Soap Bubbles and the Forces Which Mould Them
Brian Lipson
Presented by Arts House
Wed 1 – Sat 4 Dec, 2021
6pm – 7.30pm
Duration
5 minutes
Tickets
FREE – bookings recommended.
This experience is for one audience member at a time.
Warnings
Low level light, physical contact.
This experience requires standing for the duration of the performance.
This experience is restricted to patrons 16 years and over, unless accompanied by a parent or guardian.
Arts House
North Melbourne Town Hall
521 Queensberry St,
North Melbourne
Read our COVID-19 Safety Plan here.
An unsettling (but hygienic) encounter.
In its bubble form soap provides the perfect metaphor for the current fragility of our lives. And who would have thought that such a mundane phenomenon could turn out to be a vital weapon in the fight against an alien invasion!
Every bubble is a self-contained universe of infinite mystery and beauty. The English scientist C. V. Boys was endlessly fascinated by them; no one has investigated the process with more rigour and delight. He first published his findings on bubbles in 1890, and this curious booklet has been an inspiration for artists ever since it was championed by the great proto-dadaist Alfred Jarry.
These experiments and the sad but provocative life of the man who conducted them have led Brian Lipson to create a unique and intimate event which bends time and space with subtlety and wonder.
Only Bubbles Do
Nothing in nature knows
How to be so precise
Or contain rainbows.
Nothing in nature knows
So little; stays the same
Each moment it grows.
Nothing in nature knows
It’s wrong to be perfect
Reverses its blushes, goes.
– B.G.C. Lipson
About the Artist
Brian is a writer, director, designer, teacher and actor, but his main interest is to create unclassifiable experimental events that combine elements of performance art, lecture and seance – most famously in his solo work A Large Attendance in the Antechamber. This show toured for over seven years and received wide acclaim at the Edinburgh, Sydney and Adelaide festivals. It also toured the USA, had a three-week season at Sydney Opera House and toured regional Victoria.
Brian habitually intersperses his personal practice with main-stage acting (MTC, Bell Shakespeare, STC, Belvoir, Malthouse etc) as well as working with many independent companies such as Back to Back, Chunky Move, Eleventh Hour, fortyfivedownstairs, Hayloft, Stuck Pigs Squealing etc. He also co-devised, designed and performed in all four Inotrope/Theatre Works collaborations with the St Kilda Drop-In Centre. (The documentary Tempest at the Drop In was broadcast by the ABC for Disability Week in 2013).
During Lockdown Brian recently made two streamed works; Seven Ages for Victorian Seniors’ Festival and (with Mark Wilson) History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus for Melbourne Fringe and Arts Centre Melbourne’s Take Over program.
Brian has been nominated for nine Green Room Awards and won four of them. He was made an Australia Council Fellow in 2011.
Artist Statement
“An experiment is a question which we ask of nature.” - C.V. Boys
Presented by Arts House
Wed 1 – Sat 4 Dec, 2021
6pm – 7.30pm
Duration
5 minutes
Tickets
FREE – bookings recommended.
This experience is for one audience member at a time.
Warnings
Low level light, physical contact.
This experience requires standing for the duration of the performance.
This experience is restricted to patrons 16 years and over, unless accompanied by a parent or guardian.
Arts House
North Melbourne Town Hall
521 Queensberry St,
North Melbourne
Read our COVID-19 Safety Plan here.
Image credit: Tiffany Garvie
Image description: An older man sits in a dark room. He is lit from the front with a dark window behind him. He is holding a bubble wand up to his face with both hands, and looking intensely through a large clear bubble directly into the camera. He wears a white shirt and a black vest, and has curly grey hair, and a short light grey beard.
