High Diving around the country...well Joburg & Cape Town...

After a long silence - there is much to talk about... We took High Diving to Festival of Fame in Joburg and Out the Box in Cape Town...

Starting with Festival of Fame

This was our second experience at this super cool Fest for school kids... Our first year was last year, we took Weekend Special, and during one of our performances the cool kids in the back row let off two stink bombs - i'm not even kidding! Can you cope! I'm laughing now - but I wasn't laughing then - between mock charging and the hideous smell of rotten eggs is a tiny room with no windows and in the middle of summer! Beautiful. Not so funny!

But Festival of Fame 2010 I am happy to report went by stink-bomb free - the only hiccup was that we were given a strange time slot when the visiting schools had already left, so leaving us the odd loitering student and few die-hard theatre enthusiasts who had ventured to a school room in Braamfontein to watch a play. Mncedisi Shabangu being one of them - what I know about theatre is you often have to select whose criticism you take on - Mncedisi is one of these people - if you're lucky enough to have seen one of his shows or actually been lucky enough to see him breath in and out on stage you'll know what I mean. He came to watch and left immediately without a word - aaah he hates it! Enough to break my heart. But happily no - got to love gmail chat - we chatted and he loved it! Yay.

Out the Box Festival...

Cape Town rocks - people go to the theatre and are friendly and there's a theatre community and dress well... however... and just so that everything in not only perfect... they drive slowly and really dig performance art! Two things I cannot understand! Right so... Our play was well received - except for one rather bitter blogger - but other than that we got big claps and standing ovations. We also saw some fantastic shows... rock on... but most excitingly I attended the Handspring Puppet Company workshops.

What a luck!
Hey?
No really.

It was - well - wonderful. A group of 13 or so bright eyed enthusiasts with Adrian Kohler a bright eyed genius... rummaging around their workshop sawing, cutting, gluing, sanding... all to make a control that will - one day in the not too distant future - manipulate a head and a pair of wings.

Oh and of course not to forget - the fabulous moving joints shadow puppets we made on day 1 - with brilliant 'pull back' mechanisms - so that when my very elementary Giraffe bends to eat - it automatically stands tall when I release the control - how cool - Oh the joys.

So - we had three days in their - Basil & Adrian's - workshop - it was like being in the bowls of THE THEATRE seeing the place where magic is made by - well - brilliant people. We also got to see - and play with - the duck - yes the very same duck - from War Horse - West end smash hit soon to be Broadway smash hit! As if that wasn't enough we then got to play with their other precious puppets from shows like Tall Horse - as you will see in the very short AV clip - in a two day manipulation workshop. 5 whole days. So yay.

Check out the video... the footage in order of appearance...
1. The students banging away in the Workshop
2. Adrian demonstrating a finished head mechanism
3. The actual mechanism I made... although you can't see the whole thing!
4. The fantastic Duck from War Horse... but if you look carefully you will see - the foot is the wrong way around! v. funny.
5. My fellow enthusiasts trying very hard to manipulate a very large and awesome puppet from Tall Horse

So I came home from Cape Town inspired and rejuvenated... Thanks also to all the lovely warm and welcoming people I met! Yay. Oh and yes we were nominated for a 2010 Handspring Puppet company award for visual theatre in the category of Best Design - we didn't win - but we were nominated.