 |
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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: May, 2007 |
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 Flyer by Morgan F.P. Andrews  Caliban (played by Aaron Birk of Black Willow Productions) turns the tables on Prospero, depicted here as a puppet on his servant's hand. |
Puppet Uprising and the Missoula Oblongata
joined forces to present  |
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Dressed for an embarrassment of desserts and adorned with
red carnations, the audience braved the storm for
a most mysterious meeting.
Encountering others
at the secret point of departure (the Ellsworth stop of the Broad Street Subway)
on the appointed evening of the play,
the performance began there,
and their hosts lead them to the secret theatre...
Five acts, five companies, five desserts and yet only one play: William Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST—a joint producion by Philadelphia's Puppet Uprising and the Missoula Oblongata. Performed at a secret location in South Philadelphia for a totally sold-out four-day run in May of 2007. Each of the five acts of THE TEMPEST was assigned to a different theatre company: Miranda's 3, Shoddy Puppet Company, The Missoula Oblongata, Wham City and Black Willow Productions each related their version of events intertwined with between-act oddities by Eagle Ager. Each act was accompanied by a dessert and a beverage. CLICK HERE TO SEE PHOTOS OF THE SHOW |
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Bios and Links for the Performers in THE TEMPEST: |
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EAGLE AGER (Brooklyn, NY) The illustrious guides to the Secret Theater! Dancer Charlotte Gibbons, sculptor Geoffrey Mosach and composer/musician Stephen Cooper make up this art-team/sculpture-band that mixes puppetry and performance art wtih experimental movement and music. See their on-line antics here. MIRANDA'S 3 (Philadelphia, PA) Using movement, music and text, Richenda Cope, Kate DeRosa, and Missoula Oblongata director Sarah Lowry explored the possibilities of choral storytelling and strengthened THE TEMPEST's only female voice by shifting the perspective from which Act 1 was told. SHODDY PUPPET COMPANY (Philadelphia, PA) Puppet Uprising curator Morgan F.P. Andrews created and directed a disjointed second act for THE TEMPEST that took the audience from tea and cookies (with accordion accompaniment), to a lecture on colonialism and "tragi-drama," to shadow and hand-puppet sequences set to avant garde musics. Performed by Anna "Bannanz" Whitehead, Cat Claw, Jen Coleclough, Salihah Moore and Steven Lance Kelly. Other Shoddy Puppet collaborations for the year included Going Nowhere (based on John Cage and Bertolt Brecht) with fellow shadow-master Erik Ruin, more shadow puppets for Sara Felder's play Out of Sight, and theatrical direction for Spiral Q's Puppet Theater's Peoplehood Pageant. |
THE MISSOULA OBLONGATA (Northampton, MA) Madeline ffitch (yes, "ffitch") and Donna Sellinger are frequent coroborators of dinner theater as well as five-company Shakespearian productions. They instigated THE TEMPEST in the footsteps of their touring play, The Wonders of the World: Recite, which received a weekend's worth of standing ovations in Philadelphia last winter. The Missoula Oblongata is also responsible for community experimental arts events that make use of performers and non performers, public and private space, visual atists and people who speak in tongues. They returned to Philadelphia in June with their original full-length work of theatrical detection entitled The Most Mysterious Day of the Year. WHAM CITY (Baltimore, MD) An unconcious collective from the land of painted window screens, Wham City graced us with "A Funny Clown" who would gesture toward what would happen in The Fourth Act. Check our the Wham City website here. BLACK WILLOW PRODUCTIONS (Philadelphia, PA) Aaron Birk has been tooling around in restoration ecology, comic books, stop-action animation and puppetry for seven years now. He combined his foci in the movement/puppet piece "Dance of the Ripidistian" for Puppet Uprising's 2007 Spring Thing and presented a work of post-apocalyptic mythology at The Barnstormers event at Bartram's Garden. With the help of musician Natalie Joy, Aaron brought things full circle in a stupendous Act Five of THE TEMPEST. |
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