Is it a Greek epic? State of the nation drama? No – it’s Shaun the Sheep! | platform

‘I“It’s a family drama,” says Yaron Lifshitz. “It’s a sort of minor-key, gently comedic version of the Oresteia trilogy. Without the dismemberment, the murder and the purple carpets. Lifshitz talks about his latest production for the popular contemporary Australian circus troupe Circa. Is it a Greek epic? A state-of-the-nation drama? A searing emotional journey? No, none of those. It’s a fun family circus show based on the delightful cartoon character Shaun the Sheep.”

You might not think the antics of an anthropomorphic herd of farm animals could be compared to Aeschylus, but Lifshitz sees the characters bound together as a family with different personalities, friends, and enemies, who have to work out how to live together. Shaun the Sheep has been a hit since the character’s introduction in Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave in 1995. The stop-motion series, which launched in 2007, has aired in over 50 countries and has had several spin-offs including two feature films and another in production.

However, children’s animation is not an obvious subject for Circa, which has been known over the past 20 years for its highly skilled and atmospheric shows, with an “abstract and exciting” aesthetic, Lifshitz said. They perform amazing acrobatic movements with a refined choreographic feel – at this year’s Edinburgh Festival, for example, they performed Gluck’s opera Orpheus and Eurydice, to great acclaim.

But when art director Lifshitz heard about the possibility of working with Shaun the Sheep creators Aardman Animations, something just made sense about it. “We found we were like-minded,” he says via video call from Australia. “We’re slightly left-of-centre people. They’re from Bristol, we’re from Brisbane, and they both have a similar offbeat weirdness about them,” he says. “They were a small business that could, and did that. We are a small business that could, and did that.”

Lifshitz has performed for children before, an audience he believes is not always well served. “I think a lot of theater for kids is frankly a very bad thing,” he says. “It’s bracketed; it tells beautiful stories that end really beautifully and in no way reflects the real world.” You won’t find much tragedy in Shaun the Sheep, but Lifschitz loves the mischief and mayhem in it, and the featured herd at Mossy Bottom Farm, as well as the sheepdog Bitzer, and the feuding gang of pigs, get embroiled in many high adventures, all the while pulling the wool over the farmer’s eyes. “It’s not unlike Kafka in some ways: the absurdity and rules of being in society,” he says.

Anyone who’s seen the cartoon will know that there’s a lot of physical humor in it actually, with sheep balancing on each other’s shoulders, trying daring escapes, throwing each other over fences, that sort of thing. So there was a lot to work with. Lifshitz and his team delved into the animated series. He showed me a spreadsheet with every episode listed, hundreds of them, and the good jokes and scenarios extracted. They turned that into a full-fledged show, the first half resembling a series of episodes, and the second a more comprehensive circus performance. He uses some clips from the TV series, along with great rolling, juggling and aerial skills. At 80 minutes long, the mood is a bit dreamy for a tight seven-minute episode, but it has plenty of gags.

Making this presentation was the first time Circa had dealt with the licensing and intellectual property of a famous brand, and all the specifications that go with it. Example: Each sheep character has its own distinctive eyes on the hood of its costume. “There are 48 eyes, and each one is individually certified in terms of the size and position of the pupil,” Lifshitz says. “And it’s great, you know, because they care about their work.” But he says it means there have been some “robust” conversations. (A scene in which a sheep clips herself like a stripper was revisited because it was too sexy.) Aardman is interested in rigor in storytelling, which, Lifshitz admits, “is really not my thing.” Lifshitz’s work is generally considered more abstract. “I think circus can get away with a lot of looseness, because the show is so exciting as a virtual setting,” he says.

He had tackled narrative before, but found himself viewing things with “double focus.” “I was trying to convince myself that I thought it was about Peter Pan, or climate change or something else, while I was watching someone doing something skillful and brilliant, and I thought: ‘Can’t we build our art out of the ‘skillful and the brilliant’?” “I had this kind of Heideggerian phenomenological experience,” he says. “I just want the actual experience, the feeling of this thing, not what it’s about.”

However, in this presentation, Lifshitz appreciated how meticulous Aardman was regarding the art of storytelling. “They were meticulous in how they set things up and explained them in a way that I didn’t need to,” he says. “But it was a good lesson for me that dramatic rigor can be a good thing.” So there you have it: Greek drama, Kafka, and strict dramaturgy. And you thought it was just a funny cartoon about a clever little sheep.