7^th April, Weston Studio WMC

PROTEST.

So you don’t have to.

#Fly on the Wall: a Citrus Arts project grown from the support of Wales Millennium Centre as part of their incubator project. It was birthed in the aftermath of the G20 Summit and Iranian protests of 2009, but in its current form it is based more around more recent events examining the real voices in the protests. Citrus Arts have researched every angle of the protest world, taking genuine accounts from individuals involved in the protests and creating a cacophony of voices fighting to expose the truth. There are activists, anarchists and bloggers who all want to be heard; the police officers are doing their impossible job and calling it duty; the bankers and politicians display the power to ignore those at their door yet have a history of their own.

Politics is no longer in the hands of the politicians, far from it. As a mobile, digitally enhanced world we have the chance to voice our own opinions and make them heard. It is very much an age of the armchair protest: # is an inconsequential piece of punctuation at the centre of debates, it represents this powerful change and even the smallest, quietest of voices can be heard in Twitter’s 140 characters or Facebook’s status updates and the myriad of Youtube video sensations and bloggers commenting on their world.

Pictures taken during WMC dress run, there are more fantastic shots of arial acrobatics and the set on Citrus Arts NTW group page:  http://community.nationaltheatrewales.org/group/citrusarts

The show opens with the cast camping festival style, the night before the protest, along with the very Alice in Wonderland White Rabbit. As protesting has become a widespread activity for everyone it has developed a carnival atmosphere with singing, dancing, animal characters parading around making themselves noticed. There are poignant moments across the fantastic wire acrobatics, precisely choreographed moves and dancing. One cast member finds themselves wrapped by a stream of newspapers, trapped by the daily avalanche of information with nowhere to go, fighting to get out, tearing at the restraint. Another, suspended above us, tries to attract a politician’s attention and as the performer gets ever closer he also gets further away and the politician persistently ignores him, no matter how he shouts kicks or waves his flag: he is left spinning trapped by the wall of silence presented to him. The acrobatics involving the crowd barriers was cleverly done, representing a determined attitude to be heard no matter what or who stands in a protestor’s way.

With their own brand of physical theatre Citrus Arts have focused on their skills and idea’s rather than dialogue, although there is no need for structured dialogue and plot: environment and theme do all the work necessary to present a brilliantly developed piece about a singular ambition to get voices heard.

Protest? We do have to, who else does it fall to if we don’t give our opinions? If the general populace stays silent we cannot change anything, the hidden truths will never see daylight. For me #Fly on the Wall is a reminder to be determined, never losing faith in speaking up.

#Fly on the Wall will be at Galeri, Caernarvon on 13^th May

http://citrusarts.squarespace.com/  / http://community.nationaltheatrewales.org/group/citrusarts

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