I got married yesterday to a woman who already had kids from a previous marriage. I also felt the inside of someones stomach, was briefly 60 years old and traveled to the moon.
OK, so what if it was make-belief? The first night at the PuSh festival went off with a bang and not one but 4 (!) shows. I started off with two cute ten-minute shows (”You and the Moon” and “The Desperation [...] of Tom”) where I got a private performance both times; a cultural lap-dance so to speak. Both were enjoyable, although I must admit that I lean a little bit towards the second performance as it made me want to get up and sing along with the Irish/British mini-cast. I never realized how emotional a stomach could be. The first one (a love story about the moon) felt a bit rushed, not giving me enough time to adjust to the strangeness of the setting.
The main performance (”Best Before”) was 2 hours, which they told me is “quite short”. And the audience only had themselves to blame. Everyone in the theater got their own game-controller, with which you could control one of the +- 200 tiny characters (”skittles”) on screen. You have to see it to believe it. By making a series of choices, we started building a society of individuals, which felt oddly engaging. Intermixed with the gaming bits, we heard personal stories from people of Vancouver. While this was compelling in its own way, the fact that they were not actors sometimes impacted the delivery in a distracting way. My personal story within the story was – in retrospect – quite boring. I guess that was mainly because my choice were oddly safe (software programmer, married with kids), at least compared to (my) real life. You would think an avatar world would make you go bold and crazy, but it didn’t. One of the choices that resonated most was the choice between being capable of “pain and fear” or being “happy, always”. As much as I understand that some of the pain I have experienced in the past is a major factor in making me who I am, it occurred to me that I wouldn’t take that path if given the choice.
The last piece I experienced was a perfect send-off. Seated at a table in the bar with a head-set, I was invited to act out an entire story with my colleague actor-for-half-an-hour seated across from me. The instructions came through the head-set, which made me realize just how much potential this technique still has. Put simply: I loved it.
Random fact: there is a man with a huge mustache, snoring, right here in the library. Also, this is written outside on a banner:
we have seen
the proposal
and our decision
overwhelms
even us
Randomer fact: Yesterday I met a guy at a party who is friends since kindergarten with a documentary director from Rotterdam who I am working with. One degree of separation, 7795 km away from home. Needless to say there was a lot of “holy shit!” and “no way!”. Tonight I’ll be going to their performance, named “KAMP“.
I’m beating the crap out of my jet-lag. Today I already slept in until 11am! (I switched rooms, which helped a hell of a lot.) My host brother is also joining me for the trip, which will probably kick this thing into high gear.