Dot, Squiggle And Rest

Theatre29/06/2015

This piece of animation is a bit weird out of context, but that’s how I like it. It’s from a show for early years kids called Dot, Squiggle and Rest, a joint production between Polka Theatre and the Royal Opera House.

This part of the show was developed from a proposal I made during the initial R&D session for the project, the idea being for the musicians to interpret the animated images (in this case a dot following variously shaped lines) as they would a more traditional musical score, similar to the graphic notation technique developed in the 50’s by experimental composers. It was good fun playing about with these, and we felt it would be an engaging idea for the kids to enjoy, so once the theme of the garden emerged it seemed sensible to replace the dots with the struggling little Ladybird. I then worked pretty closely with the composer, Elspeth Brooke, to figure out the structure of the sequence, the various kinds of shapes to use and the build up of the mini narrative so that she could write the music for it, leaving some space for the performers to interact with the animation. Here are a few of the most relevant original proposals edited together…

Dot, Squiggle And Rest is on at the Polka Theatre in Wimbledon from 26th June to 16th August.

Dot, Squiggle and Rest performance.
Dot, Squiggle and Rest performance.
Dot, Squiggle and Rest performance.