This is our first dispatch with brief reviews of some of the shows from the first week of the 7th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival. From vampire dreams to dancing sisters, the productions display the amazing ingenuity of puppetry storytelling and the great variety of puppet characters that we meet. The puppet stories are powerful dramas, comedies and musicals, some for all ages, some definitely not for kids.
The 12 days of the puppet fest, which continue through Sunday, January 26, feature performances at 14 venues all over the city, along with neighborhood tours, which bring free puppet productions to 12 Chicago neighborhood venues on the north, south and west sides. In this dispatch, we cover shows reviewed by our writers during the first week of the festival. Watch for our second dispatch next week. See complete information and buy tickets here.
Dracula: Lucy's Dream by Plexus Polaire (France)
The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival’s 12-day hand-operated extravaganza came to life Wednesday January 15, with its opening act Dracula: Lucy’s Dream by the award-winning French troupe Plexus Polaire. At the Studebaker Theater in the gorgeous Fine Arts Building, a nearly packed house enjoyed a spooky, dazzling display of dance and puppetry.
The nonverbal performance, bolstered by a dramatic score, is familiar to anyone who knows the Dracula mythos. Frail ingenue Lucy goes mad while the seductive vampire of her dreams materializes in life. Action alternates between Lucy’s dreamworld, where she is played by three dancers, and her reality, where she is a puppet.
Plexus Polaire possesses a bottomless Mary Poppins’ bag of theatrical tricks to pull off Dracula: Lucy’s Dream. Through a combination of human-sized puppets, hand puppets, masks, shifting sets and clever lighting, they keep the audience constantly reassessing their perceptions. At times I cannot discern performer from puppet; sometimes I can spot a puppet but can’t divine its operator. At its best, however, the show transcends these illusions and, rather than interrogate special effects, you simply let the characters speak for themselves.
Lucy, for example, is one of the most compelling and sympathetic puppets I’ve ever seen. Deciding to cast her in reality as a life-sized puppet is a clever visual metaphor about female autonomy, as her every move is literally controlled by a cast of doctors and maids. Those sequences, when actors play Lucy’s caretakers and puppeteers simultaneously, must require a level of unimaginable communication between the performers. I am in awe.
Puppetry as a medium, it seems, fits snugly in the story about seductive dreams. What’s real? What’s not? Who’s in control? A layered production like Dracula: Lucy’s Dreamsis a great way to jumpstart the festival.
Dracula: Lucy’s Dream was staged at the Studebaker Theater January 15, 17-18. Running time is 65 minutes. The play is for ages 14 and up. (Adam Kaz)
Anywhere by Théâtre de l'Entrouvert (France/Chicago)
In Anywhere, presented by the French company Theatre de l’Entrovert, the central character is a marionette puppet made of ice. Inspired by Henry Bauchau’s novel, Oedipus on the Road, the show depicts a poignant journey of father and daughter. We first see Oedipus (puppeteer and puppet builder Mark Blashford) blindly making his way across the landscape, his daughter following behind. As Antigone (Ashwaty Chennat) attempts to support her fragile father, he slowly melts, his body shimmering under an expressively lit stage. The strange world they inhabit is both “nowhere” and “anywhere,” a place of exile and exploration.
The show is for all ages, though it particularly serves as a meditation on aging. The staging, directed by Claire Saxe, primarily takes place in a circle of ice, with an eerie symphony of music, sounds and occasional voices from composer Corey Smith, and inventive lighting provided by Richard Norwood. The puppetry itself is not constrained to mimicking real-life physics, with the puppet often soaring and dancing above his daughter. Audience members were also given a chance to view the puppet’s marvelous construction up close at the end of the show. If the Chicago winter isn’t feeling icy enough for you, consider seeing this luminous puppet in action.
Anywhere was performed January 16-19 at the Chopin Theatre Mainstage. Running time is approximately 50 minutes. (Devony Hof)
Aanika's Elephants by Feisty Elephant Productions, Pam Arciero Productions & Little Shadow Productions in association with Center for Puppetry Arts (Connecticut/New York)
Aanika's Elephants is set in Africa with courage and love as universal themes. The set is simple, with characters—portrayed by hats, work gloves, and colorful attire—carried by puppeteers in black. The elephant puppets are mostly head and trunk with soft eyes and ears to signal distress and other emotions. The trunks are coils with a realistic-looking end. The elephants took a bow and paraded through the audience, giving nuzzles. The looks on the young children's faces were very sweet. Some of the adults smiled like kids (including me!).
Jimmica Collins is known in puppetry and children's theater for her work with the Jim Henson Company. Collins is charming and appealing as the young girl Aanika and her unnamed American counterpart, who cannot believe how people survive in the jungle. I love the American girl's reactions when Aanika tells her how termites and maggots are delicious and filled with protein.
The subject matter of life and death is handled with subtlety and reverence. Aanika insists on taking care of "Little," the baby elephant whose mother was killed by poachers. She proclaims that her mother died. She knows that she can handle death. There is no sugarcoating, but Aanika's bravery and desire to help a vulnerable being thrive are good lessons for easing grief. Aanika is brave, strong, and a survivor. Aanika's Elephants was written and produced by Annie Evans and directed by Pam Arciero.
According to the program, Aanika's Elephants is probably best for ages 7 and up. There are depictions of guns made of sticks and depictions of predatory animals and people. The poachers and Aanika's creepy uncle are good lessons in trusting your instincts with "Stranger Danger" overtones. It is not heavy-handed, nor does it incite fear. It is well-written and beautifully performed, with kalimba and percussion from Paul Randolph and Gordon Robert Price.
Aanika’s Elephants was staged January 17-18 at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center in Hyde Park. Running time is 60 minutes. (Kathy D. Hey)
The Cabinet by Cabinet of Curiosity (Chicago)
The opening performance of The Cabinet was dedicated to the surrealist filmmaker David Lynch, who died Wednesday, and that dedication turned out to be prophetic and appropriate. The Cabinet, presented by Cabinet of Curiosity and created and directed by Frank Maugeri, draws its gruesome story from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the landmark 1920 German Expressionist horror film. Six puppeteers recreate the story of the murderous Dr. Caligari and his somnambulist slave Cesare.
As the play opens, what appears to be a brown wall comes to life as the doors of the central section swing open to become the main stage. The puppeteers, costumed in black and white with white-painted faces, maneuver the puppets through the story; other puppeteers reach down to grab a puppet or swing down from the upper level to assist. The Cabinet’s upper and lower levels have doors and drawers that swing open and closed as the spooky story progresses.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is known for its surrealist visual style with sharply angled scenery and landscapes that twist and turn to create an off-kilter world. The visual style of The Cabinet suggests this, using backdrops and projections to create the weird black, gray and white world of the carnival and the asylum. The puppets themselves have large, almost lifesize, heads and small bodies.
The six puppeteers are Gabrielle Frabotta, Danielle H. Gennaoui, Jacinda Ratcliffe, Sion Silva, Allyce Torres and Dustin Valenta. Mickle Maher is writer and Jesse Mooney-Bullock is puppet designer. A large creative crew handles scenic design and engineering, animations, lighting, music, projections and costumes.
Cabinet of Curiosity is a Chicago-based creative project collective who collaborate on original celebrations and productions. The Cabinet was inspired by a long-running 2010 show that director Frank Maugeri created and directed at the now defunct Redmoon Theater.
The Cabinet was performed January 16-19 at the Biograph Theater. Running time is 60 minutes. (Nancy S Bishop)
Concerned Others by Tortoise in a Nutshell (Scotland)
On the third evening of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, an audience no larger than 40 gathered to see the festival runners make good on their promise to showcase interesting, original work. Concerned Others, a 40-minute multi-media tabletop show devised and performed by Alex Bird of Tortoise in a Nutshell, explores firsthand accounts of Scotland’s corrosive drug problem.
What this means in practice is Bird stands silently in the mouth of a crescent-shaped desk and presents puppets, drawings, videos and dioramas while audio interviews about drug addiction play overhead. At the show’s conclusion, however, I cannot find a message in the hodgepodge more compelling than Drugs Are Bad. Without a cohesive whole one only enjoys the performance in its components, some of which are far better than others.
As an example, the first portion is a live video feed of Bird illustrating the same drawing on his desk again and again. It’s of a simple figure, maybe a man, lunging. We watch Bird draw this character five or six times before he sets them together as an animation and the audience realizes the lunging figure is actually running. The message, that drug addicts are on a constant running loop, is a payoff far too weak for such an extended setup. Concerned Others is livelier when Bird sticks to more traditional puppetry techniques.
In one compelling component Bird hides behind a tablet screen like an iPad. On the screen an animated face communicates mountains of emotion through minor changes in its lined brow and mouth. With one hand Bird controls the face, while the other acts as the puppet’s hand. The character, displaying expressions one could only describe as concerned, looks at a beer bottle and fights the temptation to drink. In this segment Bird shows heavy emotions communicated through simple techniques. It’s exactly what one would want from a puppet performance.
Bird’s hit-to-miss ratio is something like one and three. Audience members looking for meaty ideas may be disappointed. But those who enjoy puppetry so much they’re willing to sit through some duds will be very pleased with Bird’s successes.
Concerned Others was performed at Instituto Cervantes January 17-19. Running time is 40 minutes. The suggested audience is 14 and up. (Adam Kaz)
The House by the Lake by Yael Rasooly (Israel)
Three little girls in a tiny room. The time is World War II and the girls have been left by their mother—to be safe “until she returns.” The House by the Lake is their story, created in puppetry and musical cabaret and directed by Israeli-trained artists Yael Rasooly and Yaara Goldring and produced by the Hazira Performance Art Arena of Jerusalem.
The play begins with Rasooly as a cabaret singer, haunted by her memories of the three little sisters in hiding during the war. The performers are three women—small, medium and tall sisters—played by Edna Blilious, Gili Beit Hallahmi and Rasooly. They wear their doll-puppets on their chests and manipulate them in ingenious ways. In two musical scenes, the actors sit on tiny chairs with the puppets on their laps and change the dolls’ legs to different designs to suit the performance. The three sisters alternately sing, dance and hide fearfully as ominous noises—heavy footsteps, sharp knocks at the door, a ringing telephone—interrupt their efforts to play and pass their time until Mother returns. They make believe that a handsome prince has arrived at their door and cavort with the prince puppet. Every now and then, all action stops and one of the sisters says, “Where is Mother?”
Puppet design is by Maayan Resnick. The lively and haunting cabaret and dance music is composed by Naadav Wiesel with sound design by Binya Reches.
The House by the Lake was inspired by conversations with Holocaust survivors who were children in hiding during that period. The play premiered in 2010 and has been performed at theaters and festivals all over Europe. Its first performance in the US was January 17-19 at the Edlis Neeson Theater at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The running time is one hour. (Nancy S Bishop)
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