2020 PuSh Festival: Testing out what will sink or float in fish-tank performance High Water
Credit to Author: Shawn Conner| Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 19:00:57 +0000
When: Feb. 1-5
Where: The Nest, 1398 Cartwright St.
Tickets: From $26 (discount children’s tickets available) at pushfestival.ca
So you’ve decided to base a show around a fish tank that gradually fills with water, placing various objects therein. How do you decide on which objects?
Lots of trial-and-error, apparently.
“So much,” said Robert Leveroos, the conceptualizer behind and performer in High Water, a new show premiering with the PuSh Festival.
“We’ve been working for two years on it, and a huge amount of that work was our experimentation. We played weeks of sink or float, where we were bringing in objects that we thought were funny and testing them out.”
In combination, the objects create surprising images: rockets, cityscapes, satellites and more, according to the PuSh write-up. Sample objects include clothespins, CDs, and turkey basters.
The PuSh shows mark the Canadian premiere of High Water, although Leveroos has been testing it out on audiences while workshopping it at Presentation House. A class of first and second-graders have seen it, as has a group of seniors and a general all-age audience. Leveroos says he likes making shows for everyone.
“It’s more fun when the audience is mixed like that. That’s how I like to view my artwork. I create it with anyone in mind. Depending on your age, you might see something different in it. And all of that is intentional.”
Leveroos’ previous work includes Between Two Rocks, described on his macromatter.com website as a work that “unravels an imagined horizon across harsh and humbling landscapes. On stage, large piles of wool are carded, spun, and woven by four performers.”
One of his collaborators on that show was Elysee Cheadle, who is directing High Water.
“I came and proposed the idea. I said, ‘I want us to work with a fish tank. I think it’s just me on stage. And I want it to fill with water over the course of the show.’ After that, everything’s been collaborative.”
Cheadle, along with show composer Nancy Tam, helped select objects for the tank.
“The ones that were surprising were the things we were most excited by,” Leveroos said.
“Beyond that, we started putting them together in combination, seeing what they would do as an image together, and also how we could change the physics of the objects by putting them in different combinations. And asking: how can they speak to larger ideas? What can they create with the sound design? How do we point them in a certain direction so audiences can see them in a way that we see them?”
The show is wordless, so it’s up to the audience to figure out what those larger ideas are.
“I really enjoy that in art,” Leveroos said. “I want audiences to come to it with their own imaginations, to trust themselves that what they see is accurate, that they can believe that what they see is what is in there (the fish tank).
“We have a very clear idea from moment to moment about what everything is and what our internal story is. But we recognize that doesn’t need to be the same as everyone else’s. And that room for interpretation is what’s exciting.”
Also exciting: finding the right fish tank.
“I found one on Craigslist when we first started,” Leveroos said. “We broke the bottom of it during a very eventful rehearsal. Since then I’ve been trying to find a standard, and none are exactly standard. So we’ve reinforced the one we have with an acrylic bottom so it’s stronger.”
CLICK HERE to report a typo.
Is there more to this story? We’d like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. Email vantips@postmedia.com