Review: Heron and Crane by DA! Theatre Collective
by Michael Meigs

New Year's Eve day, 2008. The sun had gone lower in the sky, sending broad yellow shafts of light across dusty Zilker Park under the First Street bridge. When we came back in half an hour to the HBMG venue, the DA! Theatre Collective was setting up for their touring children’s show, Heron & Crane.

 

At the 4:30 showtime there was almost no audience. The DA! players had set up on the road. Almost without exception the people who showed up for the presentation elected to sit on the incline, behind a dirt strip about 50 feet wide. I joined them, with the perspective shown above. One man broke the pattern and plumped his rear down in the dirt just by the stage; I went and joined him. Then I stood up for a moment and looked back. The perspective from there shows the great divide between stage and public.

 

The players from the DA! Collective had an inadequate sound system, which was their primary additional disadvantage; in addition, as their audience strained to hear them, the idiot chatter booming across the lake continually interrupted their lines.

 

Occasional joggers and bikers along the roadway diverted across the dirt, and at times sculling races crossed dramatically from far, far stage right to far, far stage left.

Heron & Crane is a charming, whimsical two-character play, based on a Russian folk tale. In these circumstances it was a beautiful gem cast onto a sandpile.

As a start to the participatory session, the actors encourage the audience to make the sounds of wind, bubbles, frogs, bumblebees, and storms.

The story is simple: Michelle Brandt is Heron, a sweet but lonely bird living by a pond; Jude Hickey arrives as Crane, the boisterous, bumbling newcomer to the neighborhood. The story runs through the course of a year, as Heron and Crane discover one another, play, quarrel, dance, and make up. The wind, bubbles, frogs, bumblebees and storms periodically occur, to the delight of the spectators. The actors danced to recorded music at several points in the action.

 

Language is simple; concepts are easy for children to grasp as the two friends compete, play, differ and reconcile. Brandt and Hickey do lovely bird struts.

 

 

This is a play written for close-up participation. Jude Hickey gave us the gosh-gee-whiz attitude and throwaway energy of a clever four-year-old, and Michelle Brandt was as cheery and attractive as any child's very best friend.  But after a cranky, nonsensical argument over pumpkin carving, as the play's year draws to a close the friends are not speaking.

 

Moderator Kirk German then engages children directly, asking what the two bird friends might do to overcome their difficulties.  ("Say you're sorry!" "Play together -- have a flying race!")

 

 The actors carry out the audience's suggestions and bring their bird year to a cheerful, successful close.

 

The venue was a disaster for this delicate, friendly presentation, which in the comfortable and non-distracting confines of a classroom or activity hall must awaken wonder and great enthusiasm with its target audience. Make-believe is natural and spontaneous for the very young, and the lessons in this simple morality play are easy to grasp. And anyone with an ounce of wonder left in his or her spirit would be pleased to make the acquaintance of such engaging characters as these. 

 

 

 That was certainly the opinion of the two tiny youngsters who rushed the stage after the conclusion of the play.

 

Hits as of 2015 03 01: 2865

---

Heron and Crane
by DA! Theatre Collective
DA! Theatre Collective