| Dean Bareham and friends are cooking up a spectacle this year that’s likely to wake the 2,800-year old mummy sleeping just down the hall. That’s right: after last year’s astounding Glenbow Museum show, Dancing on Water, the Green Fools are back. This time, they’re transporting the audience back to 37 A.D.
"We’re going to do a full-scale puppet/mask/stilt show," says Dean Bareham, artistic director for The Green Fools. "We’re also working with an aerialist and acrobats, as well. Because back then, there was a lot of large-scale spectacle."
The company is no stranger to spectacle. Last year’s Glenbow Museum show tied three different creation myths together – Greek, Vietnamese, and Hindu – in a performance combining puppets, shadows and water. So how is this show, Crossing the Mediterranean, different?
"I don’t have to worry about the dangers of water, which is hell on the puppets," Bareham half jokes. The project, which ties in with the Glenbow’s Egypt, Greece and Rome: Art of the Ancient Mediterranean World, is pushing different boundaries this year.
"We’re going to weave two stories: we’re going to have the mythic realm, which is cool, and we’re going to have large, full-size Egyptian Gods, which is really exciting. We’re going to have various marionette scenes taking place in different parts of that little theatre in the Glenbow: our goal is to transform the space, to make people feel like they’ve gone back in time."
Joining Bareham and the Fools are other collaborative artists, notably musicians Vi An, who performed in Dancing on Water, and David Rhymer, best-known for his work with One Yellow Rabbit. "We’ve got a great team of people working on it," Bareham says. "We’re also going to have a choral element in it this time, too." The musical talent will be integrating with the large-scale puppet pyrotechnics to immerse the audience in a tale of ancient myth and artistry.
"We’re taking myth – something that we use quite often – and weaving it with the story of an artist, and the artist’s journey. Essentially, back then, artists were like slaves: you were either bought or sold or absconded. So we have this fellow starting the show with his father working in a scarab factory. We found during our research that there was a place in Egypt, a Greek city in Egypt, that made scarabs, so it was the first commercial (manufacturer) for tourists."
The show centres around an artist who learns his trade from his father, and who travels through the ancient world on a quest to discover his identity. But the young man’s quest is blended with the old myth of Osiris and Isis, in which Isis must retrieve the parts of her dismembered husband that have been scattered across the Mediterranean, so that she can put him back together.
"We’re tying it together with school groups as well, bringing in school groups and tying the show directly to the exhibits," Bareham says, emphasizing the show’s connection to its source material – the artifacts resting just down the hall. "We’re most struck by these exhibits, by the fact that there are so many beautiful artifacts, and you never know who did any of this stuff."
But will the ancient art be any match for The Green Fools’ new – and top secret – shadow puppet techniques?
"I don’t want to give too much away," laughs Bareham.
Crossing the Mediterranean runs from November 23-December 7 at the Glenbow Museum’s Burlington Resources Theatre. |
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