Laurie Everitt
l-r: Casem AbuLughod, Jaclyn June Johnson, Tony Trout, Autumn Shiley, Gina Goméz, Stacey Garbarski, Craig Johnson
“Our goal is not perfection. It’s creativity.” After seven years and 30 productions, Are We Delicious? founder and performer Tony Trout has his schtick down pat. With the “aw shucks” warmth of a small-town mayor, he introduces each show with an explanation of his theater company’s unique process, as he did last weekend for his crew’s current production, Patchwork Puppets Parading on Mercury.
Presented in collaboration with Mercury Players and running through Nov. 2 in the Evjue space at the Bartell Theatre, the show was created by eight theater artists who worked together for a scant seven days to bring a show to life, from page to stage. To shake things up, each production is built around a specific theme. In the past, the company has written episodic sketch comedies and dramas in the genres of murder mystery, political satire, fairy tales, musicals and even horror stories. This time around, the agile group of writers and actors was given an exceptional group of props to work with: a set of colorful, beautifully constructed puppets created by local designer Laurie Everitt.
Over the course of a week the company members each got to know their puppets, wrote a short two-character scene for their castmates, and then rehearsed the hour-long show, adding in lighting and sound effects. And that’s cool. From what I’ve heard from current and previous cast members, the process is a lot of fun and very challenging. But as Trout said at the top of the show, the company’s goal is not perfection. Its aim is stimulating the creativity of the ensemble. It is no wonder, then, that the final product is sometimes uneven, and on the night I attended, the performers seemed to be having more fun doing the show than the audience had watching it.
Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?
The first hiccup with Patchwork Puppets is that the pre-show music features familiar (much loved) songs from Sesame Street. When it comes to puppets of all shapes and sizes, coupled with short form, high impact comic pieces, it doesn’t get much better than the Children’s Television Workshop and Jim Henson’s clever creations. This set a high bar for the evening. By comparison, it also illustrated how hard puppetry is to master. On Saturday night, many of the performers had trouble manipulating the arms of their puppets, some struggled to work their puppet with a partner, and no one synched their lines to the puppets’ mouths consistently. And although each actor gave an enthusiastic performance, some puppet voices were clearly still in development.
There’s no business like show business.
The Oct. 26 performance I reviewed also featured a last-minute cast change, because “the show must go on,” even if one of your actors can’t perform. Jess Schuknecht filled in for Casem AbuLughod and his puppet character, a Scottish crocodile named Angus of Clan MacCroc. Reading a script off a music stand while manipulating a puppet with a believable Scottish accent is a lot to ask of any stand in, and while Schuknecht did his best, the show was obviously affected.
It’s been one week since you looked at me.
Puppetry is hard. So is playwriting. And these playwrights had extra challenges: They were working with a cast of puppet characters and tasked with tying in the theme that Mercury has gone into retrograde (a nod to the Mercury Players collaboration). Like improv and 24-hour page-to-stage festivals, sometimes high-pressure situations result in dramatic gold. Sometimes not. This was an off week for the writers, who had trouble creating interesting dynamics between characters and stories with any emotional pull. References to Mercury felt shoehorned in. Autumn Shiley’s “What We Can’t Leave Behind,” featuring Stacey Garbarski and Schuknecht, came the closest to telling an engaging story.
Big props for the props.
Although the stories they tell aren’t all that interesting, the puppets themselves are a marvel. Everitt has created beautifully detailed, distinct characters that do actually look like they belong onstage with Kermit the Frog and the gang. From the more traditional furry monsters, to the talking cheeseburger Hampton J. Patrick, to the winged Womanticore, to the aforementioned kilt- and tam-wearing Scottish crocodile, each puppet is a work of art. Hopefully, they will go on to tell compelling stories in the future.
