>>REVIEWS
2007 INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ANIMATED OBJECTS
The curtain falls on the third International Festival of Animated Objects, and Fast Forward steps out from the wings to provide the city’s most comprehensive coverage of Calgary’s biannual festival of masks, puppetry and animated objects. Ten days of unique tomfoolery in 13 reviews.
· OPENING GALABASH (artists: Chad VanGaalen, Kara Keith and others) – Cramming Victoria’s Ballroom to the roof with gaggles of hipsters and puppet mongers, the festival’s first event felt like an intimate house party thrown by people far more eccentric and interesting than those you know. Roaming girls with bobbing ducks offered the chance to win tickets for the evening’s prize draws, and balloon artists created alien hats, balloon corsages, and even doll-like Sesame Street characters. From a shadow puppetry and mask-making table where partygoers could wax kindergarten with exacto knives, scissors and cut-outs, to mainstage acts Kara Keith and Chad VanGaalen, the night was an electric start to the festival.
Extra props to Kara Keith, whose performance also included live-action slideshows, one of which featured a Koopah Troopah whaling on Mario. (JK)
· HEADLESS TERROR (Artist: Ghostwriter Theatre) – Oh, a sideshow act at the High Performance Rodeo? Alright barker, you’ve sold me with your hawking and jaunty straw hat. Let’s see inside.
By God, that lady’s got no head! Look! Why, that’s simply remarkable. She’s able to write on a sketch pad and everything. How did they do that? Mirrors? Probably. I can’t see any though. Maybe she’s lying down or… oh, time to go?
Curse you, Ghostwriter Theatre! You’ve bamboozled my eyes and I love you for it. (JK)
· GET OFF THE CROSS MARY! (Artists: Small Brown Package Theatre) – In Get Off the Cross, Mary!, a disillusioned puppet named Bruth dared to ask of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: why did a movie Bruth loathed affect him so intensely? And more importantly, what would it look like if he recast himself in the main role? Small Brown Package Theatre answered with a scandalous commentary on the crucifixion that occasionally dissolved into miscellaneous dick jokes designed to incite gasps and offend the pious, but more often succeeded with such zingers as holding a pivotal scene in a fabric shop and dressing the 12 Apostles in drag. Vancouver’s Berend McKenzie showed us how quickly a film derails if puppets reveal who fists them, er, who sticks a hand up their ass, um… who "handles" them. Culminating in a delightful climax with Jesus staple-gunned to a sequined cross while Gloria Gaynor belted "I Will Survive" to the flabbergasted audience, Small Brown Package triumphed in its mounting of this production in the alcove of a former church on a Sunday night. (AC)
· THE GLORIES OF GLORIA REVUE (Artist: Mooky Cornish) – Like a beautiful prop lost in the cavernous space behind her stage and then found again, Mooky Cornish’s The Glories of Gloria Revue begins full of infectious silliness but doesn’t quite find itself again until its big finish.
Ostensibly the creation of a self-promoting, would-be musical star, Glories turns clown absurdity into a one-woman variety show, with projected vintage film stock segueing into Cornish’s routines. Though its faltering middle sometimes blurred the line between pantomimed ineptitude and genuine technical failure, the show’s piece de resistance brought a collection of random audience members to the stage for a lip-synched, show-stopping Broadway number. If time smoothes the wrinkles of the show’s middle, its upcoming tour to California should have them rolling in the aisles and singing on the stage. (JK)
· OUR TRADITIONS (Artists: ’Ksan Performing Arts Group) – Our Traditions celebrated Aboriginal culture in four distinct performance styles. ’Ksan used mask work and traditional costuming; "Horse" juxtaposed a haunting cellist with oral storytelling; "One Day" rapped out possibilities; "Young Spirit Voices" took a youthful stance on defining oneself through culture. A river of Aboriginal pride ran through the evening and created an interesting dynamic with the predominantly white audience. Jerilynn Webster and Archer Pechawis, the emcees, alternated between paying tribute to their Cree elders and relying on stereotypical jokes to elicit laughs. Webster and Pechawis mentioned the 15-minute intermission, then clarified, "Not Indian time!" The audience tittered. When Webster asked the audience to call back "I’m Proud" in her awareness rap of missing Aboriginal women in Canada, the question of what the white audience members were proud of came to mind, and insinuations of cultural appropriation hovered around the microphone.
Pechawis’s "Horse" was the highlight of the evening, with cellist Cris Derksen looping her cello over itself to weave a haunting fable of spirit horses. The Young Spirit Voices comprised of emerging Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal performers in the community, showcased youthful ingenuity. ’Ksan’s performance, while the most acclaimed segment of the evening, lacked the exuberance and raw energy of the individual performers. The evening ended with the presentation of white Stetsons to the members of ’Ksan and black Stetsons to the Young Spirit Voices. Nothing like offering a token of cowboy goodwill to the First Nations people for their efforts. (AC)
· UNSTRUNG (Artist: Ronnie Burkett) – Hearing Ronnie Burkett read one of his scripts is humbling and sublime. Canada’s premiere puppeteer may be best known for creating striking theatre with his marionettes, but even without them he is able to weave a tale as complex and energizing as anything on the main stage, bouncing between characters with remarkable vocal agility. In his third presentation at the IFAO, Burkett read from Billy Twinkle: Requiem For a Golden Boy, a beautiful, fictionalized autobiography that seamlessly joins puppeteer griping with the more familiar story of artistic talent squandered and then found again. From a career-ending stint as a novelty cruise ship puppeteer to a transformative visit to a puppetry festival, Billy’s journey through memory and the lives of the festival’s eccentric attendees was touching, comic and humbling.
A writer, designer and puppeteer, Burkett’s regular "unstrung" presence at the IFAO proves that though his puppets are beautiful, he’s more than skilled enough to do without out them. Thank goodness he doesn’t. (JK)
· THE MOTHER OF ALL ENEMIES (Artist: Paul Zaloom) – Melding camp and political humour into a single shadow puppetry show, Paul Zaloom’s The Mother of All Enemies takes its fez-wearing, openly gay Arabic protagonist, Karagoz, from the oppressive wastes of an Al Qaeda training camp to the oppressive shores of America itself. Unfortunately, with the show composed of either the scatological or the simply scattered, Zaloom’s obvious skill was overshadowed by jokes flatter than his puppets, such as the terrorist-in-training being instructed to look for a bomb "at the corner of Fatwah Boulevard and Jihad Drive."
After six years of the same continuous neo-con flop, taking shots at the war on terror, especially in something as clumsy as a random name-drop, isn’t progressive, it’s pedestrian. Yes, religious fanatics on both side of the conflict are ridiculous jingoists, but simply dropping their names is no more a comedy act than reciting newspaper headlines. (JK)
· MASK MESSENGER (Artist: Rob Faust) – Rob Faust’s Mask Messenger may have brought in the youngest crowd out of any of the festival’s performances, but that certainly didn’t limit its appeal. The show, an examination of the role of masks both on and off stage, had the entire audience enthralled.
Certainly some of the appeal came from the masks themselves – Faust’s faces are animated enough to provoke laughter when he’s not doing anything. But it’s his physicality that really sells the performance, and Faust’s stage presence literally knows no bounds. He even went so far as to climb into the audience in one of his more monstrous masks, prompting one youngster to admonish him during the question and answer period.
Even if he was frightening at times, Faust never lost the kids’ attention. And if the standing ovation at the end of Saturday’s performance was any indication, the parents were having just as much fun. (PH)
· INTERNET SLUTTS: THE SHOW THAT SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN (Artists: Frank Meschkuleit and Ron Stefaniuk) – Given the budget to create a pilot episode by Canada’s Comedy Network, Frank Meschkuleit, Ron Stefaniuk and a merry band of lowly paid techs and writers created 26 episodes of Internet Slutts, a puppet show that imagined two friends saturating themselves to the breaking point with bizarre Internet content. In the basement of the Art Gallery of Calgary, Meschkuleit and Stefaniuk provided an insider’s post mortem on the show’s ultimate failure to find an audience and the challenges of creating an entire show on a budget meant for a single pilot. Instructive, witty and bizarre. (JK)
· PUPPETS ON SCREEN (Artists: Red Smarteez, various) – Two programs of short works showcased the talent of local and international artists, including a wonderfully surreal fish dinner-cum-Christian allegory by Polish filmmaker Marek Skrobecki and a haunting story of the friendship between a monkey and deer in a prairie ghost town by Halifax’s Graeme Patterson.
Lyle Pisio of local jazz ensemble tokyosexwhale produced the series’s most surprising technical innovation: a time-lapse video that used a reflective, spherical Christmas ornament to impose his reflection against the background of his environment while he moved through his own home and its surrounding pathways. (JK)
· THE WORLD ACCORDING TO SESAME STREET (Artists: Linda Goldstein Knowlton and Linda Hawkins) – As a look at an American television institution’s role in a turbulent global environment, The World According To Sesame Street has ample opportunity to be critical. After all, one of the show’s founders has described its producers as being "like old-fashioned missionaries," and that kind of statement carries some heavy baggage. But while World gives a passing nod to accusations of cultural imperialism, it is far more concerned with showing the good that Jim Henson’s groundbreaking children’s show has done. And damned if it isn’t convincing.
The film focuses on three of Sesame Street’s more difficult productions: the bureaucratic nightmare of Bangladesh, the ethnic strife in Kosovo and the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Taking on all three stretches the film a bit far, as each country’s production has enough drama to fill an entire documentary, but watching the genuine idealists at Sesame Street Studios as they work with local artists in extreme situations is surprisingly moving. And the clips and test animations from classic episodes are sure to warm the hearts of all but the most nostalgia-shunning audience members. (PH)
· DOLLY WIGGLER CABARET (Artists: "Festival Stars") – A hell of a sendoff, the festival’s final event brought its performers back to the stage in a cabaret-style evening emceed by Cory Mack and Mooky Cornish. Opened by Paul Zaloom’s excellent postmodern take on the classic Punch and Judy show, Punch and Jimmy navigated the familiar retinue of Punch’s murders (baby, policeman, hangman, Death, Satan) with Punch as an oversexed gay man with rage problems. Unlike the traditional invincibility of Punch and Judy’s title character, Zaloom’s libidinous antihero is murdered by the only force stronger than himself: his own dick.
The evening also included a smattering of shorter, excellent works, including appearances by The Mask Messenger’s Rob Faust and a riotously funny take on the concept of a balloon stripper. Where the traditional burlesque act has a stripper pop balloons to reveal parts of her naked body, the Dolly Wiggler equivalent used a balloon-made marionette whose act culminated in macabre self-destruction. Wonderfully meta and wonderfully concluded. (JK) |
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