Dream Ballet to the Rescue
With the play heading in a solid direction, we turned out attention to our High Street Performance. Since AHSTF is a large producing organization, they have managed to secure timeslots on the Festival Stages for us to advertise our play for 20 minutes in the very heart of the Fringe. 10 years ago, we had 4 of these performance slots, and those street shows were far and away the most valuable experiences we had the whole time (we were in a Greenside Venue down Leith walk that was almost as far from the heart of theings as Church Hill, but in the opposite direction. So no one much came to our show, but we had crowds of well over 100 at our street shows.) The Fringe has gotten much bigger in 10 years, so those 4 performance slots are whittled down to one precious chance to catch some punters. We've been blessed with a venue that actually is only 50 meters from the Royal Mile, so foot traffic is a possibilty...if we can come up with the right sales pitch.
So we've got to come up with an advertisement for our play that incongruously doesn't involve saying lines from our play, since it's a fool's game to try to enact scenes on the High Street. You cannot hear a bloody thing out on the street when the Festival is in full swing. I've been thinking about this since last year on the Fam Trip, when another director and I spent a lot of time analyzing what works and what doesn't. I know that our costumes are a huge part of our marketing, and I know that we are going to need eye catching props...like the umbrella skeletons and our 27ft long scarf. I know that it has to be some sort of Dream Ballet/Dance/Mime that sells the humor, the world view, and the beauty of our show. We've worked out a plan involving 3 choices and interactive buzzers so any gathered masses can choose options, and I, masquerading as an Iowa housewife on holiday, will push the buttons if no one else does. A few days ago, I finally found perfect music that is eerie and jaunty and reminds me a tiny bit of the Mystery theme from PBS that Edward Gorey illustrated.
...But what form should the dream ballet take?
Ever since I saw my first Dibbledance, and certainly influenced by Holly Silva and her various companies, I have been captivated by a specific type of dance. Now, I'm no one's idea of a dancer, so I don't get a lot of opportunity to choreograph these mad visions. * I can do a workmanlike job choreographing musical theater, but I'd rather be doing poetry of the body like this that is far less literal and way weirder and more fun. Today I got to live my dream of making inexplicable, funny, beautiful art. We had a rare time putting together what I think is going to be a really solid high street show. The kids are fresh off the trip to Synetic (was that really yesterday? The days feel like weeks because we're getting so much done) so they were pretty capable of grasping the timing and rythym.
At one point though, Kathleen was struggling, and so I started to dictate timing to her by making up on the spot lyrics to illustrate her actions in time to the melody of the music:
Hey....Mister I have a Bottle,
And you--you seem to have a mallet.
If we trade and then you Drink,
You are gonna die!
Ooops, And now that you are dead
You...are gonna need a doctor
It.... was all Aunt Ada's plan,
she is so very proud
of her protege.
Well, it wasn't long before we were ALL singing the ear-wormy tune, and I fear it will haunt us for the next two weeks.
But we had great fun making all this up, and I don't get the sense that I'm overloading the kids with too much extra stuff. The three components of our High Street show only take about 3 or 4 minutes to get through, so we'll repeat and repeat when we take to the Royal Mile. That plus our gorgeous flyers, plus a little bit of luck... If we can get as many as 10 strangers to come see our show on top of the AHSTF assigned school audience, it will be worth it.
*the notable exception being "The Rise of the Pineapple," a dance my high school director allowed me to choreopgraph for the fairies at the end of our production of Midsummer, which included a move that inspired no less than Keanu Reeves--who was in attendance, strangely enough--to imitate the next day. The move? It involved one partner biting another partner's elbow. I have no idea why my high school director put so much faith in me, but God Bless her.
