Fire and dance, poetry, music and magic combine among the trees at Chingford Park next week - weather gods permitting. Charmian Smith talks to the Firebugs, Jonathan Cweorth and Hilary Norris, about a journey to the underworld and back, and sex, death and magic in the Renaissance.
Among the many Fringe Festival events this year, a couple of theatrical pieces delve into the magical past: a spectacular fire theatre production, The Fire of Life, and a reworking of Renaissance poetry to reveal the underworlds of sex, death and magic.
The Fringe Festival is a good opportunity to push the boundaries, says Jonathan Cweorth of the Dunedin Medieval and Renaissance Society, which is staging Sex*Death*Magic: Renaissance Poetry Unbound and who has written the script for the Firebugs' production of The Fire of Life: A journey to the underworld and back.
The Firebugs, a group of Dunedin fire performers, wanted to extend their act beyond tricks with fire, and their show at Chingford Park next week tells a mythical story about the theft and recapture of fire.
"Fire is born and creates the stuff of the universe, inspired by philosophers like Heraclitus who believed everything came from fire, and is captured by demons, taken to the underworld, and heroes have to come forth to recapture it and return it to the world," Cweorth says.
The show involves not only the Firebugs but also dancers, musicians, masks, costumes and epic poetry, according to Tama Braithwaite-Westoby and Keir Russell of the Firebugs.
There will be belly dancers, burlesque dancers, Jack Frost morris dancers, medieval musicians, a didgeridoo player, drummers, and a bassist and classical guitarist for whom Tama's brother, Kara Braithwaite-Westoby, has written a score.
The show has six scenes that take place in different parts of the park, with the audience moving from space to space, guided by lights, torches and music, to maintain the atmosphere, Braithwaite-Westoby says.
They originally planned to stage it in the Dunedin Botanic Garden, but when they visited Chingford at Fringe director Paul Smith's suggestion, they knew immediately it was the right place.
"It's a living stage, a bit out of the way, with big trees, and lends itself to the concept of the underworld and a journey. It's a living stage pathway and we'll be taking the audience round the park and using the trees, and people hidden in the trees, for different sections. The landscape will be part of the set," Braithwaite-Westoby says.
The Firebugs are a group of performers who used to do simple fire-spinning together, then decided to develop their acts and techniques so they could pay for their hobby, Russell says.
"It's not cheap and we wanted it to take us places, so we started choreographing and it's taken us around the South Island to festivals and things."
Russell designs and customises most of their equipment so it won't fail and the group has developed acts including rope darts and fire whips. They are working on a flamethrower and flame fingers.
There's always someone on safety duty with fire blankets and fire extinguishers at the ready, he says.
Most of them are students - Braithwaite-Westoby is doing a PhD in 19th-century literature focusing on the Brothers Grimm, and Russell is writing a dissertation on cultural anthropology. Several members come from overseas and have brought new ideas from Sweden, Ukraine and Germany to the group, Braithwaite-Westoby says.
Renaissance poetry is not just dry, dusty words, but can be highly entertaining and even comic in some ways, Hilary Norris says. The Dunedin theatre director, along with Jonathan Cweorth, is co-directing Sex*Death*Magic: Renaissance Poetry Unbound, as part of the Fringe, and to coincide with International Poetry Day on March 21.
They have selected passages from 16th-century English poets Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Thomas Wyatt, that deal with those three facets of human existence: sex, death and magic, Cweorth says.
"One of the benefits of doing a show on Renaissance poetry is that with 400 years of hindsight, you can actually link different pieces together," he says.
They have devised the show using the texts in unconventional ways and interwoven with music and dance.
"We're sticking to the format and genre, but making it work in a different way and finding interesting stuff from within. Normally they would be played in a very strait-laced, straight-faced way, but there's a lot of fun to be had out of them as well," Norris says.
She is relishing getting her tongue around wonderful speeches she would not normally be able to play in theatre, such as portraying Marlowe's Jew of Malta as a psychopath - "channelling Hannibal Lecter", she says.
There are also moving pieces about love in old age using Shakespeare sonnets and pieces from A Winter's Tale, Hecate's speech from Macbeth in which she also reacts to comments and footnotes from later critics, and Marlowe's Hero and Leander.
"That's a chance to treat a man as a sex object. We are enjoying that hugely. Even within that there's an opportunity to build a relationship between the two women and a relationship with the other man who's looking on. The tangled sexual ramifications of that poem are really fun to explore," Norris says.
Younger actors rarely have opportunities to work on these texts, and realise the importance of rhythms, diction, breath and other classical acting techniques, she says.
The show takes place in the Vertical Aerial Dance Studio which is full of poles, and these are included in the modern dance choreography. The music too, is a mix of Renaissance and contemporary - recorders, percussion, spinet, jazz clarinet and electronic.
Catch them
• The Fire of Life: A journey to the underworld and back, with the Firebugs, is at Chingford Park at 8pm on March 22, 23 and 24.
• Sex*Death*Magic: Renaissance Poetry Unbound is at the Vertical Aerial Dance Studio, 27 Moray Pl, at 8.30pm on March 20 and 21.
