Seeing the Candle for the Trees

Last Friday night, the 19th of December, I was up in Canberra at the remarkable National Arboretum to perform 'Faraday's Candle', a 50-minute one-man show based on natural philosopher (scientist) Michael Faraday's 1848 Christmastime lectures, 'The Chemical History of a Candle'.

This show was developed for Inspiring Australia, the national strategy for science engagement, and has been presented by CSIRO over the last three years in various venues: churches, cathedrals, conference centres, the theatre at Sovereign Hill, the Canberra science centre Questacon, and now the Arboretum. We've done short seasons and one-offs and last Friday was a one-off. Below: me as Faraday drawing a diagram of a burning candle.

The team behind the show is: myself as writer/collaborator and actor; Carly Siebentritt (Inspiring Australia) as collaborator and producer, and Chris Krishna-Pillay (CSIRO) as collaborator and director. We had a lovely audience of 100 or so on Friday, including a man who had, years ago, borrowed a copy of Faraday's lectures from the ANU library and read them to his young daughter - and turned up to see our show with the very daughter!  And... they liked it - phew!

Above is some natty lighting by Chris: this is the point in the show where I become Sir Humphrey Davy, Faraday's mentor, the man who "...first described the light of the candle in terms of incandescent particles of solid carbon," as Faraday says in the script. To the left, the eponymous candle. To the right, Lake Burley Griffin.

"All that remains at the end of this lecture is to express a wish that YOU may be fit to compare to a candle..."

Faraday's great because his influence on today's world is profound: his discovery of the generation of electricity by magnetic induction changed our relationship to nature irrevocably. But his dedication to education meant that he delivered these candle lectures again and again because they are a profoundly accessible introduction to fundamental ideas about fire, physics, and chemical reactions. And here we are, continuing his tradition.

The trailer for the show (made by Chris) is on the Faradays Candle page. Carly took these pictures on Friday night. A tip of the fedora to them both: great people to work with.

"It depends on the mood of the machine"

Our last day of rehearsal. Tomorrow's the day.
The above was said by Coco today, about whether the smoke machine will work for our big final trick of the show.
The klim (dried milk, for those not posessed of an extensive WWII POW escape story library) in the rehearsal room always gets me singing that Radiohead song.


Below, my team in our final burst of writing and development. It was about this time I had a powerful burst of deja vu, as I was demonstating an action that would illustrate Megumi and I drowning in a pool of oobleck. Oobleck-o? Ask your mums, kids: it's made with corn starch and water and is the funnest stuff. It's our first big trick.



Prize for Best Japanese/English sentence so far goes to Chris Krishna-Pillay for the below, which basically means, "This is the best mess."

And the mess.

We lunched outside, in the sun, before a dry fountain and a fashion model photo shoot.

The toothpick, happily, did not hurt my finger.

Back in the room, it was time to roll out the astroturf. Things were getting serious.

And, after a run, we needed to debrief, to streamline the show, to make things make more sense. Many questions arose about the language that we had decided to put in the show, and whether it now worked in the overall picture. Much got changed.

And at this point the conversation got very serious indeed.

Luckily we were just discussing the fate of the show mascot, Maurice Fitzmaurice.

His big monologue remains.

My character has developed substantially.

Oddly enough I'm no stranger to bobbed-wig-wearing, see here for my turn as Liz Moran.

At 6pm we went down to the stage under the GeoDome (where we'll be performing tomorrow) to be part of the opening ceremony for the Science Agora 2009 - we got up on stage and each of us spoke for a minute about the experience, made our thanks etcetera. It was an interesting moment to 'see outside' of what we have been doing, out of the womb of the rehearsal room, to realise that this precious world made by these 16 people will be a memory by Monday.

Before the tears began, we hustled off to dinner at the Telecom Centre Building, the square with the hollow centre, I will post a picture, then back for the inevitable late night walk-through and then dress rehearsal.

We get another one in the space tomoorw morning at 8.30am, so I'll mosey off to bed now.

But I know that the Mighty Atom will be smiling over us tomorrow - and I'm sure he'll look after my colleaugues back at Museum Victoria who will be working on the big Children 365 day there. Good on you, my friends: ja mata (see you soon).

Okay, who's here to work?

This morning, both parties of the exchange breakfasted together in the 'Sky Lounge' on the 30th floor of the Grand Pacific Le Daiba. As I slurped down sweet potato rice porridge, Coco ate adzuki beans and told me about the character/demon/ghost Adzuki Arai, a little old bald man who spends his time washing beans, made famous in a manga by Mizuki Shigeru. Will have to track that one down when I visit Akihabara.

What with the view and the demons, we were 5 minutes late in getting to Miraikan for our first session. Never again: Yuko (below left), our process wrangler, was so politely disapproving that it chilled us to the marrow. Tomorrow, five minutes early.

But it was time to hit the floor, to start writing the show. Yuko kept us moving at a clip, and we arrived at a setting (a house) and characters (a family), to help us to tell the story of 'familiar science', the brief which has been set for us.

Then it was time for small group work to start to generate scenes. Below, Hiromi reports from the 'bathroom' group - from left Yuko, Patrick, Motozugu, Hiromi, Mitsuru and Chris.


Can't see Motozugu? Here's a sketch:



Below, Mami reports on the 'garden' group's progress - Cathy, Coco, Mami and Pete.

And below is our team, with the stirling interpreter Naoko doing the pointing either just before or just after Aki's report on our progress with the kitchen scene. Naoko, Kate, Megumi and Aki.

At 4pm we were joined by Matsuda Suzuki from the National Science Museum of Japan, which we will be visiting on Monday arvo. She was one of the attendees at last year's inaugral exchange at Questacon in Canberra. She performs science shows from Hokkaido to Kyushu. She made the point that Japanese science performers do not do so much character work/acting, but that after last year's exchange she was putting more emotion into her shows.

She brought her own matches:

and liked to make things burn.

After her demonstation, which examined oxgen and fire, she and Patrick got up and spoke about their experience last year in Canberra.

After which (heck, I think it was after which - wow, it was only 7 hours ago and I've forgotton the order of things: I do feel a bit brain-fried at this point I must admit) Patrick delivered a talk featuring snippets of show from each of the Australian performers. Cathy (Questacon) did Newton's third law for 3 year olds, I did part of a show from Melbourne Museum called 'A Fly in Your Eye', aka 'What Poo Do you Do?', Pete (Queensland Museum) did film canister pop rockets, Kate (Scitech) did fire-in-a-flask/pressure change/water filled balloon sucked in, and Chris (CSIRO) did a Tesla Coil/PET bottle detonation. Bang!

Then, was it time for an official welcome dinner? It most certainly was! Up we went to the 7th floor where we were congratulated on being selected and welcomed to Miraikan by Doctor Mamoru Mohri, the Executive Director of the museum, who recalled his happy years studying at Flinders University in Adelaide. Mohri-san is an astronaut who has been up in the space shuttle.

In amongst eating and drinking Australian wine (thanks Embassy!) and Japanese beer, there were more demonstrations from the participants, both Japanese and Australian. Static electricity, annoying noises, centres of gravity, sound waves, dinosaur nativity,

a bit of a custard powder fire ball from Kate,

and a big yellow balloon kept up in the air by Aki.

Getting to Tokyo

Thanks to Susan and Joseph and Zebedee for dropping me off at Tullamarine. Chris Krishna-Pillay and I flew together to Sydney, where we met the rest of the crew:


Above from left to right is Mitsuru, Kate, Chris on the phone, Cathy, Peter and Patrick. We nabbed us a snack, we misplaced and then found a suit, and then it was onto QF21 for the nine and a half hour flight to Tokyo.

I read a bit of the Tokyo Time Out guide (thanks H and Torrie), then needed some fiction so turned to John Barth's 'The Sot Weed Factor' (1961) which I've always meant to read and had finally began on Saturday on Phillip Island. Some great language in there so far, including this exchange between Henry Burlingame III and Ebenezer Cooke, 'over small beer after dinner':



The sun came up over the Pacific, and we dived down to Nariba Airport where we had a couple of breakfasts: my first was a BOSS can o' coffee and a red bean paste bun. It was very tasty and I was very lucky: it could have been anything...

From the airport it was 100 kilometres and about an hour and a half to Odaiba Island (built on a pile of rubbish in Tokyo Bay - hmm, I will check on that). It's a fairly recently constructed place and has quite a Canberra feel (quick note: I am a Canberra fan). Our hotel though, the 'Grand Pacific Le Daiba' is constucted on the Opulence and Elegance school of architecture - zow. Ee.

A quick shower to rinse a couple of plane trips and a bus trip off (looking down into Tokyo Bay the while, la di da) and then... the nightshirt.

I'm sure it has a Japanese name.

Okay, time to head down, meet the others and have an explore.

Next: the wonder of toilets.