Day 8 - Ommen Circus Day
The morning started as any other with a nice Dutch breakfast in each other’s company. We could feel the excitement amongst ourselves as we were finishing it off: the butterflies before entering a stage, the emotions before a show. To our luck we had a great audio system which propelled sound across the facility as well as outdoors. The right combination of music, and the tension was loosen as people relaxed and started to move and dance while Andra and Katya prepared our makeup for the show.
As mentioned in the previous posts, the Circus act contained of what’s important to a circus: clowns, acrobats, magicians, directors, an audience and of course, penguins. Thus, our costumes and make-up had to match our characters.
As the directors were introducing the circus, the magicians started playing their part transforming into statues and back to humans again amazing the audience. In the mean time, some poor little lost penguins, have traveled all across the world to find a new home and have found a suitable place in the Ommen Circus. As they were trying to fit in with the rest of the crew, the clowns became more and more jealous. For you see, clowns desired all the spotlight in a show. How would they have attained that with the fluffy cute birds stealing the audience’s hearts. Thus they devised a mischievous plan to get rid of them. They tortured by tickling, scaring and hugging them breathless, then locked them away, once again taking the light of the audience with their clumsiness and humour. Fortunately for the little creatures, not all were captured and the ones that were able to escape sought the help of the magicians who witnessed the whole maleficent act as they were statues the whole time. Meanwhile the directors were miming the story, as the whole act was voiceless. The audience were baffled by the cruelty of the clowns and desired the justice they deserved. Magicians acted quickly and with their power ensnared the clowns in a trance-like dance taking their ability to move. The penguins that escaped the clown’s tyranny were able to quickly rescued their kin as the wizards formed a magical barrier to contain the pesky fools.
The acrobats were missing some components in order to do their act, and observing the chaos that was produced, have seen the potential of the strong two faced red clown and released him from the spell with the condition to join them. Once free, the penguins also joined the acrobats as they were in need of other performers to produce their eye catching performance. Although he agreed to be an acrobat, a clown will always be a clown. After the acrobatic performance, the red two faced clown set his brothers free. They learned their lessons though and decided to play along with the rest, mixing within the group. What once had been clowns, magicians, directors, penguins, acrobats and audience, were one now: creating and performing together within a big family.
The performance was played on the bridge that crossed the Vecht river, in Jumbo's square and also in Action’s square. Act by act, our viewers grew and interacted with us gradually as we ended giving our audience free hugs.
After we finished we headed back to our now homey Olde Vechte for a well deserved lunch. Before we took our make-up off and changed into comfortable clothes for the rest of the day, we had a photo session with each member of the circus on the spot light.
Did you think we were through for the day? Well guess again. Our facilitators prepared for us a 10 m long canvas for us to draw on while listening to some funky tunes. Both our hands and feet were turning into shades of rainbows as we dipped them in colour after colour, covering the enormous canvas. Who needs brushes, right? Well, guess again, we had at our disposal every means to work on this masterpiece: paint, brushes, cloths, and of course ourselves.
I must admit the cleaning session was not my favourite part after that, though we managed and had enough time for a karaoke session having set up the projector. Thus ended our 8th day at Olde Vechte.
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