Oh, to be in London this Saturday, September 13; if you are, lucky you! Improbable Theatre and firework crew "The World Famous" are collaborating to produce "Sticky," an international sensation featuring a shimmering 100 foot tower of light and fire made of Scotch tape and sparklers. "It has astounded audiences from Zurich to the steps of Sydney Opera House," said the Financial Times.

"The tower rises before the audience, creating fantastical images as it grows, and then explodes in a blaze of shooting stars and Catherine wheels - releasing a huge winged insect. It is spectacular, but also extraordinarily moving."

"The ingredients are dozens of rolls of Scotch tape and several hundred sparklers. 'A sparkler's the simplest firework there is,' said pyrotechnician Mike Roberts of The World Famous, 'but it's an entirely different effect when you light 400 of them at once.'" [I am reminded of Lenin's remark, "Quantity has its own quality."]

"The idea of 'Sticky,' said Phelim McDermott, one of Improbable Theatre's founding triumvirate, 'was almost as a guerilla rig where you'd go in and use whatever space was there and do different things... It's really a celebration of using an ordinary material in a spectacular way, a celebration of an impossible idea.'"

"One effect of the protean, ever-shifting aspect of Improbable is that it can be difficult and sometimes downright misleading to try and describe what the company actually does." [I have precisely this problem when someone asks me what I do!]

Who will send me to London by Saturday evening? I so want to see this!

I am all excited: I just found out Improbable Theatre is coming to the U.S.! Alas, though, not with "Sticky." Here's their website.