For many people, having a bath is a surefire way to unwind – but there’s a new project designed to heighten all your senses while you do so. It’s been specifically created to help you relax and experience joy, all from the comfort of your own home.
Melbourne Fringe artist Alex Hines as alter ego Juniper Wilde listening to the digital work, Play in your Bathtub 2.0.Credit:Justin McManus
It’s a simple, slightly kooky idea inspired by the pandemic, the brainchild of New York-based This Is Not a Theatre Company. Since its release in March 2020, Play In Your Bathtub 2.0 has been translated into 34 languages and enjoyed by people around the world. Now it’s coming to Melbourne Fringe.
The company’s artistic director Erin B. Mee came up with the concept when COVID hit. She was in Argentina, which went on to experience one of the world’s longest lockdowns. A lover of the bath, she started to think about what you could do if you combined the need to chill out in the safety of your own home with the theatre. “What kinds of things can we do with a tub?” she wondered.
At the same time, her mind was ticking over with ideas about continuing to make work and somehow get it to audiences. “How do we make theatre for this historical moment, how do I make something that at least I relate to. How can we make sure that it is still site-specific and interactive?”
Melbourne Fringe artist Alex Hines/Juniper Wilde says a mix of live and digital events at Fringe is ideal.Credit:Justin McManus
While traditional theatre plays with sight and sound, her company is committed to work that uses all the senses. That prompted her to think about scented candles or bath salts, the idea of having a cup of tea or a glass of wine in the tub. “Also a dance of fingers across the water or [using your] toes, putting a washcloth across your neck. [We] began to build it in a modular way, with things that would be fun or interesting to do in the tub, then what poetry and what kinds of music would work.”
The theatre company was created in 2013, by Mee and Jesse Bear, who writes many of the company’s shows. “What we do is site-specific, interactive or immersive, experiential theatre. We enjoy creating pieces that are co-created by the audience – that really allow audiences not to sit and watch the results of our creativity, but to practice being creative themselves.”
According to Alex Hines, who has two shows in this year’s Fringe Festival including To Schapelle and Back, what started as artists troubleshooting in the pandemic with online shows has now become a way to present art to a wider audience. “It allows for more voices to be heard and more people to hear them. More people can experience your art and engage with your work in a way that is accessible to them,” they say. “I can experience this art from New York in the comfort of my bathtub.”
Play In Your Bathtub 2.0 was distributed through an organisation called Fractured Atlas in the US. Mindful that many people had lost their jobs due to the pandemic, it was available for free and a donation requested if people could afford it.
A theatre in Moscow made contact to say they wanted to translate it into Russian. “They had an opening night Zoom party with 400 people zooming in from their bathtubs; they were able to control what was in and out of frame, many of them were wearing bathing suits,” Mee says with a laugh. It was a way to come together, in a moment when that was physically impossible.
“It’s a two-hander play – the two characters are the listener and the bathtub, so it’s different every time. It was designed as a break from anxiety and an opportunity to relax and to have fun and to play and be whimsical, noodling around in the water, [with a] tea or a glass of wine,” Mee says, adding there’s the feel of the water on your body as well.
She makes the point that these site-specific plays are “differently accessible”.
“There are ways in which theatre in the home can be easier to access for certain people and more inviting,” Mee says, adding that a series will be released in the next few months, with shows for the living room and the kitchen, and another for children designed to take place in a blanket tent that you make in your loungeroom.
Play In Your Bathtub 2.0 is part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, from October 6-23. The Age is a Fringe festival partner.
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