Mummenschanz!
Oct. 27th, 2010 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidLast night my parents took me out to see Mummenschanz: 3x11 in Worcester (the closest they came to Boston; I wonder why not Boston as well...?). Unsurprisingly, they continue to be fabulous (I last saw them in 2003). And impressive: two of the performers are from the original 1972 group, and I'm just blown away by their talents, all of them.
The first half of the show was shorter pieces that tended to play with anthropomorphizing usually-inanimate objects, while the second half was more obviously people. In both halves, lighting was key, particularly to certain pieces, having a long ray of light with everything else dark so the performers were not the focus, just the things.
We were up in the balcony, far enough back that the few times the show moved to the audience, we weren't able to see what was going on. It was a loss, but a relatively small one.
The show started with two huge hands, that opened the curtains, and clasped each other, or twiddled their thumbs, impressive because it was two people coordinating. And because their sense of timing was good, so other gestures were funny.
That was followed by a big brown blob that slowly moved and humped its way up onto a platform, rocking this way and that, slowly... and then falling off the back of the platform.
There was a split green sphere, rather like a 3D PacMan, that came out, and tasted some little toy that was thrown from the wings.... and then had to wipe its huge red tongue off on the platform, it was so nasty once it had finally tasted it.
There was a yellow corrugated tube that played with a huge red balloon, suctioning it to one end, bouncing it back and forth, even to the audience, motioning for it to be tapped back.
A thin line of light, and a mosquito slowly made its way from one side to the other, sometimes up on fingers and toes.
A rippling rectangle flowed and floated, wriggled and sometimes bent to form a face.
Two metallic flame shapes included interesting sounds as they shimmered and danced around each other, moth a metallic foil sort of sound and a solid edge of each costume as well.
A slowly floating sheet of some kind of plastic (it seemed to have more depth, perhaps related to bubble wrap) drifted through, then a thinner scrap of plastic, and a small bug that was zapped by the plastic.
A huge tan blob moved from the back of the stage towards the front, forming a heart, and a face, and almost falling into the audience, before retreating and shrinking down to almost nothing.
A rectilinear Gumby-like creature explored the possibilities inherent in having four appendages and two (either-end) heads that all ended in rectangular prisms.
A person wore golden cylinder segments, mostly cut on the bias, along arms and legs and head, making a huge number of different shapes and effects with them.
Flexible corrugated 'pipes' joined in a middle segment to make a 4-legged spider that played with what its appendages could do.
Two oversized people of inflated plastic slowly swaggered around the stage, once they'd inflated their (detachable, as it turns out) heads.
A yellow cardboard box unfolded itself into a net with arms and legs, later joined by three other green boxes.
Ribbon curled through the air, the narrow band of light showing only part of the curves generated by the ribbon at the end of a stick.
And two segmented sticks investigated two-dimensionality, sometimes with eyes.
The second half started with a woman using white tape to put on the outlines of an outfit, and generate different faces (some by the audience).
A pair of shutters opened, then encouraged a pair of windows and potted plants to join it.
The next skit all I have noted down is "eye face," and I don't remember what that was supposed to trigger.
Two people each had a colored wire coming from the back of their collars, over the tops of their heads, and down the front. It could be pulled out, and bent to form interesting huge faces.
Another man and woman piece with each one having mutable features and hair that they one-upped each other with. And they had little rolling 'pets', one called by a whistle, the other by one of those "whee!" sorts of noisemakers (no clue what they're called).
Another couple, with hoops rising over their heads, each with a plastic bag face that could blow one way or another depending on how the body moved. They managed a single kiss, but otherwise were always pointing in the same, rather than opposite, directions as they chased each other. Bittersweet.
A big outlet on one head was matched by a big plug on another head. They went offstage, and the lights kept dimming and brightening....
A suitcase head came out, leaving a red piece that another used for hair, then put on a mouth.
Pink and blue toilet paper faced people had their (slightly messy) romance.
Another skit where my short note wasn't enough to bring it back to mind: "face play".
There were the classic clay faces (similar to this video) as the official end of the show.
An encore included two green eyes, a red mouth, and a nose forming a huge face.
The tour continues with Burlington, VT (October 27), McLean, VA (October 30-31), Sarasota, FL (November 3), Wickenburg, AZ (November 14), Santa Barbara, CA (November 19), Irvine, CA (November 20-21), Berkeley, CA (November 26-28), Arcata, CA (November 30), Philadelphia, PA (December 16-18), New York City, NY (December 20-January 8), Morristown, NJ (January 14), Princeton, NJ (January 15), and Valhalla, NY (January 16), if anyone would like to check them out.
The first half of the show was shorter pieces that tended to play with anthropomorphizing usually-inanimate objects, while the second half was more obviously people. In both halves, lighting was key, particularly to certain pieces, having a long ray of light with everything else dark so the performers were not the focus, just the things.
We were up in the balcony, far enough back that the few times the show moved to the audience, we weren't able to see what was going on. It was a loss, but a relatively small one.
The show started with two huge hands, that opened the curtains, and clasped each other, or twiddled their thumbs, impressive because it was two people coordinating. And because their sense of timing was good, so other gestures were funny.
That was followed by a big brown blob that slowly moved and humped its way up onto a platform, rocking this way and that, slowly... and then falling off the back of the platform.
There was a split green sphere, rather like a 3D PacMan, that came out, and tasted some little toy that was thrown from the wings.... and then had to wipe its huge red tongue off on the platform, it was so nasty once it had finally tasted it.
There was a yellow corrugated tube that played with a huge red balloon, suctioning it to one end, bouncing it back and forth, even to the audience, motioning for it to be tapped back.
A thin line of light, and a mosquito slowly made its way from one side to the other, sometimes up on fingers and toes.
A rippling rectangle flowed and floated, wriggled and sometimes bent to form a face.
Two metallic flame shapes included interesting sounds as they shimmered and danced around each other, moth a metallic foil sort of sound and a solid edge of each costume as well.
A slowly floating sheet of some kind of plastic (it seemed to have more depth, perhaps related to bubble wrap) drifted through, then a thinner scrap of plastic, and a small bug that was zapped by the plastic.
A huge tan blob moved from the back of the stage towards the front, forming a heart, and a face, and almost falling into the audience, before retreating and shrinking down to almost nothing.
A rectilinear Gumby-like creature explored the possibilities inherent in having four appendages and two (either-end) heads that all ended in rectangular prisms.
A person wore golden cylinder segments, mostly cut on the bias, along arms and legs and head, making a huge number of different shapes and effects with them.
Flexible corrugated 'pipes' joined in a middle segment to make a 4-legged spider that played with what its appendages could do.
Two oversized people of inflated plastic slowly swaggered around the stage, once they'd inflated their (detachable, as it turns out) heads.
A yellow cardboard box unfolded itself into a net with arms and legs, later joined by three other green boxes.
Ribbon curled through the air, the narrow band of light showing only part of the curves generated by the ribbon at the end of a stick.
And two segmented sticks investigated two-dimensionality, sometimes with eyes.
The second half started with a woman using white tape to put on the outlines of an outfit, and generate different faces (some by the audience).
A pair of shutters opened, then encouraged a pair of windows and potted plants to join it.
The next skit all I have noted down is "eye face," and I don't remember what that was supposed to trigger.
Two people each had a colored wire coming from the back of their collars, over the tops of their heads, and down the front. It could be pulled out, and bent to form interesting huge faces.
Another man and woman piece with each one having mutable features and hair that they one-upped each other with. And they had little rolling 'pets', one called by a whistle, the other by one of those "whee!" sorts of noisemakers (no clue what they're called).
Another couple, with hoops rising over their heads, each with a plastic bag face that could blow one way or another depending on how the body moved. They managed a single kiss, but otherwise were always pointing in the same, rather than opposite, directions as they chased each other. Bittersweet.
A big outlet on one head was matched by a big plug on another head. They went offstage, and the lights kept dimming and brightening....
A suitcase head came out, leaving a red piece that another used for hair, then put on a mouth.
Pink and blue toilet paper faced people had their (slightly messy) romance.
Another skit where my short note wasn't enough to bring it back to mind: "face play".
There were the classic clay faces (similar to this video) as the official end of the show.
An encore included two green eyes, a red mouth, and a nose forming a huge face.
The tour continues with Burlington, VT (October 27), McLean, VA (October 30-31), Sarasota, FL (November 3), Wickenburg, AZ (November 14), Santa Barbara, CA (November 19), Irvine, CA (November 20-21), Berkeley, CA (November 26-28), Arcata, CA (November 30), Philadelphia, PA (December 16-18), New York City, NY (December 20-January 8), Morristown, NJ (January 14), Princeton, NJ (January 15), and Valhalla, NY (January 16), if anyone would like to check them out.