La Mama Puppet Festival

Marcus David
December 2018

When it comes to experimental puppet theatre, La Mama knows what its doing. Curated by Denise Greber, this year’s festival showcases a wide range of women artists from around the world, with each production tackling it’s own issue and content with direct force. From the deadly serious to the beautifully sublime, the festival offers audiences the wonderful thrill of experiencing the magical illusion of puppetry alongside thoughtful themes and poetic narratives.

WUNDERKAMMER, photo by Klaus Kühn

The festival opens with WUNDERKAMMER – Cabinet of Curiosities, Meditations on Wonderment, created by puppeteers Alice-Therese Gottschalk, Raphael Mürle and Frank Soehnle. The concept of an old fashioned carnival attraction, straight out of the 1920 German silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, is the framework for presenting this team’s oddities and curiosities. With every opening of a new box or drawer comes a new creature with its own little mystery and enchantment. Charm, horror and sensuality are twisted into disturbing combinations and brought to life in this nightmarish parade of show and tell, that falls somewhere between science and black magic.

Tian Wen, photo by Richard Termine

Next up comes TIAN WEN Heavenly Questions for Modern Times, created by Hua Hua Zhang. Inspired by a classical Chinese poem, TIAN WEN takes us on an atmospheric excursion through the landscape of various dreams, each dream addressing a different question and each question answered with traditional and experimental puppetry. The staging is minimal and monochromatic with props serving as screens to project shadow puppets, which in turns creates an even deeper feeling of otherworldliness. This astral mood is further advanced by the sweeping motions of beautiful white bird, whose gestures are set in contrast to other rickety skeleton creatures that also can magically fly. Best of all is the illusion created by performers draped in fabric and bearing a simple mask with an equally simple facial expression. Astonishing in its simplicity, this combination is used to great effect in bringing life to beings of a totally unknown category.

Blind, photo by Patrick Argirakis

Disease, darkness and decay are on full display and dominate in BLIND, a one-man tour de force of puppetry, ventriloquy and performance art conceived and choreographed by Duda Paiva and Nancy Black. From start to finish, BLIND hits you hard with traumatic visions that Duda Paiva draws from his own experiences with a childhood disease that blistered his body and left him blind for several years. Through direct engagement with the audience Paiva invites us to participate in a shamanistic ritual of healing as he excises growths from his body that turn out to be entities of their own. The often in your face confrontations with these grotesque creatures is not for the fainthearted and can create awkward moments. The common reaction to these disturbances and horrors is nervous laughter and there is plenty of it.

Food for the Gods, photo by Khunum Productions

Using a multi media approach, FOOD FOR THE GODS written and directed by Nehprii Amen, takes on the issue of Black Lives Matter and does so with direct and relentless force. The puppet side of the show comes in the simple form of disembodied death masks of the all to many black male victims of unjust killings, each called out by their actual name with the terrible circumstances of their horrible death also explained. A celestial dinner party is the setting for this gathering of tragic souls where upon entering the scene each new face is washed with tears of sorrow. A sad and heavy picture is painted as the stage is composed to echo Di Vinci’s Last Supper, with beautiful lighting, touches of delicate color and expressions of rage.

Exodus, photo by Philippe Van Bossche

EXODUS, presented by Théâtre d’Un Jour and directed by Patrick Masset, is a multidisciplinary performance piece that contrasts the deadly refugee crisis in Europe with the benign immigration experience of a Belgium family to Canada. The show features American based Iraqi refugee, Rahim Alhaj, playing the oud, a short-neck lute-type, pear-shaped stringed instrument. The music adds a sad and soulful soundscape to the different stories of individuals leaving their home countries, some in search of freedom, others fleeing certain death. EXODUS is a show with many highlights, culminating in the appearance of the puppet of a small boy washed up on an empty beach. The boy’s body is miraculously brought back to life in order to assist in the assembling of a spiritual vehicle. Tension builds as the vehicle’s construction expands to its final heroic form that at once demonstrates the fragility of all things and carries hope.

Thanks to La Mama for a job well done.

Come and see what other productions La Mama is offering in their 2019 season. They are located at 66 E. 4 Street in the East Village.

lamama.org