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produces and promotes cutting-edge
theater and puppetry in Philadelphia by bringing local and touring artists to perform at various venues. |
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Past Events: January 2007 |
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A monumental Uprising event: the kickoff of the debut Erik Ruin/Shoddy Puppet Company collaboration Going Nowhere, and the Missoula Oblongata's awe-inspiring play The Wonders of the World: Recite, finally getting a proper due with two nights of standing ovations that would lead to further collaborations later in the year: The Most Mysterious Day of the Year and a five company-version of William Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST.
GOING NOWHERE (a reference to John Cage's essay "Getting Nowhere") juxtaposed two differnt pieces of shadow theater in one triptych stage. "Seams Like" (by Erik Ruin) utilized inticately cut layers of dissolving architecture, spraypainted scrolling landsacpes, and a recorded score by the Minneapolis-based accordion/french horn/musical saw duo Dreamland Faces to present an abstract narrative with an interlude of a song by Bertolt Brecht ("Pirate Jenny" fom Three Penny Opera). "Mushroom Music" (by Shoddy Puppet Company) interspersed the one-minute stories from John Cage's Indeterminacy series with those of Shoddy director Morgan F.P. Andrews, framed within the nagging question, "If you had to give up all of your senses except one, which sense would you keep?" Morgan and Erik lugged Going Nowhere on a three-week East Coast tour via public transprtation (bus, train and trolley from Maine to North Carolina) enlisting chance music by various improvisors in each locale. The Philly show was accompanied by the electronic tonalities of Charles Cohen. THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD: RECITE, the first full-length original work by the Missoula Oblongata, looks like a cross between a yard sale and a children’s play fort. A lighthouse crafted from broken window blinds overlooks a landscape littered with old suitcases, laundry lines adorned with artwork, a bookshelf of knick-knacks and piles of necessary junk. Here, a delusional grandma schools her grandson on the dangers of meteor showers, infectious disease, and unreliable radio broadcasts through a vaudevillian pageant of objects and imagination. Everything unfolds when the grandson befriends a resourceful wandering fisher-mailman leading to an inevitable octopus hunt and enough birthday cake for the whole audience to enjoy before everything finds its place under the starlit sky.
Read John Cage's Indeterminacy series here. Visit the Missoula Oblongatahere. |
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