Puppets
During a time of loss, this project insists these moments are explicitly ripe for connection. We explore how art can play an adaptive role to nonetheless bring moments of levity, wonder, and joy to one another.
The shadow wagon is a mobile puppet theater stage built atop a 4 x 8-foot wagon. Observing social distance guidelines, a limited crew can safely pull the wagon around city streets. Inside the wagon, crew members will project a narrative shadow puppet vignette onto a 2 x 4-foot screen. Neighbors can view the show from a safe distance inside of their front door or through their windows. The wagon will make variable stops attempting only to be indiscriminate in sharing and moving on into the night. Live music, a live narration, or simply the streets’ soundscape may be the accompaniment to the show.
The crew remains in the shadows, so to speak, or anonymous to the viewer. It is the team’s wish for there to be limited recognition of authorship. The more muted this wall, the more energy is forcibly reflected to the viewer as the subject and motivation of the project. We hope to put people in a precarious position where all they can do is accept this moment is a gift for them and just enjoy it.
The shadow puppetry form is itself a meditation on the fallout, the collateral damage, the shadow of the COVID experience. As COVID ravages social connections as we knew them, what grows in its shadows? As we have sat at home sheltering in place, what personal demons have we each faced? Taking grief as a point of departure, in what ways can grief be productive? What is the realm of possibility after death? What do we need to steward ourselves on to the next phase of our journeys and what role do shadows play for this?
Cast away as an undesirable darkness, we meditate on the co-creative relationship between light and dark. For some, shadows are an extension of the soul or seen as the other self. They can leave you for a while to conduct business and come back, serve as a protector, and eventually as an entity that gives permission for transition and passage into the beyond. Shadows are a container for things we don’t want to bring into the other parts of life. We take on shadows directly, now, as companion to our narrative and the path ahead.
Finally, this project is grounded. It’s about a phenomenological experience which is not digitally mediated. It is produced as a shadow to the culture of the double-tap. The shadow wagon demands your embodied attention – just for a fleeting moment. It is about ephemerality, a navigation in a liminal space, a vehicle for the other side. For these reasons we wish not to be beholden to covetous, sticky, ego- and identity-traps of social media. Movement moves on.