fred_mouse

I had a very simple plan for today. It ran:

1. On getting up from bed, put a load of washing on
2. Proceed to kitchen. Tidy kitchen counter by dealing with the myriad small tasks that have been put there to deal with
3. Clear table of games, preferably by putting them in their new home
4. Go see The Arrival, socialise
5. um

What did I do instead?

Point one went fine. However, I was immediately distracted, and decided that the laundry sorter needed some love and attention. And so I decided to completely sort out the laundry - to the level of painting parts of the wall (at which point it was time to shower and leave). Looks pretty, but there is stuff all around the house again. Some small problems with artisanat and I working in the same space for some of the time, so I did manage to do quite a bit of the moving of games to help with that, but the table is still not useable.

From there, leaving the house, collecting maharetr, going to Fremantle, parking, catching the cat bus were all very straightforward. Lunch at the raw food place was not - we eventually asked for our order to be converted to takeway, ate while walking along South St, and were only just there on time. And then youngest needed to go to the loo, which meant we were heading back in to the auditorium as the curtains opened.

The play was fabulous. If you are in a position to go and see it, I thoroughly recommend it (Running until next weekend, day time, ~$20 per person or cheaper for groups. For access by public transport, the theatre is across the street from the Fremantle train station. In terms of accessibility, it is fitted with ramps outside and inside but I have no baseline to assess how useful they are).

True to the original novel, there are no words - there is use of gesture, pictures labelled with pictograms, language of the sort used when the conversationalists have neither language or culture in common, music to set the scene - but no words. Unusually for a Spare Parts Puppet Theatre production, there were were very few puppets - only four that I can recall (two pet animals, one flying animal, and one representing the origami birds that messages are sent on) - as well as three actors, all of whom did a little of the puppetry and a dedicated puppeteer.

There was a lot of graphic work, much of it which I recognised from the book, some of which I recognised as being from other places (although it may be in the book as well - it may be that some of it is generic as Tan's style).

And while I have lots of rambling thoughts about it, I'm going to leave it there, because sleep is going to be important Real Soon Now.