| The Big Game | Polyglot Puppet Theatre |
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Polyglot Puppet Theatre in association with Melbourne International
Arts Festival and National Gallery of Victoria presents The Big Game, a
free, giant, interactive play space, performance and public artwork for
families.
One of the best things about childhood is the freedom to muck around
and make stuff up. Polyglot makes an art out of it with The Big Game, a
larger-than-life interactive performance and play space. Participants
are enclosed in a gigantic visual, physical environment. Kids
participate as pieces in a huge board game, rolling enormous dice,
stepping on game tiles, undertaking hilarious tasks and facing an
interactive terrain of sculptures, puppets, tasks, hazards and rewards,
guided by Game Masters and fuelled by music; they strive to reach the
finish first.
As a beautiful and deeply engaging play space, children and adults can
play the game with their own dice and their own teams, guided and
helped along the way by Games Masters. In this form The Big Game is an
adventure in which children can totally immerse themselves, making up
the rules and their roles as they play.
The game also operates as a performance at specified times, with
children as tokens and the audience as cheer squad. The Games Masters
are over-the-top characters who rule The Big Game world, dividing the
audience into spectator teams. Live music underscores the action as
participants accept tasks and battle through the hazards of the board,
combining sport and art to invoke the kind of passion and spectator
participation rarely seen in theatre.
The Big Game has been created in collaboration with children from the
Carlton high-rise commission flats. They are from a highly diverse and
economically disadvantaged community, with many Horn of Africa
families. The kids have worked with Polyglot’s Artistic Director Sue
Giles, and Designer Geoff Kennedy to explore their different cultural
perspectives, which have informed the set, prop and costume design.
The Big Game draws on the kids’ responses to games and art, and their
interpretation of artworks from the National Gallery of Victoria, which
form the basis of the visual design of the game itself. The Big Game
reflects their lives, their stories, cheek and energy. It explores the
board game elements of competition and luck as people are challenged to
be satisfied with the lot the dice gives them, treading the path chosen
by a random twist of fate.
A perfect amalgamation of community and mainstream art, each of the
giant elements in The Big Game – a giant dice sculpture, oversized
dominos, Scrabble tiles, green houses of Monopoly, and a huge smoking
volcano – have different cultural and aesthetic significance.
One of Australia’s foremost puppetry theatre companies, Polyglot Puppet
Theatre is unique in the diversity of its program, its exploration of
puppetry arts, its engagement with communities and its creative
processes which place children’s imaginations at the centre of a
collaborative arts practice.
Celebrating its 30th birthday in 2008, Polyglot tours work for children
aged under 12 and their families regionally, nationally and
internationally, placing kids at the centre of the company’s artistic
process so they become a genuine part of the playmaking; valued for
their opinions, insights and design, as discerning audiences of today.
Polyglot Puppet Theatre presents
THE BIG GAME (Melbourne International Arts Festival season)
Venue: Arts House, Meat Market, 5 Blackwood St, North Melbourne
When: Fri 10 - Sun 12 Oct
Fri 10 Oct: 10am (performance - 60 minutes) / 11am - 1pm (play space)
Sat 11 & Sun 12 Oct: 10am & 3.30pm (performance - 60 minutes) / 11am - 1pm & 4.30 - 5.30pm (play space)
FREE
THE BIG GAME (National Gallery of Victoria, Children’s Week performance)
Venue: Great Hall, National Gallery of Victoria International, 180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
When: Sun 26 Oct 10.30am (performance - 60 minutes) / 11.30am – 12.30am (play space) 2pm (performance)
3pm – 4pm (play space)
FREE
www.polyglotpuppets.com.au
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Saturday, 10 January 2009
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