With the sun shining in Oakland we looked inside at our practice space cringing at being indoors on such a beautiful day. Well, our scene for the piece is a playground, so we decided to do some field research and check out different monkey bars on playgrounds around Oakland. We've been spotting them for a while and Rain saw one this week that looked pretty good- regular solid steel free standing on a school playground just a few blocks from our practice space. The empty playground waited for us and tossing our shoes aside we improved and experimented with shape and movement and talked about the design that we're going to use for our own piece.
A bell rang and a bunch of kids exited the school and sat on picnic tables nearby eating their lunch and looking over at us. After their sandwich and apple sauce they scampered over to us with looks of bewilderment on their faces. "What are you doing here? Who are you? Are you working" Small questioning voices surrounded us. Our response "We're playing" was met by even further concern. "Adults don't play, they have work to do." "Really, your parents don't play?" "No. They work all day and then they're too tired." Then from the group one girl climbed up on the bars with us. Looking into our eyes she frankly stated. "Adults have inner children too, but they lock it up inside because there's too much work to do."
exactly
As we were leaving one of the kids ased again who we were. We exchanged looks. Rain laughed and said, "We're kooks." The kid responds, "Oh, you're in the circus."
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