Photo by Greg Inda
Any walk or drive through just about any neighborhood right now will make sure that you know, if you didn’t already, that it’s Halloween season. This year, I’ve seen already dozens of giant skeletons (one dressed as Dungeon Crawler Carl), inventive and clever cemeteries, scarily carved pumpkins, and even a giant Octopus taking over an apartment building. But nothing in the world of outdoor seasonal decoration even comes near to what awaited me in the Merle Theatre (the former garage theatre at Steppenwolf). Rough House Puppet Arts’ annual 45-minute show, of which this is the sixth iteration, lets small groups of audience members move from scene to scene, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting, as they watch the elaborate and haunted stories acted out for their pleasure…by puppets, as you’ve probably guessed by now.
These puppets are, of course, manipulated by master puppeteers, and the views into the tight performance spaces are limited to what one can see through narrow slits in the walls, so the effects (lighting, sound, movement) that director Corey Smith and a wealth of artists and designers intended will be honored.
After exploring the lobby displays and perhaps visiting a bespoke bar where drinks are served in baby bottles to avoid accidental spillage if an audience member gets jostled while moving around inside in the darkened halls, each small group is ushered into the first room, where they don headphones (the first set of many) and listen to a spooky introduction before moving on to the main event.
Vim Hile and Tanima are the creators of the first story (pictured above), called “All Night, All Day” and performed by Camille Mitchell and Casey Doe, in which a puppet takes flight as we watch her struggle with nightmares. The next room features one of the most fully realized stories of the show (as most of the rest are stingy with spoken narrative and allow the lovely visuals and music to help us to know what is happening). Created by Charlie Malave and Caitlin McLeod and performed (in alternating pairs) by Finn Bradley, Eddy Barber-Rozema, Rachel Hartmann and Emilie Wingate, “Hushaby, hush you’re not going with them” invites us into a little girl’s nightmare, where all sorts of creatures infest her castle-like home, including a huge crow-demon that threatens to swoop in and carry the girl away.
The third tale, created by Madigan Burke, Zhen Heinemann and Andy Slater and performed by Lindsey Ball and Candice Conner, is called “The Moon is So Bright”; it opens on a tight scene of someone fishing for shrimp in the moonlight from the shore of a lake. The scene opens up from there as we see months and months go by during the tale. A fourth scene, created by Leah Lara, strawberry gelato (your guess is as good as mine) and performed by Sara Addai, Amari Amai, Sam Lewis, Tia Pinson. Called “(love is) A Mother’s Burden,” it features lovely fire effects in an artistically rendered piece.
The show shifts gears radically for the fifth room. “Jumping Jack Money,” created by Saskia Bakker and Ruby Que and performed by Khalil Smith and Alexander Ferguson, is a busy and often very funny tale of a mad doctor (the almost life-size titular character) making himself more and more wealthy through his vile manipulations of experiments in the hospital he runs. In this scene, all of the audience members reach through holes to take control of hand puppet characters and thus become parts of the story. The final story leaves the very populated hospital to focus on a single dreamer and echoes a question: “Don’t You Want to Live Your Dream?” In this lovely last piece, Felix and Abby Palen take us deep into the world that question wants us to answer that question, asked again and again in a song by Felix. Performed by Shannon Twenter, Mallory Kimbrell, Amandatron 5000, Felix, and Ryder, the scene’s beauty tempts us to answer yes…until we remember all of the nightmares in other scenes.
If we could only guarantee safe and pleasant dreams, we might all be happier and better weather the storms of the real world. But the daily news…and this season…render everything far too much like nightmares. This brief show takes us into a few of them, but mostly it is a reminder that puppeteering is still with us, here allowing us to give vision to our dreams, both good and bad.
House of the Exquisite Corpse VI: LULLABIES runs through November 1 at the Merle Theatre, 1624 N. Halsted, Chicago (in the Steppenwolf garage). It is performed Thursdays through Saturdays, with timed entries starting at 6:50 p.m., continuing every 15 minutes until the last entry at 9:30 p.m., with Sunday matinees, starting at 1:50 p.m.For tickets and info visit roughhousetheater.com/tickets. For more Chicago reviews or show information, see our home page at chicagoonstage.com or visit theatreinchicago.com.