Ian Thal, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen!
Blogs by Ian Thal
Another Two Weeks with Bread & Puppet Theater: Part II 12/24/2004 8:13:31 PM
November 1, 2004: First Night of Rehearsals
The first evening of rehearsal with Bread & Puppet is similar to the previous year’s except in the fact that I already know many of the people. Mary Curtin is still producing, Peter Schumann is still the director. Lydia, Justin, and Rose are back as part of the touring company. Ben T. Matchstick, whom I had met last year, and had become a company member by the time of the show at Northeastern University in which I had also taken part is also back. Jesse, who had, like me, been a volunteer at last year's Cambridge shows was now a member of the company, meaning that I only had three new faces, those of Lilly, Jabari, and Michael.
There are also a handful of familiar faces amongst the volunteers. Catalina, Tom, former company members, Alan Hark, John Bell and Trudi Cohen, John and Trudi's son, Isaac, and the entire Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band. John, as with last year, has managed to recruit a number of students from Emerson where he teaches theatre and theatre history. I also see some old friends of mine who are trying the Bread & Puppet experience for the first time: Katt Hernandez and Hans Reikhert. Katt is best known as an improvisational violinist and Hans as an underground cartoonist, but as of late they had been experimenting together with performance art, mostly in the guises of Doctor Selenium and Margo.
We are divided up into bass, tenor, soprano, and alto and begin rehearsing a hymn. Last year, for Oratorio of the Possibilitarians, we had worked on a Medieval Corsican Latin modal hymn, this year it is something that is easier for our modern ears to understand, an 18th century shape note piece entitled "Mourning" It's much easier to sing, and while I am a stronger singer than I was last year, I still lack the precision needed to take part in a four voice contrapuntal work.
At the first rehearsal, casting for parts in "World on Fire" begins. Rarely in the Bread & Puppet productions in which I have been involved is a volunteer cast for a specific role; rather, one is cast into a scene or as a member of a group of performers, at which point, one might get a more specific costume or puppet and one might have a chance to differentiate one from the rest of the group in which one performs, though rarely taking a completely different character. In "World on Fire" there are basically three groups: the Red Clowns, led by the Fire Chief and played by members of the touring company; the Asymmetric Prisoner of War Orchestra; and the Red Puppeteers.
Essentially, most of "World on Fire" is structured around the Asymmetric Prisoner of War Orchestra off to the side, improvising the musical interludes, while the Red Clowns play out broad political satire with a fairy tale like narrative of how various powers that be react when the world is on fire. The puppeteers remain in a smaller proscenium theater within the theater performing a dumb show that provides a more metaphorical counterpoint to the clown show. I decide that I want to become a better puppeteer and so I volunteer to be one of the Red Puppeteers.
