The upper section of Myers Park forms a somewhat precipitously sloped amphitheatre bisected by a set of stairs and a path way leading down into the park. A large statue of Moses is sited near the bottom of the stairs on the right, and there is vegetation dotted about – clumps of trees and bushes and several gigantic palm trees.  Apartment and office buildings merge on the right hand rim, and a large parking building perches on the edge of the slope. On the left, a sizeable area is simply a grassy slope which ends in rock face. Back from  the edge, more buildings, with bush edging the pathway below. 

It’s a great place for an outdoor performance on a summer’s evening, with the audience perched on the left hand slope, and with some watching surreptitiously from apartment balconies.  There have been many shows here over the years, variously augmented by stages and booths.  This week it hosts a Fringe show by Stephen Bain’s Winning Productions, When Animals Dream of Sheep, and a platform stage has been added at the bottom of the right hand slope, with a floor of removable planks and a paper backcloth on which projections are displayed.

In the first half, a broadly narrative section of voice and chorus accompanied by soundscore created live by musician Jeff Henderson, three figures  –  a park ranger (Cat Ruka), a fluoro-vested hardhatted worker (Josh Rutter), and a narrator in tidy clothes (Geof Gilson)-  talk to us — sometimes one, sometimes a chorus, voices supported by hidden microphones, telling us how deer were imported to the island on which they stand, how the deer were never successfully hunted and how conflicts arose over what should be done about them, about the failure of public officials to take effective action, and the current state of relations between human and deer on the island.

The narrators are constantly moving, in bursts and stillnesses, ambling lazily one moment then rushing up the slope for no apparent reason, or zigzagging downwards and huddling together the next — much as deer would while grazing on such a hillside. There’s too much text, really, too much information to take in all at once –  it’s easier to stop listening to them, take in the enticing soundscore, and just watch the events unfolding. You can’t help noticing how fit the core cast must be to sustain their clearly audible delivery of text while rushing about the slope.

The second half is marked by the fall of darkness, the call of wolves, the disturbed sleep of a young woman on the stage, and by a row of 6-8 figures who suddenly appear against the pale wall of the parking building, heads topped by antlers, bodies wreathed in black skirts. The text is largely supplanted and the inherent drama of the site takes over. Distance and scale are played with; vistas are stretched across space. Figures loom from the dark and are silhouetted against the light; they move ritually in processions which thread across the hillside and down through the audience, or rush furiously up-slope as if hunting or being hunted, and disappear into dark corners under trees or between buildings.

We observe key moments in the young woman’s life, from her nightmares of wolves to a blindfolded obstacle course on the way to self-hood; the gaining of her deer-head, her head-butting arguments with her parents in her quest for freedom to roam with her peers, and her night out wilding — and the dire aftermath.

Cat Ruka is the linchpin in this second half, and hers is  an extraordinary performance,. Her immersion in the role of the nascent she-deer, and the rich physicality of her engagement with the deer pack and the invisible, mauling wolves, are chilling. 

NB  Bring a blanket and a cushion – the ground is hard and it can get cold. And be sure to give a koha. They deserve it.

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