Radiant Darkness - Stories in Shadow Puppetry

January to March 2006: Links Hall’s new Artistic Associates - Jennifer Friedrich, Mark Booth and Nicole LeGette - each curate a month-long series of performance, based on expertise in their respective artistic fields. January’s program has been curated by Jennifer Friedrich, puppeteer and Managing Director of The Incurable Theater.

Storytelling in the shadows
Using just a light, a screen and paper silhouette cut-outs, an entire realm is created from virtually nothing but shadows cast. Radiant Darkness explores the dark side of the world of shadow puppetry through murder ballads, folk songs, Victorian tabloid tales and other beautifully gruesome storytelling.

Coming soon:
February: An Incomplete Map of Everything, curated by Mark Booth
March: The Body Breaks: Butoh, Breakdancing, and Beyond, curated by Nicole LeGette

Links Hall is located at 3435 N. Sheffield Avenue, convenient to the Addison Red Line El stop. Reservations for all events highly recommended, please call 773.281.0824. Pay at the door.

PROGRAM ONE
January 6-8 and 13-15, 2006
Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm
Sundays at 7pm
$10

The Golden Comb:
Heroines, Hair & Happily Ever After
by Jennifer Friedrich, Jamie O'Reilly,
and Paul Amandes
This series of shadow puppet pieces includes ‘The Tale of Two Sisters’, a Victorian style kranky play, and ‘The Wedding Night’, a 17th century Irish tale of thwarted nubile bliss, projected on a laundry line of turn of the century era garments. Jamie O’Reilly is one of Chicago's premiere song stylists, known for her powerful interpretations of ballads and songs. Paul Amandes is a singer/songwriter, playwright and composer, and recently directed The Cripple of Innismann at Columbia College Chicago, where he also teaches. Puppeteer Jennifer Friedrich is the co-Founder and Managing Director of the Incurable Theater; she worked as a builder and designer with Redmoon Theater, and directed their Children’s Company for over two years.

To Keep My Love Alive
by Ashley Sullivan
Through shadow puppetry and song, Sullivan explores one woman’s history with her many deceased husbands. Cold and calculating, she deploys a variety of murderous methods when she tires of them: poisoning, stabbing, and dumping them off balconies. Ashley Sullivan is a Musical Theater major from Columbia College Chicago.

The Snow Woman
by Hiromi Sogo
A traditional Japanese tale: one night, two hunters see a beautiful woman in the snowy mountain; she is the fabled snow woman, and if seen she will take your life. A young hunter who survived that terrible encounter, finds a surprising secret after many happy years with his beautiful wife. Born and raised in Osaka, Japan, Hiromi Sogo also works with traditional stop-motion animation as well as dolls and puppets.

The Immortals
by Meredith Miller
Miller presents shadowy reeanactments of the deaths of our most beloved celebrities. The legendary final moments of stars such as Elvis, Natalie Wood, and Sonny Bono illustrate the ironic tragedy of a life of fame and glory extinguished in a brief incidental moment. With her usual combination of beautiful and disturbing imagery, Meredith Miller creates a shadowy exploration of the human tendency to romanticize violent death. A puppeteer and theatrical designer, Miller is co-Artistic Director with The Incurable Theater, and has designed and built puppets, props, sets, and costumes for Redmoon Theater, Blair Thomas and Co., The Shedd Aquarium, and Collaboraction.

The Strange and Unfortunate Dream
by Lolly Extract
Lolly Extract specializes in the movement and design of marionette puppets, and her Chicago-based traveling puppet theater offers original comedies combining shadow puppets, hand puppets, and rod puppets. In The Strange and Unfortunate Dream, a puppet enters and falls asleep. A shadow puppet of the marionette pulls himself out of the sleeping marionette and proceeds to climb away, only to slip and fall, setting off a dreamlike sequence of shadow puppetry.

Using guitar, viola and various sound makers, Jill Summers and Dave Whitcomb create the musical atmosphere for Radiant Darkness. David Whitcomb plays bass and guitar, and runs Stray Dog Recording Co., a small recording studio in Bucktown. Jill Summers (composer, viola) is a regular musical contributor to the Michael Montenegro puppet theater and is the manager of Stray Dog.

PROGRAM TWO
January 20-22 and 27-29, 2006
Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm
Sundays at 7pm
$10

Being Mad to Desperation - Murder Ballads and Shadow Puppetry
by Anthony Whitaker and Shelley Miller, with John Hasbrouk
Being Mad to Desperation is a verse taken from ‘The Banks of Ohio’, one of the most traditional murder ballads, which explores the story of a man who kills his beloved after she refuses to marry him. Popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, murder ballads told tales of murder, trials, and executions. This piece explores the form from ‘Fay Tucker’ by the Indigo Girls, based on the first woman serial killer executed in Texas, to ‘Ellen Smith’, a murder ballad told from the point of view of her pet bird. Singer/songwriter Anthony Whitaker has performed at the Royal George and Bailiwick Theatres, and has been artist in residence at Northeastern University.

Lost and Found
by The Incurable Theater
Using silhouettes and shadows to explore the relationship between amputation, phantom limbs and the earliest prosthetic technology, Lost and Found combines psychiatrist Weir Mitchell’s research of the phantom limb phenomena with a series of thank you letters sent by Civil War veterans to a prosthetic manufacturer. The Incurable Theater creates a vivid picture of the horror of losing a part of one’s self and the human mind’s astonishing ability to adapt. The company recently performed Punch and Judy, Three Penny Puppet Opera and Little Faust in the 2005 PAC/edge Performance Festival, and reprised their acclaimed production of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman at the Breadline Theater in Fall 2004.

The Yellow Wallpaper
by Cynthia Von Orthal
The Yellow Wallpaper was written in 1892 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and explores the tortured role of women as wife and mother, at a time when men defined those roles, leaving little room for the woman to define herself – and with madness as a viable option for women as an escape from conforming to these attitudes. Cynthia Von Orthal’s shadow version of this text, reflects the darkness and two-dimensional ideology that pervades these attitudes. Cynthia Von Orthal is Artistic Director for Von Orthal Puppets.

The Agreement
by Damien Hinojosa
The Agreement is a short shadow play based on a comic dialogue by Plato. Hinojosa is co-Artistic Director of The Incurable Theater, and his work has been seen in many festivals, including showings at the Women in the Director’s Chair Theater, Links Hall and The Field Museum. Damien has also worked with several puppet troupes including Redmoon Theater and Jabberwocky Marionettes.

Mary
by Connie Lee
Connie Lee returns to the theater after a ten year hiatus with the story of the mother of a boy named Jesus. From the conception of her first born son until his death, this story explores the concerned mother’s perspective regarding her child of prophesy. Told with shadow puppets, this is the second in Lee’s series on Saints.

Jill Summers and Dave Whitcomb once again provide the musical atmosphere for Radiant Darkness (see Program One).