A Witty and Enchanting One-Woman Opera: Skunk Without K is Sun at Tramway
This contemporary solo opera “sings itself into being” with playful audio descriptions of events onstage and aromatic scents pumped into the theatre to enhance the experience. Skunk Without K takes the audience on a journey from nature’s creation to its imagined collapse in this vivid sensory experience.
Image courtesy of the Tramway.
By Devon McCole | Photos by Devon McCole & Tramway
The show began, much like the story of creation, in complete darkness. As if attempting to recreate our first experiences of the world as babies born blind; we know nothing, we see nothing and crave to be saved from the quiet darkness.
Then, the harmonious operatic signing echoed through the theatre, describing the barely perceivable events unfolding onstage. A cloud appeared. Ethereal and suspended in mid-air, it slowly grew in intensity, transforming into a thundercloud with the clever implementation of smoke and lights, convincingly imitating a true force of nature.
Something I hadn’t given much thought before was the audio described element of the show which made it inclusive for anyone with visual impairments. This element of the show, however, didn’t feel thrown in but was central to the story-telling and was humerous and poetic in delivery throughout.
During that first act, as we were eventually introduced to the set design and the performer, we knew we had signed up for something special. The cloud appearing out of nothingness as it was sung into being by the voices from above, breathing and shifting as the singing set the tone, was a precursor for what followed.
“No happy muse, no pleasing views”, sung in the second act, rings true here, before the curtains are lowered, masking the plain shadowy darkness behind it. On the curtain, silhouettes of trees are created, again using lights at the back, as the world in front of us comes together.
One can’t help but think that Louise drew inspiration from Plato’s famed allegory of the cave, in which he equates our perception of reality to shadows cast on a cave wall, in which everything we see and know to be real is in fact an imitation of reality.
Conceptualised, choreographed and performed by Louise Ahl, Skunk Without K is Sun is a playful and dramatic attempt to portray the complex and metamorphic properties of nature and the human condition, especially our tendency to name and categorise the world around us for it to be real.
In the second act the performer continued to follow the instructions from above, attempting to physically portray human emotions and movement.
The delivery of each word sung and each move made was utterly enchanting. It was only the occasional eruption of chuckles from the audience around me that snapped me out of the trance. Like when the performer, attempting to portray walking - “with great drama and inaccuracy” - fails, instead looking like a glitched NPC attempting to walk through the floor, or an upturned bug.
The performer, struggling to walk whilst singing “Walking?” back to the demanding voices above as if looking for approval, was met with laughter. Especially when the voices sung back “Nature shows determination. Nature Shows Boundaries.”
Moments like this were as thought-provoking as they were entertaining, reminding us that life and nature, whilst being unpredictable and having great potential, is also limited by unbroken and universal laws.
The final act sees the collapse of earth, depicted through the performer’s voice, movement and the set and sound design only. The aroma of charred wood and sulphur wafted through the theatre, as the stage was engulfed in an orange glow “similar to that of 1000 burning candles” - as described during the performance.
The show ends with a ritualistic and tribalistic dance across the stage, the curtains are lowered again as the performer’s increasingly sing-songy screaming is replaced with the sound of a violin, parroting the melody laid out by the performer.
The show felt like something to be interpreted rather than understood. Skunk Without K is Sun is rooted in imagination, thought and metaphor. The longer I think about it, the more I seem to get out of it. I would recommend a contemporary show like this to anyone who isn’t afraid of a challenge, or who would like an hour of pure experimental madness to take you somewhere else.
Skunk Without K is Sun is no longer on at the Tramway, as it was part of the Take Me Somewhere festival this year, which is still on until the end of this week. Check out the Tramway website to see what other contemporary performances are on this weekend.