A story of many parts

Visit any rural property in the State and you will most likely stumble across the "graveyard", the final resting place for old utes, tractors, fuel drums, farming equipment and household odds and sods.

Many farmers would have inherited these heaps of trash over the generations, seeing them as treasure they can plunder for spare parts to breathe new life into a busted mechanical workhorse.

But those junk piles serve more than a utilitarian purpose. To rake through them is to excavate the memories and stories of the people who have lived and worked on the land.

In some way, that serves as a metaphor for the way Spare Parts Puppet Theatre approached its rural residency in the Wheatbelt town of Merredin.

Farm, which had its world premiere at Merredin's charming and historic Cummins Theatre last week, began life two years ago when locals contributed to a midden of memories at a pop-up stall established by Spare Parts on Merredin's main street.

Spare Parts began its residency by shaping a mound of dirt into the outline of a human body skirted by a fence as if it was a farm. People were invited to place personal objects on the "body-farm" and indicate what parts of the farm correlated to what parts of the body; was the house the heart or the brain, for example.

"It was an exercise that kids and adults could do and a way of collecting stories," Spare Parts artistic director Philip Mitchell says.

"It's been interesting to see people's responses to what we have done with all their stories and creations," Mitchell says. "Those objects hold the stories and memories that are being unleashed. What does a little toy tractor stir in the memory of a man who has done 60 harvests in his life and now has to leave the land? What are the triggers that remind people of things?"

One woman from Perth took Mitchell, writer Ian Sinclair and the rest of the creative team around her childhood property. They lingered over the junk heap as she raked over her memories of growing up there.

"Seeing her remember her childhood through those triggers of a sink or a bottle or a stump was lovely," Mitchell says.

Supported by Collgar Wind Farm, the CBH Group and Shire of Merredin, among others, Farm is presented in partnership with the Cummins Theatre. The seed for the residency was planted by cast member Chloe Flockhart, whose family has farmed in the district for a century and helped welcome the city-slicker company.

"The important thing was that we weren't a cold Fremantle company coming into a regional area," Mitchell says. "We came in with a family that had been in the area for generations."

He says it was a stimulating and bonding process for the creative team to be immersed in the "intense laboratory" where inspiration could be drawn directly from the community. "The biggest thing we took away was our experience with people and their amazing connection to the land."

Farm tells the story of a young girl who is not at first acknowledged as someone who could take over the running of the family property. "We were inspired by the stories of women who are now taking over farms because of improvements in technology, part of a movement of women called 'farm-hers'," Mitchell says

The show explores themes of change, drought, salinity, bumper times and resilience using dance, puppetry and physical theatre led by Ruth Battle as an undefined elemental creature who brings the environment to life through her body and masking techniques. Mitchell says Farm is a highly visual story scored by a conversation between a grandfather and a girl.

"We didn't want to do an Old MacDonald Had a Farm story that you might expect from a puppetry company that does theatre for young people," he says of a production that takes Spare Parts into new explorations of the visual language of puppetry.

"It is very much about giving life and soul to the soil, to the environment. Still, there are a few kangaroos in there and a few sheep transformed from wheat bags. There is some comedy and humour in there."

Mitchell says Farm comes at a very busy time for the company, which has three different troupes involved in three productions, including the regional tour of The Night Zoo, which premiered in 2009, and the world-premiere season of Moominpappa at Sea at the Awesome Festival.

He says Spare Parts is back in good financial health after the difficulties emanating from hosting the UNIMA World Puppetry Festival in 2008. The company has a strong sponsorship base and earns a healthy 60 per cent of its income through the box office.