, and fantastical props to engage families in a lively and topical story that will inspire action and thought.
Two in a Barrel follows quirky best friends Riri, played by Sarah Rose Graber (The Dirty Laundry Campaign, Edinburgh Fringe; We Never Sleep Development, National Theatre of Scotland; Serendipity) and Moku, played by Ruxy Cantir (Pickled Republic, UK tour; Unicorn Dance Party, UK tour; co-founder of LARDS, a new ensemble of Scotland’s finest physical comedians and visual theatre creators), confined to a barrel sitting on top of an island of rubbish.
Fascinated by the treasures that surround them, they love finding prizes in the vast waste and making up their own world of adventure and imagination. Every little discarded thing can be transformed into a magical trinket that starts a fun game, but being in tight quarters means they face new challenges. Having to ration their food and learn to coexist, Graber and Cantir portray an energetic show of working together to battle the emerging dangers that arise when the waste around them continues to pile higher and threatens to cover them altogether.
Inspired by the current ongoing climate crisis, Two in a Barrel is thought-provoking for young audiences, and addresses important issues in a way that engages with our role as changemakers. By looking at mass consumerism and the destructive effects non-biodegradable waste has on our environment, this Beckett-meets-Pixar show poses questions about the rubbish we produce and invokes awareness and environmental activism. While the climate crisis is quickly becoming our generation’s biggest challenge, it is future generations who will bear the brunt of it.
Ruxy Cantir says, We are so excited to bring this beloved show to communities in Scotland we’ve not visited yet. We’ve been working on this show before and throughout the pandemic and to finally share it with young audiences and their families means a lot to us. What I find most valuable about this project is offering a space to young ones and their adults to engage with a difficult subject matter in a fun way. We’ll be visiting a lot of coastal communities across Scotland on our tour where plastic pollution and the environmental issues we refer to in the show are an immediate and visible problem, so this tour feels particularly relevant in starting up some important conversations with wee ones.
Sarah Rose Graber also says, We both have a background in physical theatre, clowning, and visual theatre and knew that we wanted to use these forms as a way of telling this story. The climate crisis is bleak, and by using these styles of performance, it allows for humour and curiosity to become entry points to those conversations. As a duo, we’ve created a wide range of projects together and this one is truly a collision of our creativity, playfulness, and activism.
Two in a Barrel heads on tour with additional thanks to Creative Scotland Touring Fund for Theatre and Dance and Creative Scotland Open Project Fund, Surge, Plutôt La Vie, Imaginate, Platform, and The Touring Network.
Tour listings and ticket information can be found here
