Aedin Walsh at The Artful Badger’s Wild Worlds: Dark Sides. Image: Jasmin Bell
The Artful Badger’s Wild Worlds: Dark Sides. Image by Chantal Guevara
The Artful Badger’s Wild Worlds: Dark Sides. Image by Maximillian Webster
The Artful Badger’s Wild Worlds: Dark Sides. Image by Maximillian Webster
The Artful Badger’s Wild Worlds: Dark Sides. Image by Maximillian Webster
Ever seen a performer peel off parts of a vegetable penis, before writhing around in a giant net in the midst of an audience in a dark tunnel under a mainline station in London late on a Sunday night? Running at the Vault Festival until Valentine’s Day, Wild Worlds: Dark Sides is a slice of immersive theatre by interdisciplinary live arts company The Artful Badger. Don’t step into this too lightly: it is undoubtably a surreal journey, a fierce exhibition of feral values and one hell of a weird show.
Renowned for their legendary woodland stage at Secret Garden Party, the collective also hold club nights that have successfully graduated from Passing Clouds in East London to the larger underground Vaults beneath Waterloo. Their dancers in animal costumes keep the audience moving late into the night, and their workshops explore the power of the anonymity beneath a mask and freeing yourself from inhibitions. But while all of their work seeks to explore the animal in man and encourages the crowd to shed their human skins and embrace their wilder side, this show (as the name suggests) is a much darker representation than what has gone before.
There is a real passion for experimentation that is evident from the start. The opening choreography is violent and aggressive. Fireworks exploding are by no means cause for celebration and the centre of the show invites the audience in self-aware narration to inspect a dead bird: “What does it mean? Is it a metaphor, or just a dead bird?” The show doesn’t wrap itself up into an easily decoded or bite-size message but it does stay with you however, and is full of strong visual images and fleeting impressions.
Only at the end is there a move towards something lighter. Enter the faun! Stomping across the stage in high heels, he leads the audience in what is essentially an exercise dance workout, while encouraging everyone to embrace their inner predator.
A particular highlight of Wild Worlds sees the mythical creature lead everyone on a hunting mission. Projections on the far wall display a woodland countryside while a performer suspended in the air in a harness runs across the wall in panic as an entire room full of people chase her across the moving landscape. Following the kill, we are told to take out the heart and bathe in its still warm blood. It’s a great, if gory, moment and a climax to a show that seeks to challenge and confront you in equal parts by shaking you out of your everyday existence.
If this sounds too much for you, the Badgers are running a two-day party on 13 and 14 February which promises to be “romantically rampant.” This should see them return to their hedonistic routes, complete with live music, performances and art installations. Strange, chaotic and full of life, The Artful Badger obviously care deeply about giving you an experience to remember.
Wild Worlds: Dark Sides. Presented by The Artful Badger. 28 January-14 February. Vault Festival, Leake Street, Waterloo. £15. www.vaultfestival.com
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