By Pearl Tizzie
5 stars
Belgian Theater Collective FC Bergman with Toneelhuis bring The Sheep Song to the 2023 Adelaide Festival.
An incredibly moving and fascinating insight into human morals and belonging, The Sheep Song is a deeply visual experience that leaves you reflecting long after the curtains are closed.
Incredible production and use of prompts, the show is poignant and confronting, but never for the sake of it. Each test of our emotions is explicitly relevant and important to the narrative of the work.
Concept of the show
The Sheep Song follows a sheep who feels there is more to existence. Through a curious wanting begins to take steps (literally and figuratively) observing the life of people with a youthful curiosity and determined resilience despite all of the adversities of the human condition. Starting with the first steps on hind legs, the sheep watches and learns from social and cultural norms, following along, only to face setbacks and experiences and never quite finding that sense of belonging. Not quite sheep, and not quite human. A feeling that some of us might experience even as a human within our own species.
Set and production
The production of the show is incredible, seamlessly entwining moving stage parts, live animals, puppetry, robotics and animatronics into the storyline. Each element used with purpose. The production creates a cinematic like experience, moving parts creating a sense of moving through both space and time. Almost like a dolly camera on a film crew, the play is so engaging that you are sucked into the story as an observer. The film-like nature of the piece is characteristic of FC Bergman’s use of these techniques in past work 300 el x 30 el x 30 el. The after effects of which feel like you have watched a psychological heartwarming movie, but in real life.
The warning of the explicit nature of the play should not be taken lightly. At times it was uncomfortable, but necessarily so.
A beautiful incorporated soundtrack enhanced the performance and included the tactful use of banjo. It was beautifully choreographed and impeccably executed, the definition of synergy.
Response
A full house at the Dunstan Playhouse sat waiting for the show to start, being previously warned that the show is a complete lock out. This increased the anticipation and made the starting scene even more startling. Laughter and raw emotive expressions were heard from the audience at the most climatic points of the play, of which there were several.
The piece comments on human morality, how we behave, the rules we live by, and how we learn them. The bullfighter becomes the bull and strongly evokes an innate sense of empathy for creatures and their experiences.
The ultimate story of belonging, the play nods to other forms of art and theatre including traditional puppet shows, country and western, and cultural forms of fitting in and society. The sheep follows human rules only to be shunned but the same humanistic morals that it follows, being rejected from the society he tried so hard to be a part of.
It isn’t all so trying, and The Sheep Song really is a story of love, connection, courage and determination, and curiosity, while carrying your experiences or burdens with you.
Sanely emotion provoking and a must see.
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