Two puppet festivals at the Theater for the New City this month will feature performances of children’s fare like “Little Red Riding Hood,” as well as more avant-garde material, like the prisoner uprising at Attica in 1971. Bread and Puppet Theater and the Voice 4 Vision Festival begin on Dec. 7 and 8, respectively, at the theater on First Avenue. The former will also feature “Man of Flesh and Cardboard,” an examination of Bradley Manning, the soldier facing life in prison for allegedly leaking a bounty of government information through WikiLeaks.
PUPPETRY
Get Your Fix of Czech Marionette Theater at La MaMa
By STEPHEN REX BROWNA performance of “Golem.”
This month, the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater will perform “Golem,” which retells the Jewish legend about a golem created by a revered rabbi to defend the Prague ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks.
Vit Horejs, the director of the musical, which features eight performers handling puppets that are roughly four-foot tall, said that the story is a classic in the Czech Republic. He expected a big crowd for the performances, starting Nov. 17 at La MaMa theater on East Fourth Street.
“Every Czech child will know it,” said Mr. Horejs, 61. “People come from all walks of life to see it. A lot of people are interested in Golem.” Read more…
For Mentally Ill, Expression in Puppetry
By SAMANTHA KU
Samantha Ku Dario D’Ambrosi supervises preparations for his new show at La MaMa Experimental Theater. His work explores the experience of the mentally ill.Life-size puppets were perched on stacked chairs at the La MaMa Experimental Theater as Dario D’Ambrosi, the Italian avant-garde actor and director, attended to last-minute details for the opening of his new play tonight.
“Bong Bong Bong against the Walls, Ting Ting Ting in our Heads” opens the fourth annual La MaMa Puppet Series. Mr. D’Ambrosi first worked with mentally ill patients more than 30 years ago, doing research in a mental institution in Milan. Since then, his main avenue of creative exploration has been portraying the experience of mentally ill people through acting and playwriting.
This passion led him to create the Pathological Theater drama school in Rome, which teaches stagecraft to students with a range of conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism and Down syndrome.
We caught up with Mr. D’Ambrosi earlier this week as he supervised the hectic construction of the set at the theater.
What was the inspiration for this piece?
This piece came from my work with the mentally ill. You see the set and the puppets, they designed it. We developed the play together. Yes, it’s my play, but it’s also from Teatro Patologico [Pathological Theater].
Read more…
