A rub of rubber stuff

© Meyer Originals

Freitag was the occasion to discover a whole rubber universe in the Luaga und Losna festival in Feldkirch with the work of Barbara Fuchs who directs Odile Foehl, an elastic girl, into a world of rubber thing for children over 3 years old.

A universe to create
© Meyer Originals
Barbara Fuchs and her company Tanzfuchs like working from material like they did before with plastic, food etc. All their work consist to find all the possibilities of a material and try to combine them to create a world on stage. This time the world is built with rubber rings and inner tubes and Odile Foehl have to evolve on it and with it. At the same time she’s awakening herself, she’s modelling this world, she touches it, she plays with it, she experiments it, like children do when they find a new object to play with. All the performance is based on the elasticity of the dancer, she’s kind of a robber girl moving her body around and on those inner tubes or rubber rings that they find in a rubbish dump and rehabilitate for this show.
The performance is an hymn to creativity, it offers the right to dream, to build thing, to let our imagination live, we can be whoever we want on, the only limit is our mind. Children love telling themselves story, playing with stuff and give them new abilities because mostly they ignore the purpose of the objects they have in hands. In that way, the show is really a success because we can clearly see how children imagination works, and they can reflect themselves on this world of unlimited possibilities. The proof comes when they go up on stage at the end of the play, they’re playing, building new scenes in a magnificent turmoil. In a way, it was almost more interesting to see children acting with the rubber stuff than to see the show.

An exhibition of performances
© Meyer Originals
It could be a little hard to say it but let us explain why we feel this way. When the children came on stage, there was some fresh air, some spontaneity that we couldn’t find on the show. All the scenes were well prepared but not so well orchestrated, the transitions between one picture to another weren’t so relevant so it breaks the dynamic created by the first performance. It was almost like if when she saw something on stage, she has to go on it and try it to see how it works and what she can do with it, and that’s all. We assist to a juxtaposition of pictures without a link except the material and the way of working the material. The proposition seems more like a sculptor work than an theatre work, that’s why this performance could be considered as an exhibition of some way of moving around some rubber stuffs but not with the poetry needed to be a complete play. Here the poetry could have born with the story of this girl discovering a world full of rubber objects but it’s missing something, maybe the music wasn’t used enough. There are two musical moments in the show where something more happens. We finally get touched as an adult because the music brings some poetry, more imagination, meanwhile the other moments, even if there is some sound produced by the moves of the inner tube or rubber rings, seem frozen and only here to show us what we can do with this material and that’s all. But even if it works on children we think it’s not enough for an adult audience however, for us, a good play for children have to be for the whole family and if it’s true that as an adult we are enjoying discovering all the possibilities that this material offers, we have more the impression to be at a museum than in a theatre. We saw a princess, a magician, a pit, a boat, some lanterns, some houses or some migrant’s scenes but we don’t find the poetry of it or the purpose to put it on stage except to show that it exists a lot of way of thinking an object. Once we understand the principle it’s a little bored even if the performance is on a higher level and propose some interesting reflexions, but those reflexions are more suitable in a material museum than on stage.

This performance is a good introduction to let the children understand how the imagination can work, and for sure this performance opens a window to a world of building and possibilities. If the show gives them the opportunity to explore new things, maybe it could have been better if the poetry can be more present and the narrative a little deeper than a child playing with rubber stuff.

Jérémy Engler, from L'Envolée Culturelle

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