HUMAN. Written and directed by Nehprii Amenii. Music composed by Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby with sound design by Joo Wan Park. Choreography by Amparo “Chigui” Santiago, and lighting, projections, and scenic design by Marie Yokoyama. Puppet design and building by Dan Jones and Nehprii Amenii. A Puppetry NOW featured performance at the Center for Puppetry Arts, Atlanta, Georgia, January 17-28, 2024. Nehprii Amenii’s puppet theatre piece, HUMAN, considers a world where human beings have faded into extinction. Detached from the goodness of their hearts, the once-prosperous human race destroyed itself, and all that remains on Earth are the sea …
Category: Performance Review
PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Wakka Wakka’s Animalia Trilogy
Wakka Wakka’s Animalia Trilogy: Animal R.I.O.T., The Immortal Jellyfish Girl, and Dead as a Dodo. By Gwendolyn Warnock and Kirjan Waage. Directed by Gwendolyn Warnock and Kirjan Waage. Jellyfish and Dodo also written with help from the ensemble. Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, Chicago, Illinois, January 18-28, 2024. Wakka Wakka’s completed Animalia Trilogy was performed in full for the first time at the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival in January 2024, uniting three distinct but thematically linked productions: Animal R.I.O.T. and The Immortal Jellyfish Girl (both of which had already premiered elsewhere) and Dead as a Dodo, which premiered at …
PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Psychic Self Defense
Psychic Self Defense. Created, Written, Directed, and Designed by Normandy Sherwood. Dream Music Puppetry Program. HERE Arts Center, New York, NY. September 12-30, 2023. On a crisp September night in New York, I stand outside the HERE Arts Center by the backstage entrance waiting to see Psychic Self Defense, the fall production of HERE’s Dream Music Puppetry program. It feels like the show has already begun when the usher escorts the audience in small groups from the lobby, where everyone has been congregating, back to the street toward the backstage entrance. A creature in a tall headdress with a …
PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Adrift: A Medieval Wayward Folly
Adrift: A Medieval Wayward Folly. By Happenstance Theater. Co-Directed by Mark Jaster and Sabrina Mandell. 59E59 Theaters, New York, New York, November 29 to December 24, 2023. Upon arriving on the third floor of the 59E59 theatre complex in New York City to attend a performance of Adrift in December 2023, audience members are greeted by the costumed artistic co-director of Happenstance Theater, Mark Linden Jaster. Jaster’s company is an ensemble-driven troupe from the DC/Baltimore metropolitan area that creates original theatrical pieces rooted in physical comedy and clown technique that in his words “tend to go nostalgic … look retro” …
