Erica Harris

As Great Small Works loads into St Anns' Warehouse for the festival, whose launch takes place tomorrow, it is worth mentioning someone who, although in many ways separate from the toy theatre field altogether, plays an absolutely intrinsic part in the visual aspect of the festival.
Erica Harris is the visual artist that Great Small Works has called on for several of its toy theatre festivals to create the unified visual outlook of the festival space by designing signs and hangings. After spending many hours in the studio with her, helping to paint and stencil endless reams of fabric, I learnt what it is about her practice and outlook that makes her such a valued and vital part of the Great Small Works festival operation.



Much of Erica's time as an artist is spent on residencies working with children around the world, particularly in developing countries. She says working with children has taught her the most in terms of her own creative development and understanding, and by her own admittance she has sometimes got so carried away by childrens' ideas that she has finally had to enforce some order and restraint due to safety reasons alone! It seems like this passion for encouraging creativity in others rather than hogging the limelight with her own work is what makes Erica so valued within the Great Small Works process. Restricted time and finances mean that Erica can only come into the studio for limited periods, and she is therefore called upon to create simple stencils and colour palettes for other volunteers to use at a later stage when she is not there. So although Erica only spent about ten hours in the studio in total, she set simple guidelines so that countless volunteers with varying abilities were able to follow on from where she left off and continue to make striking, unified wall hangings and signs for the festival space.

At an exhibition of Erica's collages in the ISE Cultural Space on Broadway, in Manhatten, it was also evident that a cherishing and reclaiming of objects and 'debris' from other countries, cultures and lives brings a strong parallel between Erica's work and the mentality behind much toy theatre work, which is often so visually rich, intricate and almost 'shrine-like'.





ericaharris.org

The Crankie enters the Digital Age

The interdisciplinary nature of the NYC toy theatre community was clearly evident at the Great Small Works balkan party night at St Anns' Warehouse, which followed their cabaret fundraiser (see previous post). Visual artist Jennifer Harris was behind the scenes creating projections to accompany the series of balkan bands playing that evening, such as Slavic Soul Party and the Hungry March Band....



....but it got really interesting when energetic longterm Great Small Works collaborator Jenny Romaine joined forces at the projector, armed with a 'crankie' (another fascinating visual storytelling device, consisting of a scroll mounted within a box which can be rolled to reveal a handmade animation). I watched curiously as they fused the archaic art form of the crankie with digital technology, to delightful effect.







I'm not sure how many people on the dancefloor witnessed this fusing of traditional and contemporary technologies though, I think they were enjoying the balkan sounds a little too much.

Fundraising Cabaret

The Great Small Works Cabaret, to raise funds for the festival, was a cosy, intimate, candlelit fiesta tucked away on the 9th floor of an unassuming building in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The company's extended family of supporters were plied with wine and homemade oriental snacks as they watched a series of acts which made it clear to me what a diverse and multi-talented range of individuals are brought together by a fascination with archaic art forms such as toy theatre.

Margaret Leng Tan seated herself before two small toy pianos and, with the composure and focus of a evidently highly-trained classical musician, began to play the Beatles 'Eleanor Rigby', followed by a Philip Glass piece, and an interpretation of a classical piece in which she 'combined the pitches of The Pink Panther with the rhythm of Memories'. During the set Leng Tan incorporated other toy instruments into the pieces, including the use of a rubber car horn placed in her armpit and squeezed at intervals, causing eruptions of laughter in the audience but never disrupting the artist's acute focus. It was inspirational to watch a highly-skilled musician such as Leng Tan who has chosen to apply her talent to, and embark on a quest into, the realm of toy instruments which most of us remember hazily from the pages of fairytale books and dusty antique shops.





Clare Dolan was another artist whose attempt to express herself through an archaic art form proved inspirational for me. I came to know Clare Dolan last summer as an intern with the Bread and Puppet theatre in Vermont, where Clare was helping Peter Schumann to direct sketches for the weekly circus show. One lunchbreak, as forty hungry interns sat and ate their lunch in the barn theatre known as the 'Dirtfloor Catherdral', Clare introduced us to her passion - the art of the Cantastoria - storytelling performance using visual images and, often, music and song. She stepped onto the stage wearing a self-made dress covered with intricate paintings and maps, and featuring sections which could open up to reveal book-like pages, and proceeded to perform an animated, musical Cantastoria...of the history of the Cantastoria!...tracing its origins back to India and Asia. This unexpected and utterly unique lunchtime performance left a mark on me, as did the energy of Clare herself, who would often appear at the Bread and Puppet farm to direct a rehearsal after one of her overnight shifts as a nurse.


Clare's "The Real Life Adventures of Go-Go Girl Episode 24: Where's My Fucking Bail-Out?" seemed to combine the overriding themes of her work, career and interests - performing within the Cantastoria 'genre', of course, her sung storytelling piece dealt with the 'slightly autobiographical' tale of a nurse battling against the injustices of the US pharmaceutical giants and attempting stand for her principles. It was a long story, brought to life with hand-painted illustrations on a huge cloth 'booklet', (with pages flipped over at intervals by assistants John Bell and Trudy Cohen), particular images being prodded at passionately by the storyteller's cane in pivotal moments. Just as with Margaret Leng Tan's toy piano performance, I was gripped to watch someone commit themself wholeheartedly to expressing an idea in a simplistic but utterly unusual way, and to do it with skill, precision and focus.

'The Curse of Bigness'

Hidden away in the Queens Museum of Art, tucked away in the beautiful Flushing Park, Queens, is a baffling surprise. In 1961 100 architectural model-makers working under Raymond Lester Associates began to create a miniature panorama of New York City in time for the 1964 World Fair. It was to feature a total of 895,000 structures and, until 1992 would accurately detail every single building in all five boroughs of the city. This work, conceived by Robert Moses, is still on display in the gallery and, as pointed out by the museum leaflet, is 'large and small at the same time.' This idea forms the basis of a new exhibition called 'The Curse of Bigness', featuring several artists including Great Small Works, with its collection of toy theatres.
One of the long-running aspects of Great Small Works' career is its regular Terror As Usual show, first performed in 1991. Conceived as a response to the tone of media news reports, the show features toy theatre characters and elements taken directly from newspapers and the internet - the immense scale of the media transcribed into the miniature scale of toy theatre.


The Great Small Works company appeared at the exhibition opening and performed a musical introduction to toy theatre complete with visual props and a Benjamin Pollock toy theatre. As the band started, with toy piano and accordian, John Bell began his toy theatre sermon, charmingly sung in deadpan tone, educating the gathered audience as to the origins and uses of toy theatre and willing everyone to join in with the chorus, accompanied by hand gestures "This is toy theatre, it has an arch, it's miniature, it's made out of paper, it is flat, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnd you can do it yourself." A simple song with simple sentiment. Just like toy theatre. Which is, I suppose, why I rather like it.





"It's made out of paper, it is flat"...as demonstrated by the company.


A rousing finale featuring a knight, a nasty dragon and a very distressed chick.

Welcome!

The purpose of this blog is to document the experience of my month-long internship with the Great Small Works Toy Theatre Festival in Brooklyn, New York. In doing so I hope to show what a vibrant, thriving and interdisciplinary artistic community is brought together in Brooklyn by Great Small Works' annual festival, and how the renewal of the 'archaic' form of toy theatre is creating a new platform for political debate, as well as creative diversity. To be part of this festival, and temporarily part of John Bell's and Trudi Cohen's 'collective', is to be within an incredibly rich melting-pot where performance, music, ritual, visual theatre, storytelling, teaching and celebration collide, and the possibilities are endless. I hope this blog succeeds in sharing the findings from this melting-pot as much as posssible.