“It’s the middle of the week and the Central Plaza has been taken over by the Arts Center”. As the week progressed, all us got to see the few poles in front of the palm trees develop into a colorful mess. If we went by at the right time, we could even see kids playing in and around the installation and adding their own contributions to it. Tanged, by the Polyglot Theatre Company is an interactive experience, primarily for children, where each participant is given a ball of elastic and asked to “go on a journey”. Once they have exhausted their ball of elastic, or “tangle”, they are encouraged to play in the space that had been created.
The exhibit, as such, is a peculiar piece of art. Each participant enters the exhibit with a rough(ish) idea of what to expect – the tangle around the poles definitely spark the curious side of one’s mind. Upon entering, each person is asked to tie the tangle around and that’s about the only instruction we’re ever given. What happens next is series of interesting interactions between participants, performers and poles. I’ll be extrapolating from my experience in Tangled from here on. Participants begin tying the tangle around poles and making zig-zag patterns across the space. It often happens that two participants get in each other’s way. This typically leads to one of two possibilities – either they nod and move their way, or they get a little quirky and tie some tangle around/across each other and then move on. In my observation, the latter happened much more often that the former as time passed, and kids who participated would laugh and tie the tangle around each other. When a participant interacts with a performer, it almost always led to an interesting event. Usually, the performer would try and either circle around the participant with some tangle, or sometimes the participant would join in with an idea of how to tangle up the performer. Once a participant has interacted in such a manner with a performer, this nature of interaction begins to spread, as one participant ties another and them another and so on.
It became clear to me that performers have a very delicate role in the experience – they nudge the participant when necessary, while maintaining enough distance to allow them to express themselves. For example, if performers merely went around the space tying people up with tangle, the entire experience would be different, since it’s likely that most participants would follow suit and just tie each other up. However, the performers don’t just do what they think is right, they also adapt to the participants train of thought. If a participant decides to run from a performer, they run after them. If, on the other hand, a participant decided to chase a performer, they would run away. This dynamic creates for a social experience, where each participant is not only nudged to interact with performers, but also with other participants.
Another interesting interaction that occured during my observation was between participants and the exhibit itself. Each participant had their own unique way of interacting with the exhibit. Some would go crazy, running all over the place and tying their ball of elastic to every possible pole/fence/human that they could possibly find. Some (mostly little kids) would find joy in going around a single pole in circles until they could see that their tangle was all over the pole. Some wouldn’t rest until they had tied every other person at least once with their tangle. The result of this freedom that participants are given leads to them being able to express themselves as they want. This expression leads to art – the journey of each individual is different and the exhibit in essence can be considered a “criss-cross” between different people’s journeys. Each group of participants produce something that’s different from the other, yet in a larger sense – it can be considered as similar, in the sense that it’s all just a collection of people’s expression through their journey with a ball of elastic.
Most participants had a chance to tie around at least 2 balls of tangle when I was participating (I think because there weren’t as many participants in my session). Kids would finish their balls of elastic and run to grab another. Once they were done, and they weren’t given more tangle – they began to play. Performers would facilitate this play, but most participants would begin on their own. Watching kids play was one of the most entertaining aspects of participation for me. They would come up with ideas of how to engage with the play space like I never would. The play aspect is generated, again, by the freedom and the contextualization of the space by the participant. While some may choose to simply jump across the exhibit and bounce around, some would sneak from below and pop their heads out ever so often to frighten someone else. It generates social expression where each participant interacts with some entity in the space to engage in play. It’s a wonderful exercise in creative exploration.
To conclude, the Tangled experience is one that provides an almost unrestricted space to express their creative side. It is achieved through the interaction between performers and participants with the exhibit and each other, and is unique to every participant. The experience not only allows, but also encourages participants to be as expressive as they can, and they do so subtly.