A WEB WOVEN OF LIGHT

Book_of_Dew_Image.jpg

Tide and Foam Productions’ Book of Dew sells out 
at Edinburgh Fringe, makes Bay Area debut

By Andrew “Boots” Hardy
San Francisco International Arts Festival

From a strictly linear perspective, they went about it all wrong; their results, however, smash the linear perspective completely to pieces.

Sid Zhang and Connor Lifson, of Tide & Foam Productions, brought their Book of Dew to San Francisco’s Theatre of Yugen in January for its Bay Area debut. Last summer, they packed every seat at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, selling out their performance with an inventive and remarkable set that they designed and built before a single line of script had been penned–a rather unorthodox methodology that nonetheless pays huge dividends to audiences.

“So much of theater is made from story and text,” Lifson explained. “Starting from there, then you figure out the images to fit the story… I’ve wanted for years to be able to work from the other direction, starting with images and inspiration.”

It was this idea that excited him from the beginning, when Zhang pitched him her Book of Dew concept. She’d found herself fascinated by the leitmotif of a single dewdrop caught in a spider’s web, and the idea of a wall with tiny doors of diverse dimensions, behind which a series of miniature performances could be staged.

The end result of this reverse engineering is a quietly profound performance that incorporates moving light and a sense of stationary motion across several media. Much of their set combines both high- and low-tech, as well as some carefully curated “flaws.” Glitchy 3D printing produced spider webs with unexpected threads, producing a gossamer effect that made the webs appear even more authentic. Zhang then spent hours with a glue gun, adding perfect dew drops by hand, one by one. 

The sensory immersion is brought to life as a series of storylines unfold from behind the wall, poetic and musical, moving the audience with its visual and audial motion as prismatic hues of light burst forth. Behind one door, we get a heart-rending glimpse of a solitary spider’s love for the glowing moon. Behind another, ribbons of fabric softly flutter and twirl through a backlit aquarium, inspiring a feeling of weightlessness and tranquility. By the end of the show, an enduring peace has come upon the audience, a peace that endures beyond the theater.

“It was very poetic,” said theater-goer Vitalia Fedossova, who had returned to see the show a second time. “The way they describe it–that it’s visual poetry–I really felt that. It put me in a reflective state.”

The performance exposed her to a new perspective in puppet theater, she said, and she found it both moving and inspiring. As soon as the first performance ended, she knew she’d be back for a second show.

“I wanted to be able to pick out more of the details,” she said, explaining that, this time, she wanted a front-row seat. “I really enjoy the way they incorporated movement and light into the show, and different elements that I’d never seen before.”

Fringe audiences in Scotland found refuge in the performance, Lifson said.

“Fringe is total madness,” he laughed. “It was reflected back from audience members that, because Fringe is so hectic, and this show is the opposite, people were able to walk in and lose their sense of time for a little bit, and experience the magic.”

This energy promises to grow to greater heights at this year’s San Francisco International Arts Festival, where the two will be joining musician Duane Forrest (who was performing his award-winning solo show, Bob Marley: How Reggae Changed the World at the same venue in Edinburgh) for a work-in-progress showing of Forrest’s new production, Tree of Dreams. It will be a return to the orthodox, linear method for Lifson and Zhang, as they create the visuals and puppetry for Forrest’s completed script. 

SFIAF Director, Andrew Wood and Last Supper Party curator, Kimi Sugioka attended a performance of Forrest’s Bob Marley and invited him to present his globetrotting work to the 2025 San Francisco Festival in May (Forrest is currently in Adelaide, Australia preparing to stage the show there). Fans of the Canadian singer-songwriter will get to experience first-hand his unique blending of jazz and reggae, with authentic vocals and lyrics that are singularly relevant in the modern world.


San Francisco International Arts Festival
Phone Number: 415-399-9554 | Email: [email protected]
1471 Guerrero Street, #3 San Francisco, CA 94110

 

CONTACT

Mailing List

Facebook

Instagram

ABOUT

Mission

Archives

Funders