an early collaboration of Alison & Boyd
An installation that was also a stage set and sculptures that were also costumes– this project for the 1988 Adelaide Festival was the culmination of Alison’s 5 month artist-in-residency at the Jam Factory. Chainsaw costumes made from plaited steel and wood, and microfauna puppets and costumes of metal and rubber, in rooms reverberant with the songs of frogs and insects, the scent of Eucalyptus bark and leaves lining the floor, small sculptures and work-in-progress drawings on the walls. For several performances, young actors of Unley Youth Theatre, directed by Graeme Gavin, took the costumes down from their stands to enact an environmental play, with live music written by Boyd and a libretto by Matthew Clouston, where chainsaw characters suddenly erupted in ‘regrowth' from 'epicormic sprouts' of sprung steel and wooden leaves and the microfauna returned to the leaf litter.