A VIEW FROM BELL SQUARE'S ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: STREET GAMES FROM BARCELONA

Guixot de 8 is a Spanish company that make street games.  Using recycled materials, they make original games in their workshop in Barcelona.  They pack the games into a van and go wherever they are invited.  They then set up the games in the street and play with anyone who wants to try their hand.

Guixot de 8, led by creative force Joan Rovira, have been making street games since 1991.  They have been to 30 countries in all 5 continents.  Joan says they have made about 300 games which has given new life to about 10 tons of scrap!

Guixot de 8

Spain has a deep-rooted love of games in the street.  These are usually well-known, popular games – and also ‘cucan

a’ which involve endless variations of climbing up, or along. a greasy pole in celebration of different festivals and other special occasions in small towns across Spain!  But Guixot de 8 were the first to create sets of original games and turn them into a street show.

Since then, many more companies dedicated to street games have emerged – Tombs Creatius, Toc de Fusta, Itinerània, Katakrak and others.  Talking with Joan, he explains that the best companies have developed their own style such as games made of wood, or traditional games made in giant versions for the street.

I have seen many of these street games in different places and they are always a magnet for children and adults alike.  It is lovely for anyone, and perhaps especially an adult, to stop and play in the street with other people.  It is genuine fun, completely absorbing.  And easy to find that you have been very happily distracted from whatever else you may have been doing!

Guixot de 8

There is something timeless about these street games.  They are not new, shiny, the latest thing, not digital, not even electric.  Each one is carefully made by hand and is quite beautiful and special, based on simple physical and mechanical principles.  I asked Joan why, in a time when people have access to so many digital games, he thinks people find these hand-made street games so appealing.

Joan Rovira:  ‘I think it’s because they are an alternative to screen games.  I think that playing with simple physics is attractive.  Physics has a poetry that captivates you.  Also, the games seem easy but they are not!  It makes people keep trying, over and over again.  When playing the games, people are all children – just of different heights!’

One of the things I love about these games is that you just start playing them with people you don’t know.  They are so much larger than the games you might have at home, so they contain an implicit invitation to play with them as a community.

Joan says that they often create a very trusting relationship between people.  ‘Sometimes, someone takes a person’s bag, and then passes it to another person to keep, whilst the owner is playing.  This is a bit unthinkable in current times, but it has happened many times’. 

‘People also learn from each other – passing on what they have learned from the person playing before.  People give each other advice and applaud those who succeed.  People will chase after a ball that has fallen out of the game for others’.

‘People laugh together, people smile, people think.’

Cia Katakrak

So often at Bell Square, people say the events bring people together and make them feel connected to others in their community.

Let’s take our public space and play games together!  See you on Saturday, 4 November!

Guixot de 8 bring their Street Games to Bell Square on Saturday 4 November from 10.00 am - 1.00 pm, and again from 2.00 – 5.00 pm.

Regular attendee Eva talks about the ‘You’ve Been Bell Squared’ Effect

I remember my first visit to Bell Square was to watch Carousel last year – it was close to sunset and there was a actually a circus carousel in the middle of the brick-paved square.

I witnessed a most unusual phenomenon which transformed the local environment, brought people together for something really impactful and turned a normal day into something extraordinary.

That was Bell Square; the invisible theatre – you don’t know it exists until it magically pops up in front of you – creates a huge impact and then disappears again.  It’s as ethereal as the Cheshire Cat but whenever I go to see a performance or when I take other people along, I always feel I’ve been ‘Bell-Squared’ and so do they.

So what is the 'Bell Square effect'? It’s a very positive thing – it puts the shine back in your eyes and a beat in your heart.  It’s really quite hard to pin down the ‘je ne sais quoi-ness’ of it all, but if I was to try and articulate it, I would say it’s more about the eclectic mix than any one particular thing.

During the week, Bell Square is a somewhat mundance, paved red brick area which is transformed every other Saturday into an outdoor arts space, in the round with ‘pop up’ wooden seats. Hundreds of people arrive and gather in the space – all ages, backgrounds and nationalities are eager to see what’s on. Before each performance, a very loud bell tolls for five minutes – it sounds ominous almost but it’s certainly not, it’s the klaxon for people to assemble, the invisible curtain to rise and the company of performers to begin their show.

This is where the magic happens – it may be a company of contemporary dancers putting on something hard hitting, a social commentary like Company Chameleon with their show Of Man and Beat. Alternatively, it might involve walking round Hounslow with Tilted Productions to watch scenes of Belonging(s) play out in unusual settings such as a car park or beside a tower block.

Whatever is on, the ringing bell marks the start of an absorbing journey which may last up to an hour or more. Many of the performers are outdoor arts groups who also perform in theatres – there is something very special about these outside shows – there are no walls, there are no barriers, there is no stage. Many of the performers are happy to speak with the audience afterwards; it’s as if they are important as the players themselves to the success of the event.

What all of these performances have in common is they captivate the audience and everyone is drawn in momentarily and that experienced is shared. Whether it’s dance, acrobatics or theatre, there is a connection made between the public and the performers.

No matter how I’m feeling when I arrive, when I leave, I always feel like I’ve been part of something powerful and transformative and that I’ve learned something about life and the world through these powerful performances. It’s an incredibly powerful and uplifting experience.

Are you ready to be Bell Squared?

To keep up with upcoming events, visit our What’s On pages here

And if you are attending Bell Square events – don’t forget to share your experiences on social media using the #BellSquareLDN hash tag.

An view from Bell Square's Artistic Director: Cia Ignifuga in London for the first time

Across Europe, there are many festivals of outdoor arts.  One of the biggest and most spectacular is Fira Tàrrega.  Every September, this tiny Catalan town in Northern Spain plays host to an extraordinary array of outdoor theatre, dance and circus.  With roots dating back to the 1930s, Fira Tàrrega attracts thousands of artists, audiences and programmers from across the world.  The annual trip to Tàrrega feels like a pilgrimage to the spiritual home of outdoor arts.

Over four days, the festival presents hundreds of performances by artists from across Spain, Europe and beyond.  I go to Tàrrega to look for some of the best shows for Bell Square for the following year.  It is impossible to see everything, so I always arrive with a rigorous schedule that fills every waking moment with the most interesting looking shows!

A couple of years ago, when I arrived in Tàrrega, I asked Jordi Duran, the Artistic Director of the festival, for his top 3 recommendations of shows to see at the festival that year.  One of them was A House Is Not A Home – a new show being performed for the first time by a young theatre company called Companyia Ignífuga.  It wasn’t on my list but it was a great recommendation!

On 23 September, Cia Ignífuga brings A House Is Not A Home to Bell Square.  The company and the play on which their show is based will not be familiar to most people in London, so I hope some background information will be interesting alongside seeing the show.

CIA. IGNÍFUGA   Who are Cia Ignífuga? In English, they are Fireproof Theatre! The company started in Barcelona in 2011. At the Institut del Teatre, the university of performing arts in Barcelona, a group came together around a shared vision of what theatre should be, at this early point - this still rather disorientated point - of the 21st century.

This group of young theatre makers and actors want to make shows that comment on our contemporary lives.  And they want our experience as audiences, when we see their shows, to be emotional as well as intellectual.

A HOUSE IS NOT A HOMEA House Is Not A Home is Cia Ignífuga’s third show together.  It is based on Interior, a play by a Flemish writer, Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949).  Maeterlinck is remembered and recognised principally for his early plays, written in his late 20s and early 30s.  Interior was one of these notable works, written in 1894 when he was only 32.

Most of Maeterlinck’s work is written in a way that stirs the reader’s own feelings, stimulating their own imagination, and this comes through strongly in Cia Ignífuga’s adaptation of Maeterlinck’s play.  Maeterlinck wrote what he called ‘modern tragedy’ and believed that people are powerless against the forces of fate, that we are all pushed and pulled by circumstances beyond our control. 

A House Is Not A Home is a very simple story.  Friends and family start to arrive at a house for a dinner party.  The group are laughing and enjoying themselves, whilst they wait for the last guest to arrive.  It gets quite late and still the guest has not arrived.

A car then arrives at the house, unnoticed by the residents inside.  The two people inside the car have come with bad news. They can see the people inside the house, in high spirits, and argue about how they can break the bad news to them.  How can they disrupt this happy occasion?  The show then centres on this tension between the anxiety of the people outside the house, and the happiness and innocence of the people inside - and how, with a few words, their sense of security will be shattered.

It was partly Cia Ignífuga’s presentation of the piece that attracted me to this show.  Going to see it one night at the festival, I walked along a dark lane away from Tàrrega’s town centre to an even darker, muddy field.  In the field stood a ‘small house’.  The living room lights were on and we could see the inhabitant of the house preparing for her guests to arrive.

A few rows of chairs were set out for the audience a little way away from the house.  We were all given headphones through which we would hear the conversations inside the house and inside the car.  It is a slightly unsettling experience, voyeuristic. You can hear every word that they say, but you are outside in the dark.  They can’t see you, watching.   

The show demands from us a degree of self-reflection.  It reminds us of those moments, when we walk past our neighbour’s house at night and, protected by darkness, feel a temptation, almost a compulsion, to look into their home, to look into their lives, just for a moment as we pass by.

The show does create a certain degree of discomfort.  Laughing, Jordi had said, “It will be one of the most disturbing pieces in the festival this year!”  The conversation through headphones is close to you, you feel almost inside the show.  But you are also at a distance.  You are safe, it’s not you that this is happening to. But it could be you. This could happen to any one of us.

Come and see something different – and support this great young company!  This is their first international performance outside Spain.

A House Is Not A Home is at Bell Square on Saturday 23 September 2017.  There are 2 performances – at 7.30 pm and 9.15 pm.  The show lasts approximately 1 hour. Please arrive at least 20 minutes in advance to pick up your headphones and be instructed on how to use them.