The animating force behind The Adventures of Pinocchio is the desire of the wooden puppet to become a real boy. Every scrape and digression is a lesson on the way to that ultimate goal. But what exactly is a real boy? Carlo Collodi would have moral answers to those questions, having laid out a minefield of temptations to be resisted on the road to maturity. But for Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill, the story has a different set of resonances.
In 2018, MacAskill came out as trans (“I just feel so much more like myself”), which means he finds Pinocchio’s journey to self-realisation especially poignant. Cade, his on and offstage partner, has questions of their own about where they fit into the story. Is it all about the transitioning puppet or is it also about those who support him along the way?
These are the impulses behind The Making of Pinocchio, a funny, clever and thoughtful two-hander, rich in playful imagery and direct-to-camera asides, about identity, definition and acceptance. Conceived for live performance and adapted for this single-take “digital edition”, it bounces in and out of Collodi’s story, discovering layers of childlike fantasy, autobiography and adult desire (warning: scenes of extreme puppet sex).
The satire is gentle, but the politics are clear. Anyone transitioning in this world has to convince “at least two people” they are a real boy – and only after telling their story again and again. The point is well made, but a self-deprecating scene about puppet rights is no less funny.
Cinematographer Kirstin McMahon has great fun playing with perspective. As a tree, MacAskill looms large in the foreground, his silhouette dwarfing Cade as they work in the forest, but as a puppet, he becomes miniature, like a powerless child. Even after liberating MacAskill’s Pinocchio from his tree, Cade’s woodcutter continues to be a controlling force, frequently dominating the picture, their face up close to the camera.
The ebb and flow of Yas Clarke’s breath-like violin loops creates a fairytale world at once calming and strange, while the all-consuming red of Tim Spooner’s set variously suggests picture-book landscape, theatrical velvet and S&M dungeon. They give the story a happy ending, but stop short of a neat resolution; these are, after all, lives in progress.
By some margin, The Making of Pinocchio is the highlight of the opening weekend of Take Me Somewhere, Glasgow’s festival of contemporary international performance. Saturday night’s Jump Cut – Episode #3, an “art film” by Animals of Distinction combined drag, lip-syncing and gothic melodrama in a way that would have been funny if it didn’t have such a poor sense of pace. Much better is Joana Tischkau’s Colonastics (until 25 May), a series of Onion-style videos promoting “colonial gymnastics” to help white people who are “arrhythmic, monotone and stiff”. Her sharpest satirical sting is in the first of the three instalments, which most effectively makes the connection between physicality and oppression.
Also on a colonial theme, Ayò Akínwándé’s virtual exhibition Kòrónà Stomp (until 30 May) presents Brexit through the lens of Pathé News in a series of short pieces that suggest connections between Home Office bureaucracy, gung-ho patriotism and independence. Worth a listen, too, is Sarah Hopfinger’s Pain & I (until 30 May), a poetic audio piece that reflects on the performer’s chronic pain not as enemy, as you might expect, but as an old friend.
