The 6th Annual International Puppet Theater Festival is under way in Chicago and we have a few brief reviews to whet your appetite for your own puppetry experiences. The festival continues at dozens of venues across the city through Sunday, January 28. See our preview here for details. You can buy tickets and find more information here.
Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities: A Toy Theater Atlas
Matthew Gawryk and Dan Kerr-Hobert, two Chicago theater artists, have created a vast array of paper objects to narrate and illustrate the poetic book of stories created by Italo Calvino in 1972. Invisible Cities, which its author called a novel, is a collection of prose poems, presented as a conversation between the emperor Kublai Khan and the explorer Marco Polo about 19 cities—fictional and mystical—that Polo may have visited. The cities have names like Moriana, Isadora, Despina and Tamara, each with its own personality.
"Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else."
At times during the show, Gawryk reads some of Calvino's prose poems to us. At other times, the two artists silently present a series of beautifully complex objects—ranging from photos and folding tourist cards to intricate folded boxes—some the size of a box of mints and others cigar-box size. The larger boxes are complex structures, sometimes with tiny figures, illustrating the nature of a city. One of the final presentations is a large folding album that opens into elaborate 3-D pop-up structures (pop-up design by David Hawcock). The artists open, configure and present the objects and boxes before a camera that projects the images on a large screen. Additional artistry and craftwork was done by Lizi Briet, Bernie McGovern and Hugh Spector.
Italo Calvino (1923-1985) was considered one of the 20th century’s greatest storytellers. He was born in Cuba, raised in Italy, and lived in Turin, Paris, Rome and other cities throughout his life. Among his best-known works are The Baron in the Trees and If on a winter’s night a traveler. He was part of the Italian Resistance during World War II and after the war earned a degree in literature while working for the Communist periodical L’Unita.
Invisible Cities was presented in four performances last weekend at Instituto Cervantes. (Nancy S Bishop)
Nasty, Brutish, and Short
I cannot think of a better way to kick off the Puppet Theater Festival than with Nasty, Brutish, and Short from Rough House Theater. The title comes from Thomas Hobbes and his philosophy on life and the need for government control to keep people from self-destructing. Nasty, Brutish, and Short is the antithesis of government-controlled anything. It is about 90 minutes of immensely entertaining anarchy that kicks boundaries and order to the curb.
The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival stretches the definition of what a puppet is. For those who grew up on Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop or Garfield Goose and Friends, puppets are made from socks or stuffed animals. They were sometimes a bit sardonic but always child-friendly. Nasty, Brutish, and Short is an adults-only kind of show. A giant donkey head following an apple on a stick would have scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid. In this segment, I found the craftsmanship and the movements to be exquisite, but I was glad not to be in the first row. The donkey kissed some audience members and may have married one lucky guy—I don't think it was legal but we all witnessed it.
It is obvious that people are controlling the puppets but that is part of the artistry. They become one with the puppet rather than fading into the background. There was a laser puppet presentation about a walrus, a seal, and a penguin that delighted the audience. One of my favorites was the woman with a box of curiosities telling the history of beer and the persecution of the women who brewed beer back in the Middle Ages. One of my favorites was a very limber woman and a large white box that made puppetry more of a live animation.
The show was being live-streamed as we were watching and the hosts used a variety of fuzzy puppets and a couple in the tradition of Wayland Flowers and Madame. They did great puppet voices and it was fun to suspend belief for a while and give these animated items sentience. Flying limbs, incontinence jokes, and sly one-liners were on display for all to enjoy. I think that the audience reverted to somewhere in their childhood watching the adults do weird stuff. It was a good vibe.
The circus-like atmosphere of Nasty, Brutish, and Short has something for everyone. Feminists, anarchists, sentimental souls, and funny voices are on the menu. There are brightly colored anthropomorphic puppets as well all in pursuit of an evening of original theater and an expansion of the mind on the definition of puppetry. I highly recommend it and get those tickets early. The show at Links Hall was packed. There are two more chances to see Nasty, Brutish, and Short next weekend (January 26-27 at 10:30pm) at the Reva and David Logan Center, 915 E. 60th St. in Hyde Park. Get tickets at www.chicagopuppetfest.org. (Kathy D. Hey)
Animal R.I.O.T.
Wakka Wakka Productions has a mission to push the boundaries of the imagination by creating works that are bold, unique, and unpredictable. Animal R.I.O.T. is performed by Kirjan Waage and also directed by Waage and Gwendolyn Warnock, and it does indeed push the boundaries of imagination. My imagination went more gimp suit in Pulp Fiction (1994) with Any Kaufman stirred in than the plight of endangered species. This was 75 minutes of Waage in a seemingly endless series of balaclava-style animal masks running about the stage in a series of anthropomorphic character studies.
R.I.O.T. is an acronym for Resurgence In Our Time. The underlying theme is conservation and saving the planet with stories from some species announcing their doom. Waage uses several accents to match the species. Fox is German, Dr. Yellow Fish sounds as if he were from Liverpool, England, and Koala is an Australian that will be extinct in 30 years because the world is on fire and 80 of the forests have been cut down. There are other animal masks but the dialogue comes across like standup comedy for Millennials to the alphabets-Y, Z, and Alpha. I am down with some crude comedy and the attending fart or genitalia jokes, but those segments went on too long.
I liked the vinyl mock-up of a VW van alluding to the van life trend that has become a way of life. The van contained one of the two traditional puppets—Neon Leon, the 12-year-old lab rat who can regenerate his limbs. There was also the Norwegian Great Grandpa in an orange superstore bucket. He had the best dialogue of all the characters, referring to the good old days of fish and potatoes (he prefers the convenience of the new era with disposables and flat-screen televisions). Great Grandpa was not enough to carry the show.
There were some good points made about how our planet is turning into a wasteland. A film clip of a piñata in the shape of the planet getting beaten to a pulp by kids to get all the goodies that they can was very effective. Some moments rise above simplistic thinking or the id mind running wild without restraint. Those moments make the show worth seeing. The show could be trimmed by 15 minutes and go more toward a narrative rather than punchlines. I recommend Animal R.I.O.T. with the caveat that you be prepared for a manic and scattered 75 minutes.
Animal R.I.O.T. is part of Wakka Wakka's Animalia Trilogy, which also includes The Immortal Jellyfish Girl and Dead as a Dodo. All were presented at Steppenwolf Theater. For more information, please visit www.AnimalRiot.org; wakkawakka.org; and chicagopuppetfest.org. (Kathy D. Hey)
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