Big Hand Project – Big West Festival Opening Night 2011

The Barking Spider Visual Theatre team was asked by Big West Festival to come up with a spectacular, large scale puppetry event as part of the festival’s opening night celebrations, to be held in Footscray Park, on the Maribyrnong River in November 2011. The theme for the festival was “Uncontained”. The Barking Spider team knocked heads, and came up with the Big Hand concept and some initial design ideas.

The Big Plan

In thinking about the multicultural nature of the West in conjunction to the theme of “Uncontained”, the company proposed that we create a giant hand, that upon first sighting, would appear to be a box. As the audience watched, a city scape would grow out of the box, the tall buildings in the cityscape, lighting up, and then transforming into giant fingers – lit from the inside.

Inside the palm of the hand have been trapped and concealed numerous winged and fanciful creatures (each interior lit, would be operated by a school-aged puppeteer): released, they  spread their wings or stretch their legs, and take flight – hovering, flitting, dancing, squirming, or crawling through and over the crowd, finally disappearing.  These small puppets were intended to reflect the many cultures and peoples of the West, their cultural icons and their self identity.  The project would celebrate intergenerational connection and would feature community members as young as four years to seniors, working alongside the Barking Spider team.The original programme included four community groups in the construction and design of the work.

Plans Evolve

As luck would have it, Snuff Puppets had created a number of giant body parts, including a large hand. Funding being tight, we scaled the build back, and Barking Spider worked with Snuff Puppets to include their large hand in The Big Hand project for Big West Opening Night Festival.

Kate Shearer, the festival’s Aristic Director, organised for Footscray North Primary School to work with Barking Spider Visual Theatre, to create the small interior lit lantern puppets. Barking Spider took a short residency at the school, over a 5 week period part time, to work with a passionate group of kids on this creation.

Additionally, the Federation Handbells were made available for this segment of the event, so artist Karen Berger and Jo Trevathan worked with kids from Footscray Secondary College in composing a piece to underscore the Puppetry segment.

The Big Night

The Footscray North Primary School children, dressed in white, trickled down the hillside through the audience, lead by six senior school girls ringing ethereal sounding bells, onto the grassed stage area. The Big Hand, with puppeteer Daniele Poidomani operating, emerged from the bleachers, as the children flowed away from the hand, to stage left and right, and gathered their lantern puppets. The soundscape being created by the Federation Bells was building. All the children came centre stage and hid from audience behind the Big Hand. The Big Hand made a fist, the children lit their lanterns, the hand opened up, and then all the children flew out, making beautiful patterns and shapes on the wide grassed stage area.

There was a moment of chaos when a bunch of youngsters (overwhelmed  with curiosity) came onto the stage from the audience and threatened to pull the hand over, and a lady in an electric wheelchair chose that precise moment to have her day in the sun (accompanied by her small yapping dog) & parked herself centre-stage in front of the Big Hand. But the moment passed, and the Footscray North Primary children held their own, keeping their choreography and maintaining a sense of magic and awe for the audience.

It was a stunning opening night for what was an excellent festival. Congratulations to Kate & the Big West team for the 2011 festival – And from the heart, Barking Spider Visual Theatre thanks those wonderful kids from the primary school, lead by their inspired teacher Thuy who brings so much care & love to her students.