Event Focus: RadiCackaLacky Puppetry Convergence, Carrboro/Chapel Hill, NC

Heads-up! This your fair warning that La Bricoleuse is about to go into macropuppet overdrive! The RadiCackaLacky Puppetry Convergence is looming on the horizon, August 30-September 3rd!

From their press:

The RadiCackaLacky Puppetry Convergence is a week-long celebration of radical puppetry -- theater that uses puppets and objects to tell stories of people's hopes, dreams, struggles and victories. RadiCackaLacky is a conference for radical puppeteers and also a festival for anyone who likes to watch puppet shows!

As cool as puppets can be just from an entertainment and aesthetic perspective, i must admit: as a costume craft artisan, I feel professionally obligated to investigate developments in body-puppetry. Artisans such as Michael Curry through his creations for folks like Julie Taymor and Cirque de Soleil have pushed the envelope for what constitutes "costume," and what constitutes "costume crafts" well past masks and walkarounds and into the truly fantastical--a melding of costuming and puppetry that really, someone needs to coin a term for already so we can start using it. (Here would be the opportune moment for me to do so, i know, but my mind works along the linguistic lines of crap like "thespivestmental puppedashery", which totally doesn't roll trippingly off the tongue in any way, shape, or form. Well, ok, i guess up there where i totally made up the word "macropuppet" might suffice...)

If you are in the area, I highly encourage you to take a spin through the websites of the various companies participating in the RCLPC, and check out as many of these shows as you can! Costs are free (Really Free Market shows) to cheap ($7 for Artcenter and Historic Playmakers shows featuring four performances per show, and $10 for Paperhand's big pageant in the Forest Theatre)...extremely affordable ticket prices for something you seriously rarely have the opportunity to see. If you aren't an NC local or close enough to travel, don't worry--you'll be there in spirit, because as we move into September, I'll be covering almost a dozen of them here in this blog, as well as the gallery exhibit, Face to Face, a retrospective of masks and giant puppets created by Paperhand Puppet Intervention.

Review: Cirque de Soleil's KÀ, Las Vegas, NV

Cirque de Soleil's KÀ, currently running at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, NV, is so mindbendingly spectacular that merely witnessing it will make drunk people sober, even if you've been sucking down free drinks at the rate of three per hour down at the Elvis slots since noon...which, admittedly i had been, so I can tell you that from personal experience.

Ever seen a Cirque show? If not, it's like, flying exotic dancers from another planet doing circus tricks on Broadway in a vague sort of Commedia paradigm, while stuff blows up and fire shoots everywhere. Except better. I found myself clapping my hands with glee, gasping in surprise, even weeping like a little girl as i watched this show, the majority of which takes place on a vertical stage set at a right-angle to the audience.

But, most folks know Cirque performances are fantastic and fantastical; this blog is about the costumes.

From the Costume Design section of the KÀ presskit:

Marie-Chantale Vaillancourt's costumes for KÀ are quite a departure from what audiences have come to expect from Cirque du Soleil . In this show there are no neon-bright primary colours on display, no candy stripes or optical-illusion patterns. No shimmering skin-tight bodysuits either. And yet, KÀ's costumes are among the richest and most eye-catching ever seen in a Cirque production. Vaillancourt comes from the world of theatre and film, and it shows.

"We didn't set out to break completely from past Cirque productions," says Vaillancourt. "And actually, it was important that there should be a continuity. However, the fact that I've worked with Robert Lepage since 1989 means that he and I have developed a kind of private language and we found that we couldn’t break with our own past. And at the same time, we did want to bring a breath of fresh air to Cirque."

( And who doesn't want to see photographs...? )