Playground Parade

(personal project proposal)

What would it be exactly?

A one-day long art festival on a selected playground, collaborating with the members and artists of the Forest and with the local community. The main objective of the parade would be to create something with - and for the public in a non-official way: using the facilities of this public space (such as a place of: painting, building, eating, drinking, talking, acting, dancing, observing, playing music, and last but not least: PLAYING)

Why on a playground?

You can find playgrounds in every country, every city, every district. All of them are different in a way, but there is something which is true for every playground in the world: this is a place where all the children play. The adults played there when they were children and now they accompany their children to the playground. A playground could be a melting point of different generations, of people from different financial background, of different cultures, different pasts and different futures. Everybody is playing. On his or her own playground....

What would the program be?

(I gave the times just to see the proportions of the program, of course it’s just an example)

‘Playing on the ground’

(10.00-14.00)

Program dedicated to children, but not just for them.

- pavement drawing

- sandcastle building

- workshop with different techniques (painting, drawing, montage, recycling from old toys etc.) with the title: ‘Design your imaginary playground’

‘Playground Picnic’

(14.00-16.00)

A kind of lunch brake, using the playground and it’s surroundings as a place to eat. Picnic with home-made food (we would ask people on different forums before the festival, to bring some food and drink to share with the others and of course we would also serve some.

‘Play-ground’

(16.00-17.00)

A site-specific performance, using the toys as plots of personal stories…:

- playing with toys

- playing with stories

- playing with the public

Basic structure of the performance:

- every performer has one toy from the playground and two stories (one from the persons childhood and one from his or her present)

- both of the two stories has a connection with the toy and with the person itself (direct or metaphoric)

- An example: A man is sitting on a swing. He has two stories to tell the audience:

1. When he was a little child, his mother always pushed him to help swinging. Once he saw that the others on the playground had already swung alone, without help. He wanted to learn it, but his mother never let him to try. She just always pushed the swing.

2. Now he is a young man, who still lives with his mother. He can’t do anything without the help of her (or without a help of anybody who lives around him), he can’t live his own life. He will always wait for somebody to push him…

- the audience has to options (basically…but of course it’s not my task to define it):

1. Watching the performance and listening to the stories while they are playing together with the performer. In this way the audience would be involved in the performance itself.

2. Watching the performance from outside, sitting on the banks around the toys

(as parents used to do it while their children were playing), observing the players.

- this two positions gives the possibility to view the whole thing from two different points of view: inside and out… Both of them could be interesting.

I have a quite detailed plan for this whole performance, but I wouldn’t like to fix everything in advance, as it’s just a proposal and as so many things could influence the creation of a performance like this. If you would like to know more, just ask and I’ll be happy to give you more information about the idea of Play-ground.

‘Play with your body – dancing in the playground’

(17.00 – 19.00)

Free improvisation for dancers and for those who would like to join and play together with them. We would invite dancers and musicians (through different forums, before the festival), to come and play together: using the specific forms given by the space itself and the opportunity of ‘playing again’. Anybody can join, the place and the music are given, the others come from somewhere else…

‘Playground Picnic Vol.2.’

(19.00 – 20.00)

Eating, drinking again (the same way as I described above), sharing experiences of the day.

‘Underground Playground’

(20.00 – 24.00)

Closing party on the playground. Using the space as a pub:

- playing music (live or DJ, depends)

- dancing, drinking

- enjoying the ‘last minutes’ of playing

Additional information:

- The whole event would be free for the audience.

- As I would like to reach as many people as I can and not just from the area where the selected playground is located, it would be nice to do it in more districts of the city, on different days. Although I know that it depends on many things for example on the capacities of the Forest and my skills.

- The whole program is just an idea which would be nice to realize in a similar way as I imagined, but I’m very flexible in any changes and I would be happy to doing it collaborating with the others.

Kata Balogh