fp Performing for The Pigeoning through December!

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!