Oerol: The Shows

by Jessica and Willa Marie
Jun 24, 2018
3 min read

Ok-- here at Oerol we've pretty much kept it to one show a day, what with the biking, the wind, and our kind of slow moving Jubilee speed. They have each been interesting in their own way.

More Puppets, please!

One sadness for me is there's not much puppetry. One of my favorite things is the Electric Circus with their miniature puppet shows inside big puppet heads and their funky little automata--other than that, kind of thin on puppets and objects, and I miss them.

Landscape

But some cool dance and landscape! The dialogue with landscape is the big thing at this festival. So--each company uses a place on the island in a performative way. Beach, dunes, forest, field. All the ones we've been to have steel bleachers set up for the audience in a particular orientation to the stage/land/sand.

A lot of our thoughts about the Persephone Project and Pageant Practice are about landscape and how it participates in the performance--how it speaks. And I have also been thinking about all the stories embedded in a piece of land. So--the landscape in performance is my particular focus while here, as well as the focus of the festival.

I loved the Japanese piece, all dancers in white, very ritualistic, emerging out of the tall grass with the mudflats and sky as the backdrop, unfolding as darkness came on. Flutes, drums and bells.

Faust in the Forest

The version of Faust was also super exciting, in a large field bordered by trees, with smoke billowing out of the forest and everything lit by huge raking lights and giant shadows. All in Dutch but clearly well acted, an argument between Young Faust Before the Bargain with the Devil, and Old Faust after the Fact. Dramatic costumes, some nudity which shocked WM, and a wild use of space as the actors scattered across the huge field.

Dune Dance

Next there was a dance piece in a sand pit with transforming black-clad dancers who held their own speakers and "spoke" in many languages. They simply but constantly transformed both form and language and at last exited by running up a huge sand dune. WM really loved this piece and we got to hear a little bit of English!

(Liquid Loft's piece: note the dancers at the top of the dune)

There was a cool-sounding one that was canceled due to a serious squall that blew in!! Dave went out in it to the show while WM and I bailed. And it was not to be, despite his bravery.

Night Witches

But then, the Night Witches! Up on the dunes in the way eastern side of the island, a stage that looked like a airplane runway. A piece about the all-female Russian bomber team during WWII, and it was fierce! All female team, loud music, incredible dancing in the strong north wind. And amazing landscape, with the dancers in red being picked out by sweeping lights at the top of a tall dune...

...'Nope, my turn now.' This is WM taking over. My mom is right, all of the shows were very good and exciting (despite the nudity and the fact that we couldn't understand them) I have enjoyed them all very much.

Now, it is important to remember that we are biking to all of the different shows (which tend to be on the opposite side of the island). That wouldn't be so bad except for a couple of things:

All of the shows start at around 10:30pm, so, as a result we bike back home afterwards at around midnight. That makes for a rather uncomfortable and stressful bike ride.

Also, you get sore very quickly when you are riding a bike every day for a whole week, your bottom (or bootwain as my mom would say) gets extremely painful then every night you sit on cold, metal benches for 2 hours before you bike home again! Yay!

I am actually having a really good time biking around and we are definitely getting a good workout in. It's really exciting to be in a situation like this, where you can bike around and go to weird theater performances whenever you want to.

...Thanks for that perspective, WM. It's JT again. In addition to the shows we've been to a large sound installation on the beach--in general the sound has been amazing in all the shows. Also a very beautiful sculptural installation on a different beach--woven out of wood, that burns on the last night of the festival. And--two Spanish street acrobat/clowns that were really good. Dave asked for tips on his handstand and they said, "Practice todos los dias."