Reviewed by Caroline Stafford
Do you like audience participation and facing your inner critic? Well, if so, Creative Juices might just be the show for you. The brainchild of Timothy Christopher Ryan, this interactive and creatively colourful comedy show feels like someone took Art Attack and decided to remake it for adults, with just a touch more camp.
As you walk into the De Parel Spiegeltent at The Pleasure Garden, you are greeted with a personal clipboard and pen and a minimalist stage with a small whiteboard, a simple table and some ominously glowing pots of paint. One thing that is definitely not simple is the cleverly, chaotically chromatic host. Clad in overlapping layers of blue, down to his bohemian well-worn high-heeled shoes, Ryan enthrals the audience with his magnetic personality and powerful on-stage aura. He walks a delicate line between self-deprecating comic and magical misbehaving muse. Creative Juices is truly a one-man show, Ryan uses minimal props, art, humour and his body to create an inviting and engaging environment with a delectable balance of comedy and introspection.
There is no escaping being a part of the experience of Creative Juices. Ryan guides you through a range of drawing exercises that, at first, feel a bit frivolous, but eventually create a more poignant meaning or just a clever joke. At times your art is solo, but Ryan also holds your hand through more collaborative tasks and even lends his own body as a tool of creation. There are also plenty of opportunities for individual audience members to come up on stage and take part, as muse or tool, which may terrify the introverts in the audience, but Ryan creates a uniquely safe space with his disarming charm. Towards the end of the show, there are opportunities to create group tableaus that might see even the shyest of patrons finding themselves undulating with previously undiscovered artistic fluids.
The best way to describe Creative Juices is unique. At first, it might seem like a silly, campy drawing class, complete with an art teacher even more unhinged than usual. However, if you allow yourself to suspend your internal judgement - if you can let yourself play and relax, you will walk out having walked with Ryan down a path of mindful meditation, and maybe mayhem, and find yourself a little moist, a little more creatively juicy.
Reviewer Note: Tickets for this review were provided by the theatre company.
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