“It’s a bit naughty,” says Zoos Victoria’s Stella Kinsella, who project-managed I, Animal. “The content is not for kids. It’s a bit dark, a bit edgy…we swear a bit, we talk about sex, we talk about ancestry, we talk about love.”
I, Animal is part of a push by Zoos Victoria to expand their traditional demographic. They commissioned Adelaide theatre-makers The Border Project to adapt their award-winning Adelaide Festival show I Am Not An Animal, in which performers used Adelaide Zoo as a stage and its animals as co-stars, into an interactive theatre tour for Melbourne Zoo (Australia’s oldest), which will run nightly throughout the summer. The final ingredient was the tech savvy of Art Processors, the tech developers behind the ‘O’, the innovative iPod-Touch-cum-tour-guide used at Hobart’s MONA.
“Effectively, it’s premium audio-interpretation technology that’s allowed us to create a theatrical after hours event to help [adults] appreciate what goes on here at the Zoo – but in an entirely unique, theatrical, funny, weird, emotional capacity,” says Kinsella. “We basically take people back to their childhood – that’s where the theatrical element comes in. I can’t give too much away, but we have surprises that pop up during the evening.”
As they enter the Zoo, each visitor is given an iPod touch, which contains various audio and visual material and directions. Operating interactively with the user, the iPod takes you on a choose-your-own-adventure, where you wind your way though the Zoo and hear various stories. “If you’re standing in front of the gorilla enclosure and we’re telling you about Rigo, our silver backed gorilla, and how he arrived in Australia, Rigo’s right in front of you,” says Kinsella. “If we take you down to the tigers and we’re talking about how tigers stalk and hunt in the wild, our gorgeous tigers are right there.”
But as much as zoos originated as forms of entertainment, these days they have a greater purpose – to protect and keep the animals within it. As a staunch former conservationist, Kinsella is an authority on Zoos Victoria’s role as guardians. “A lot of people haven’t gone to the Zoo since they were kids and they may not know how much we’ve changed. Zoos Victoria is all about conservation. Everything that we’re doing is about trying to change the habits of humans to save the lives of animals into the future.”
For those of us who’ve avoided zoo-crowds for the last couple of decades, I, Animal is an opportunity to re-engage with zoos as they are now. “When you get here it’s quite extraordinary how much it’s changed,” says Kinsella, “and that’s what we’re appealing to with the hipsters out there – who probably haven’t been here since they were kids. You might actually realise that you can help, you can get on board.”
BY BELLA ARNOTT-HOARE
