There’s a scene in the film Mary Poppins where the Banks children and the rather eccentric chimneysweep Bert (played by Dick van Dyke, of course) visit a friend who is prone to hysterical laughter. We find this friend floating near the ceiling of his attic home, high, it would seem, on the giggles. The laughter is contagious and by the end of the scene it is only the schoolmarmish gravitas of Ms Poppins that brings the group back to earth. Playing the hysterical gentleman was, in fact, actor Ed Wynn whose comedy sketch with Buster Keaton was shown by Jane Taylor as part of the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts’ (GIPCA’s) Exuberance Project last weekend. Taylor, along with many other contributors from various fields, had been asked by the project’s curators, Raél Salley (Senior lecturer in Discourse and Painting at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town) and Jay Pather (GIPCA Director), to consider and celebrate ‘what is extremely good, effusive and uninhibitedly enthusiastic’ in Africa. Read more...