So yesterday was my favourite day of I-Fest so far! last night we had two fantastic feature performances, one by Maegan Bruce and another by Ferrel Marr. Both of these performances were very different from the rest of the feature performances of the week - not least in terms of the number of performers, but also in terms of style of delivery. Every time I come to I-Fest there is one night when I watch a performance and say to myself "that is what I came to I-Fest for"... last night was that night for me.
Maegan Bruce is a ventriloquist, puppeteer and artist. Her ventriloquism and puppetry were technically excellent, but that wasn't really what caught my eye... she finished her performance with a brilliant piece of painting. It was fantastic. What stuck out to me was not the technical or artistic ability with which she painted but the fact that you could see that she was doing it with a raw, honest passion. I love the fact that sometimes the simplest things can make the biggest impact.
Ferrel Marr's performance similarly blew me away. You know when you have a family get together there is always that relative who has the rest of the family eating out of their hand when they tell a story, seemingly without making any effort? Well last night Ferrel did that to I-Fest! A beautiful mix of marionettes, puppets, blacklight painting and song made up his beautiful patchwork performance.
Both performers last night did not have any real glitz or glamour about what they did, they didn't have a massive show stopping routine with hundreds of performers involved... but they were true to themselves and they did what they wanted to do, excellently! If there was an object lesson hiding in the feature presentations last night it would have been: don't ever try and be who you're not, be yourself - you have a unique gift.
Each one of us has a unique gift and we should all be different when we perform, after all variety is the spice of life :) Don't ever feel under pressure to emulate someone else because their style is more popular than yours. Both Maegan and Ferrel performed brilliantly engaging pieces last night with techniques others people wouldn't think twice about using... it was great to see!
This is my last blog about I-Fest "on location"... I hope you've enjoyed them.
Take care - Dave
1 comment:
Thanks so much for allowing us to experience IFest through your eyes this week! For those of us who didn't get to attend, it felt nice to know what was going on!
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