From the April 2009 Barroquisimo Festival in Puebla, Mexico

Article in Spanish from Enfoque, Puebla, Mexico 27 April 2009

Articles and Reviews from the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe Festival


 



The List Weekly
Glasgow and Edinburgh Events Guide
14 August 2008
Kirstin Innes

Awe inspiring spectacle on stilts

The Vanishing Point

Mudfire

I picked the wrong day to go and see US acrobatic company Carpetbag Brigade's two fringe offerings. After 48 hours of rain their outdoor performance space at Sweet ECA had turned swamp and the company was making do with a hastily converted studio space. It's a testament to their skill, creativity and sheer expertise that both productions were still able to impress this much.

Covered in intricately patterned body paint and ragged costumes, the Carpetbag Brigade creates acrobatic, butoh-inflected dance works on stilts. They've realized that the huge, otherworldliness of a 9ft human figure works best with grand, mythical contexts and created wordless stories to suit their skills. Mudfire is reminiscent of the creation myths of tribal people, as an earth-rooted Beast and an elevated Wind God battle three impish Fire demons. The dexterity and feats of acrobatics are amazing, but the material is stretched and feels overlong even at 45 minutes.

The Vanishing Point is sheer delight. The stilt walkers, communicating to each other through some sort of primeval whale song, trace a pattern of evolution from dinosaur-like creatures and sexually charged tribal people to, briefly, dead-eyed office workers. Even on stilts, their floor work and gymnastic feats are lucid and nuanced, working with the lure of myth to inspire proper, Old Testament-style awe.




The British Theatre Guide
The Carpetbag Brigade
Jackie Fletcher


The Vanishing Point

On a rainy Saturday evening, the Carpetbag Brigade's stilt walking acrobats had to move out of the sodden courtyard into a large room in Edinburgh College of Art. Sitting along one wall in a plain, high-ceilinged room, the audience was able to witness the action at very close range and it was amazing. Towering high above us, but so very close, illuminated only by the daylight shining through the windows, these beautiful insect-like creatures stalked the space like Titans. They swished and hissed and licked and sniffed. They fought and mated and prowled for food with acrobatic stunts.

The Carpetbag Brigade is a pan-American theatre company with performers from the US, Canada and Mexico. Based in San Francisco, they witnessed fires devastating whole forests and wondered what happened to the creatures for which the woodlands are a natural habitat. And that was the inspiration for this show. It is timely as more and more of our natural resources fall prey to human indifference. The Vanishing Point is a show which fills one full of wonder, and reminds us that everything on the planet is interconnected. In the face of Nature, we're merely puny but arrogant wee souls.

Fabulous acrobatic skills indoors or out!



The Scotsman
Dance review: Mudfire | The Vanishing Point
12 August 2008
By Kelly Apter

MUDFIRE

THE VANISHING POINT

SWEET ECA (VENUE 186)

SEVERAL Fringe shows have fallen foul of Edinburgh's rain this August, with the Carpetbag Brigade suffering more than most. The San Francisco-based company is used to conducting its epic dramas in the Californian sunshine, but has adapted remarkably well to Scottish climes.

Both Mudfire and The Vanishing Point are supposed to take place on the grassy courtyard outside Edinburgh College of Art but, due to swamp-like conditions, many performances have been re-located indoors. An indoor venue wouldn't be half so problematic, were it not for the company's dramatic calling card - stilts. Most of the performers are elevated over three feet off the ground and flail gigantic sticks above their heads. Perfect for stomping about underneath the sky; less perfect underneath hanging strip lights.

Regardless of the constraints, the actors still manage an impressive array of back-flips and somersaults. And whereas most of us would struggle to take baby steps in these lengthy strap-on legs, the Carpetbagians act as if they're part of their own anatomy. In this respect, Mudfire and The Vanishing Point are pretty much on the same level, both wowing us with their acrobatic feats, colourful body paint and original music. Looking beyond face value, however, The Vanishing Point seems to have rather more meat on its bones. A battle between God-like forces, Mudfire entertains but fails to move - full of noise and fury which occasionally strays into repetitive territory. The Vanishing Point, on the other hand, has a gentle poignancy, touching on evolution and being human. One by one, stilts are slowly removed and cast away in an intimate re-birthing. Stepping on the ground, the performers become one with the natural world - or rather they would, if there was grass rather than floorboards beneath their feet.

Here's hoping the rain stops long enough to let this energetic troupe back outside where they belong.

. Mudfire until 24 August. Today 5:30pm; The Vanishing Point until 24 August. Today 8pm.



The Metro
You Don't Know Jack : flawed yet fascinating

by TINA JACKSON - Monday, August 18, 2008

You Don't Know Jack is a flawed and fascinating piece. For all its imperfections, this striking offering from San Francisco ensemble physical theatre company Carpetbag Brigade achieves what many shows on the Fringe fail to do: it grabs your attention and holds it.

The immensely talented cast of five are such strong performers that they imbue their dark, deliciously odd tale of a dead alcoholic and his messed-up family with a hypnotic intensity; it's impossible not to enter their dysfunctional, fragmented worlds.

Snatches of memory intermingle with scenes from a dark underworld, so that the past and the imaginary become what constitute reality. Sometimes it's tiring trying to keep up with the story but the physical energy keeps you enthralled.

Like the chaotic life it conveys, the narrative is messy, though the fluid performances of the lithe, disciplined cast are not. Sometimes violent, sometimes haunting, snippets of action show Jack's drunken mother as she descends into alcoholic lunacy.

Although the threads of Jack's psychic life, past and memories are sometimes woven so loosely that they begin to unravel in the viewer's mind, one of the particular strengths of this production is its oddity.

In this case, it's fitting that live music - plangently lilting snippets of folk songs and wonky sea shanties - communicates more sense than the spoken words, reinforcing the piece's sense of other-worldliness and its sometimes violent lyricism.



The Scotsman
Published Date: 20 August 2008
By Joyce McMillan

YOU DON'T KNOW JACK


Dance & Physical Theatre Review: You Don't Know Jack

THE Carpetbag Brigade of San Francisco are a company not to be ignored; and they're presenting this most extreme and mind-blowing of all the shows on this year's Fringe about the damaging impact of war. On a stage strewn with domestic debris and paths of stones, featuring a window here, and a teetering tower of authority there, it reflects - for a surreal, enigmatic 50 minutes - on the continuing family legacy of the wartime trauma suffered by Jack's grandfather. Both little Jack himself, and his mad, self-destructive mother, are stalked by twin demons, male and female; nor is there much sign, in the show's beautifully choreographed ending, that they will ever be laid to rest.

Until 24 August. Today 1:30pm.