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WALDEN - LIVET I SKOVENE

A collaboration with award winning Danish theater director Simon Boberg, WALDEN - LIVET I SKOVENE (Walden - A life in the Woods) is a free adaptation of Henry David Thoreau's 1854 seminal work about his self-imposed exile on Walden pond in rural Massachusetts. In it, he confronts the shackles of civilization and let’s the book stand as a tribute to the individual. It has been interpreted as simply a romantic ode to living a more self-sufficient life in harmony with nature. But does it really fit? Even Thoreau recognizes that we humans (God help us) need other humans. When it comes to living in nature, we are helpless without each other and the community. And the planet will probably do just fine without us after we have finally spoiled it for ourselves and each other. WALDEN - LIVET I SKOVENE Is an animated diorama structured around a year in the forest, from idyllic summer days to lonely winter evenings. A sensual journey about one man’s longing for the deep stillness of the forest.

performed in Danish at Bådteatret in Copenhagen, DK.

October 19 through November 16

www.baadteatret.dk

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BISMARCK

In the winter of 2001, a young woman named Takako Konishi was found wandering the icy streets of Bismarck, North Dakota wearing a miniskirt, a cropped jacket, and no hat or gloves. Clearly, she was not dressed for the dead of a North Dakota winter. Two police officers brought her to the station house to warm her up with a cup of tea, and to find out if she needed help. She spoke only Japanese; they spoke only English. (They called the local China Dragon restaurant for a translator, but unsurprisingly no one there spoke Japanese.) Through non-verbal communication, the police officers deduced that she was on her way to Fargo. But when she drew a picture of where she was headed (a drawing of a road with a tree by it) one of the officers suddenly realized that she had come to North Dakota to find buried treasure. The Coen Brothers’ 1996 dark comedy “Fargo,” begins with a crawl that identifies it as being based on a true story (which in fact, it is not) and in it, the character played by Steve Buscemi buries a million dollars in ransom money by the side of the road, but suffers an unfortunate rendezvous with a wood chipper before he can re-claim it. This was the treasure the police officer deduced the young woman was hunting for.

In BISMARCK, the young woman at the center of this story is represented by a non-speaking Bunraku-style puppet, thus “othered” by the speaking actors with whom she interacts. She is a cypher at the center of her own story, ready to have the other characters’ (and the audience’s) experiences, feelings and thoughts projected onto her. This is, of course, what we always do when we watch a puppet. But those functions can lead to unexpected results when applied to humans. Confronted with the drawing of a road with a tree by it that Takako produces, the Police officers interpret her actions through a thoroughly Westernized lens: The romanticized western mythology of The Buried Treasure, the assumption that everyone’s actions are fueled by dreams of financial plenty, and the unshakable notion that Hollywood has universal reach and impact. As we criminalize people coming across the border because we don’t have a lens that is broader than our own self-understanding, we deal poorly with “otherness,” falling back on our deeply ingrained sense of American exceptionalism.

BISMARCK is performed by five actor/puppeteers with original music by Dan Moses Schreier, sung live by a chorus of 3 “guardian angels.” The visuals of the piece are stark, winter white and devoid of detail. Projections styled like a multiple-choice quiz, continually ask the audience to interpret the puppet’s actions in multiple ways. Not unlike the police officers in Takako’s story, audiences are left to decide for themselves what they prefer to believe.