Chapter 251: Brainfools’ Balance at Ensembles Festival

Thirty years ago I rocked up in Valencia with just a backpack and booked myself into a hostel. I didn't know a soul. I was in my third year abroad at university, a bit broken emotionally from my experience in a L'Arche community in Catalonia, the administration rather than the community. I signed up for a few courses at the university and stopped a girl to ask for directions. "It's my birthday," she said. "Come to the cafeteria and meet all my friends."

Later, at the notice board, looking for accommodation, a Swiss girl and a Chilean girl approached at the same time. "Shall we find something together?" And so we did, there was an advert up for a flat for three. "Call Angelita" it read, so we did, from a phonebox outside. There were no shortages of angels that year.

Returning to Valencia this year to watch the Spain v Argentina World Cup final at Mamen's, I ended up getting a pair of wings tattooed on my wrist in a local market. A reminder of those who lift each other up, and of never forgetting what it is like to turn up in a foreign country and find welcome and support, acutely aware that it is not always the case.

So, a few days later, watching the story of a friendship unfold between two refugees, played by Toffy Paulweber and Jared Shanks, balancing each other out, was really beautiful. 

Brainfools' Balance is set in an English bunker during the Second World War. A radio transmission early on, along with the clothes and braces, signals the period, as does the 1940s music. Ah, I loved the range of music. It was so much part of the character of the piece, shifting the mood and the relationship between them, from the German ballad to the Parisian feel and notes of jazz. I came away wanting the playlist! What follows is a wonderfully inventive blend of partner acrobatics, juggling and equilibristic work, with an imaginative use of planks, kegs and bottles that gives the whole thing a pub vibe in which I feel very much at home, sipping my beer in the glorious sunshine.

It's superb skill, but also just plain funny, the experimentation of finding out what happens when... Toffy makes a rola bola out of a champagne bottle and a piece of wood. How does it not crack? Meanwhile Jared sets up on an oversized version with a keg and plank behind. Dear lord, I really have a horror of rola bola, the thought of the bottom shooting out from underneath, and they make it look so easy.

Then there is the bottle balancing, the first time I've seen that live. Extraordinary, the way Toffy eases his weight across when they are on the floor, and then has to ramp it up a notch. On go the bottles onto a platform at height, and on go the heels. It's incredibly risky, more than risqué, and really touching in the way Jared leads Toffy up to the point where he is standing on yet another platform, balanced on top of the bottles.

The blond over-plaits in his hair, with a middle parting, add to the wartime-chic glamour, set against Jared's dark hair held back in a ponytail and his handlebar moustache. I loved the duality of their energies, the masculine and the feminine in counterbalance. There was something there that reminded me of the relationship between Molina and Valentín in Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman (see Chapter 7 - click here), and I was reassured to find later I was not the only one to read that in the dynamics too.

While the precarious balancing acts held the tension and the flow of juggling was hypnotic, the acro was superb too. The balance needed there, whether using props or simply each other, was so much fun to watch, like when they counterweight each other atop a keg, or the showstopping moment when Toffy balances on top of Jared's head on a single foot. I liked the moments of downtime too, the pauses where they each sit on the end of a plank, legs dangling. I liked the surprise of a radio blowing up. Impossible skill matched by genius innovation. There is a wonderful familiarity and trust there that has developed out of a real life friendship, both finding their feet over time, meeting through circus in the UK, a community that holds each other in more ways than one. 

And there was something rather lovely about the fragility of the whole thing. When they were tidying away after the show, one of the bottles dropped. A reminder that these objects really are as precarious as they look. I wondered if they could use my empty beer bottle. Probably. 


Brainfools have a Circus Scratch night up next at Woolwich Works on Friday 25 September. Click here for more info and trailer - www.woolwich.works

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