Location:
Victoria Event Centre
(Fringe Venue 1)
1415 Broad Street
Remaining Shows:
Aug 25 07:00 pm
Aug 28 05:45 pm
Aug 30 05:00 pm
Aug 31 12:30 pm
It’s rare to find an act in any Fringe Festival that is more educational than it is entertaining. Timeline for Homo Sapiens is billed at a T-Edge talk, an irreverent non-academic intellectual redneck look at prehistory. Freeman the Handyman is a street polymath that looks at the growth of civilization through the lens of an amateur anthropologist, biologist and geologist who loves to talk. All the ideas are worthy of a Travel Channel or DTOUR network special. It’s all about alternative theories exploring how we evolved and arrived to what we are today (and what we are doing to this planet). To be offered material much like how Erich von Däniken posits the development of ancient civilizations is a show I had to check out.
As for how hominids evolved, we all assume Charles Darwin is right about the origin of the species. There has to be more. While I’d rather study this in a public lecture than at a Fringe festival, Freeman at least captures the heart of what alternative and in the edge performance theatre is about.
This show looks mostly at the Paleolithic development of the world. He glosses upon the importance of shamanism (mysticism) in early culture and he should have looked at this more. He avoids any “ancient alien” theory to keep ideas plausible. While he lacks the fire of a von Däniken lecture, he shows more passion by simply asking questions and hoping attendees will look even more to what ancient civilizations (or unusual starfall) left behind.
I feel this redneck wants is to be taken as seriously as Joseph Campbel. Sadly, he’s nowhere near television presenter level as Josh Bernstein or Giorgio A. Tsoukalos. Perhaps all that’s needed to give his lecture that spark is an amusing diversion of him on video. I would love to see more than a picture of Göbekli Tepe, the Pyramid City of Caral or even The Cahokia Mounds. Seeing him in the field offers more credibility. Or maybe, he should have a shtick much like Wilson W. Wilson had in the sitcom Home Improvement we can relate to. I didn’t find much humour, and Freeman does not have to be Larry the Cable Guy. To take the word of a handyman over anyone else requires a solid foundation of content to understand before adding unusual touches to it. With a thesis that’s just all over, what’s ultimately needed is tightening before the content can be considered passable.
3 Stars out of 5
