Leave it to the French!

Growing up, when I was only in about 6 or 7 years old, I went to a couple of puppet shows. I loved to watch the characters that were created and listen to the story unfold. 

This inspired me, I often went home and put on my own little shows. Using a cardboard box as the stage with wooden pegs borrowed from my mothers washing line, I painted them to resemble puppets! Strings would get tangled in my fingers, it wasn't easy. My audience was normally my pet dog!

In Perth, Western Australia at the moment is the Royal de Luxe, a French mechanical marionette street theatre company. Founded in 1979 in Aix-en-Provence by Jean-Luc Courcoult, they moved from Toulouse to Nantes in 1989. The company has performed all over the world. They take different Marionettes and tell different stories for different countries, normally coinciding with a special celebration. Millions of people have watched these mechanical masterpieces.

The Perth International Arts Festival brought them here as part of the Centenary for the ANZAC celebrations. It is free for people to go and watch over three days.

The Marionettes brought here include, "The Giants", a little girl, 6 meters tall and a deep sea diver, 11 meters tall. Accompanying them are 90 company performers, 100 - strong back up crew and 400 local volunteers. They weigh a lot, cranes and other structures are used to move them. 

The story unfolds and this is what it is about

In the south-west corner of Western Australia, there were Aboriginal communities full of mysteries. One of these mysteries was a boat that had come up from out of the sand, only the prow could be seen, the rest was imprisoned in the ground.

One day, the Little Girl Giant, busy with her travels, fell into one of the Aboriginal communities of the Noongar Nation, into one of those families who are in love with the barrab (sky), the boodja (earth), the yorgam (trees) and keap (water).
She was so welcomed that she decided to stay with them for a long time.
She then witnessed the evolution and change of these inhabitants in the face of the transformation of the Australian continent. She lived there as though it were a beelya (river), full of dreams that jumped like fish.

One day, one of the community’s children brought her an old book full of drawings. It was dog-eared, crumpled, aged. It told the story of a little girl in a lighthouse full of love and sorrow, who watched soldiers leaving Australia on ships, carrying hope into lost battles. It was 1915 on the beaches of Gallipoli where the sand, reddened by the blood of men, frightened the moon. Through the book, the Little Girl Giant, as she looked at the sky, saw the past, the present and even the future.

Her gaze plunged into the centre of the battle, and she could see men disappearing, like being suddenly wiped from the earth as  an eraser would rub out on a drawing. She also saw a boat sink, snatched by a gust stronger than a cathedral and laid down on the bottom of the ocean, then an Australian diver, sent to find survivors, stuck in air bubbles. As he could not see a living soul on the seabed, he decided to stay there. Miraculously and without knowing it, he started walking and this removed the tubes and the air that filled his lungs. As he turned his head, he saw dozens of boats lying in the sand. Methodically, he entered each ship and brought dead men out of them. He dug the ground to bury each one and he continued, his muscles toned by an infernal will, so much so that around each sunken boat, there was a graveyard, like small heaps of sand without crosses, only small bellies emerging from the dust. There were hundreds like this around each boat, peaceful. With a madness which cannot be named, he continued his work. But from graveyard to graveyard, his body grew thicker, denser and without realising it, one day he was able to overturn the ships. He had monumental strength. He had quite simply grown like a child in a bath who suddenly realises that his feet are touching the taps. It was simply the story of a Giant who became big at the bottom of the sea.
In the Noongar country, the Little Girl Giant closed the last page of the book. The little Aboriginal child, his eyes full of colours, was sad then, in his gaze a rainbow flew away to the clouds.
He understood then that the Little Girl Giant had to leave to re-join her family, and when the sun lifted the horizon, he hurried to fetch his father. Whilst the stars hid in the sky, lying behind the morning light, all the people of the Noongar Nation saw a tear come from the Little Girl Giant’s eyelid. As it touched the ground, a small puddle was swallowed up by the soil. In this very spot, a tree could be seen growing in the space of two hours. From a small and barely awoken sprout, a trunk developed, full of branches with leaves that the wind enjoyed moving. It was just a tree in the boodja (country).

Then she thought that the buried boat could sail the earth to find the diver. The Aboriginals began digging and within ten days, the ship was ready on the ground. The Little Girl Giant climbed onto it and the Noongars began to sing the rain. Accompanied by the sound of the boomerangs, she crossed Western Australia. The sand made waves, the boodja filling with water. In short, she arrived in Minang boodja (Albany) from where she sent a hot air balloon, like a moon over the ocean, to call the diver. Then she headed to Whadjuk boodja (Perth).
Upon her arrival in the big city, she placed her head underwater and blew bubbles which echoed at the bottom of the ocean. Everyone knows that whales can hear sounds from 5,000 kilometres away when they call each other and that the sound of people’s footsteps on pavements reverberates to the centre of the earth.
The air bubbles that were pushed by the tide floated around the Giant Diver. With their large, small or tiny shapes, they followed one another like a convoy of boats and one after the other, they exploded in front of the Giant’s eyes. They expressed signals like Morse code: a point, a line, two points then nothing and again two lines and a point. It was a language the man of the sea knew well. He could then read sentences in which each message ended with ‘come’. No sooner had he understood he was surrounded by a tornado of fishes. They circled him faster and faster so that the swirl of force became a gust of wind. On the surface, the agitated fog started to cough so hard that a storm swallowed the bottom of the water, throwing the diver into the sky all the way into the clouds. Then, like a lost body, he fell down unconscious in Perth. The earth trembled and suddenly a great spray of water burst out of the ground between two buildings. A geyser was born, as if to greet through space the arrival of the Giants.


Keeping with the French theme, I have added one of my favourite French recipes!

Strawberry Crepes with Chocolate Sauce

Ingredients 

 1 cup of plain flour
1 tablespoon of caster sugar
A pinch of salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup of milk
80 grams of butter, melted
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 tablespoon of vegetable oil 

1 punnet of strawberries, sliced

One cup of thickened cream

250 grams of dark cooking chocolate

 

Method 

In a medium sized bowl, sift dry ingredients and make a well in the centre of the bowl. Add eggs and milk gradually, and whisk until a smooth paste is formed. Whisk in butter and vanilla extract and allow to stand in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Preheat a medium sized frying pan with a tablespoon of oil. Pour about half a ladle of batter into the frying pan, and swirl the batter around until the whole surface of the pan has been covered. The batter and the resulting crepe should be thin. As soon as the crepe is slightly browned and detached, turn it over and cook for a few seconds. Continue until all the batter is gone.

To make the chocolate sauce, break up and put the chocolate in a bowl. Heat the cream in a small saucepan until it reaches a simmer. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir gently until the mixture is smooth.

To assemble, place crepe on a plate and put sliced strawberries on one third of crepe, then fold over. Drizzle chocolate sauce over the top.

Bon Appetit!