Dublin Fringe Festival 2024: An Attempt To Talk With The Beginning Of The World

An Attempt To Talk With The Beginning Of The World. Image by Neil Harrison

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When Freud first posited the idea of infant sexuality, he was roundly dismissed by most of his contemporaries. An experience Anna Newell might well relate to. Take An Attempt To Talk With The Beginning Of The World, premiering at Dublin Fringe Festival 2024 before undertaking a national tour. A work that describes itself as ‘playful up-close dance, intriguing immersive sound and light, and many, many ping pong balls…for infants 3-12 months.’ Are we seriously expected to take this seriously? Infants as a target audience for artistic work? Even Freud might have struggled with that one, surely. Or not, as it turns out. For An Attempt To Talk With The Beginning Of The World is rigorously crafted, utterly engaging and of significant artistic merit. Newell, like Freud, proving herself to be something of a genius.

Which is not to say you’ll necessarily subscribe to everything Newell and her collaborators are selling. But so you’re clear, what An Attempt To Talk With The Beginning Of The World is not selling is drama therapy, theatrical play dates, twenty minutes of creche activity or an adult and baby bonding session, even as it achieves all of the above as incidentals. No, An Attempt To Talk With The Beginning Of The World is a genuine attempt at art. At prompting curiosity and creativity. At striving for human connectedness. And succeeding beyond its own expectations.

An Attempt To Talk With The Beginning Of The World. Image by Neil Harrison

Which might be difficult to see at first given how simplicity often looks much simpler than it actually is. Newell’s dramaturgical rigour concealed beneath Sinead Lawlor’s darkened set containing six individual pods set in a circle, like lily pads around the edge of a pond. Each accommodating one adult and infant who, collectively, form a theatrical round. Overhanging each pod a soft, glowing globe softens the dark; Archer Bradshaw’s illuminations spellbinding as planets, plants and wisps of magic. The circularity of the pond, pads and globes a pattern repeated as ping pong balls, illuminated orbs, and several movement sequences describe circularity in flow. In which choreographer and dancer Hayley Earlam and dancer Jess Rowell interact, breezing in and out with swirling, soft motions like half feathered signets; Lawlor’s costumes also showing a deft touch. Throughout, movement set to an astonishingly impressive score and sound design by Isaac Gibson sees Harry Potter styled jingles juxtaposed with ambient grooves. Each scene an alchemic burst of light, sound and movement; always unhurried, ever moving yet never rushed. No forced concentration or demanding of the infant’s attention, but rather a cultivated fascination that endures the entire twenty minutes till it all explodes in baubles of delight.

Throughout, there’s something of ANU’s immersive approach at play here. A challenge to notions of audience and participation and of the spectator’s relationship to the work. If, for infants, a show has no marked beginning or end Newell achieves constancy of engagement through inconstancy, by constant changes in sound, tempo and visuals. The now forever being refreshed. Key concepts, including beauty, the defining ingredient in Newell’s work, needing to be reframed. For this is no cold, Aristotelian notion of beauty, but beauty as experience. As aesthetic arrest. Opening out into awe and wonder, then curiosity, and from there to creativity. An Attempt To Talk With The Beginning Of The World’s true aim revealed immediately after the show. Adults, infants and performers gathered together on the floor in an unforced act of human connectedness. It being near impossible to tell who are the children and who the adults as they play together. Play the foundation of all great art. Forget the beginning of the world. An Attempt To Talk With The Beginning Of The World engages whole galaxies. Dublin Fringe Festival 2024 faciliating a truly unique work of art by a truly remarkable artist.

An Attempt To Talk With The Beginning Of The World by Anna Newell Theatre Adventures, co-produced by Riverbank Arts Centre, co-presented by Draíocht Blanchardstown, ran at Draíocht as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2024 until Sept 11. It now tours to The Network For Extraordinary Audiences.

For more information visit Dublin Fringe Festival 2024 or Anna Newell