I am pleased to announce, and proud to be a part of these performances of the latest iteration of Robin Frohardt’s, The Pigeoning, a (non-traditional) bunraku style puppet theater piece which we began creating and have been work-shopping for over 3 years !
After much work, born out of St. Anne’s Warehouse‘s innovative Puppet Lab in Brooklyn, and spurned on by several gracious grant’s, a recent residency at the beautiful NACL in upstate New York, and a successful World Premiere run at the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts, we now return afresh to present a 3-week run as our Manhattan premiere of the piece in all it’s current, finalized glory!
The Pigeoning is a somewhat absurdist, darkly comical paranoid fantasy told with only highly intricate puppet play, sound/music (provided by yours truly!) and lights. There is no dialogue. I have had the wonderful opportunity to color in Robin’s incredibly detailed, yet simple and profoundly beautiful visual world with a palette of sound and music that allows the audience to get a little lost into the mind of a lonely office worker who speaks to no one – indeed, has no one to speak to – and is at psychiatrical war with his environment in a world of cold and tasteless surroundings (the 80’s !). The all-original musical score is a mix of office-context-specific muzak, naive and playful incidental pieces and sad and lonely introspective accompaniments to the main character’s (Frank) decent ( It will soon be available on CD and hopefully online! ) I perform along side the puppeteers providing a contemporary one-man-band accompaniment with keyboards, guitar, and trumpet, in addition to providing a little foley work. It is quite fun!
The play itself is a deeply moving, funny and sad – our favorite emotions – look at the self, its tendencies towards morbid fantasy and destructive obsessions that easily lead one to the edge of mental stability, and though that sounds quite heavy, it is a light approach that is called for in the dealing, for it is levity after all that frees us from the burdensome weight of loneliness!
It has been a great pleasure to continue to work with Robin on this delightful piece which has teamed us up with a crew of extremely talented actors/puppeteers in New York and with whom we have made quite the little productive family! I encourage anyone who is in New York through December to please come and check out what we have done!
You can see a trailer here!
Cris De La Fuente liked this on Facebook.
Denise Cullen liked this on Facebook.
Jd Limelight liked this on Facebook.
Erica Bjerning liked this on Facebook.
Deborah Coffin liked this on Facebook.