At this year’s DreamBIG Children’s Festival, dive into Whalebone where tales spring to life! Amidst a backdrop of whimsical inventions and quirky contraptions, a lone worker endeavours to protect our human stories from a rogue AI. This visual feast combines humour, magic, and a pinch of circus, engaging both children and adults in a thrilling adventure. It’s an invitation to explore the impact of technology on our lives and celebrate human creativity. Perfect for young inventors and story lovers, Whalebone is a roller-coaster ride of emotions and wonder.
Whalebone was created and is performed by Jens Altheimer, a theatre maker, performer and creator of community arts programs. Jens spoke to Glam Adelaide in the lead up to the DreamBIG Children’s Festival about Whalebone, it’s creation and what it is about creating theatre that drew Jens to pursue a career in the arts.
“I actually started off as a circus performer, so my first few years were mainly throwing stuff and catching them and throwing people and trying to catch them again. I think that my big shift towards theatre was that I wanted to be able to tell bigger stories to audiences. So I really became interested in how you can tell stories, and would look for a bit of a quirky angle in which to do that. We are surrounded by machines and contraptions in life, and I found that these things also started to invade my idea of theatre. I started to try to find stories where us humans connect with the world of objects around us. From that I went into puppetry and object theatre, and then on to shadow theatre. I do a lot of building of contraptions and inventions that I use in my shows. I love the possibility of having an idea and working out how I could tell that idea in ways that it hasn’t been told yet – it fascinates me.”
Jens shared with us where the idea behind Whalebone came from.
“I have a warehouse full of stuff that I collected over the years. Whenever I start working on community projects I collect bits and pieces that I think could become something else down the track. I find that stories develop in my mind the more I play with these random items I’ve collected. That was the starting point for Whalebone. Whalebone is placed in an agency called The Depository. It’s a location that actually looks after human stories and extracts the stories that are in old objects and safeguards them in the so-called ‘Mother of Stories’. All this actually happens as a real thing, so audiences see how the stories get extracted, how stories fly through the air and get integrated into a big vortex-like video animation that is the Mother of Stories. So all these machines give all the idea that it really happens. It was just before COVID when I started to have the idea for Whalebone and with all the spare time I had I also started to learn more about programming and coding and all that.”
Whalebone will be performed in the Space Theatre at the Adelaide Festival Centre on Saturday 10 May at 12noon and 3.30pm.
“I really hope audiences can have an in-depth experience with Whalebone. I want them to feel a kind of wonder and magic as they are taken to worlds that they wouldn’t have seen before, to that imaginary place: ‘The Depository’. There’s a bit of the story of my parents also interwoven into the show.”
Whalebone
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
10 May, 2025 at 12.00pm and 3.30pm
55 minutes runtime, plus 10min Q&A
https://www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/whats-on/whalebone
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