Since last summer, slowly and steadily (or more accurately, in spurts between periods of rest), I've been developing a short theater piece involving clothing and puppetry as part of my "Puppet Lab" residency at St. Ann's Warehouse. You can take a look at my early experiments in my first post of the series here.
From the beginning, I wanted to explore how clothing could physically represent the feelings that contained me last year - questions about what it means to be present, to be aware of others' presence, and how I was measuring my own presence. After creating these three sculptural and delightfully absurd garments, I was eager to put them in the hands of master performers in different mediums to see how they could be interpreted. I'm thankful to the following super talented and inspiring performers for playing with me: modern dance choreographer Mary Ellen Beaudreau, puppeteers Andy Manjuck and Dorothy James, puppeteer Lake Simons (and her daughter!), and contemporary mime actors from Broken Box Mimes: Becky Baumwoll, Nick Abeel, Matt Zambrano, and Tasha Milkman.
Lately, I've started rehearsing with two mime actors to develop our short performance, which will be performed at St. Anns Warehouse in Brooklyn February 17-20, 2022. Documentary photographer Yaxi Wang joined the project to document the process of developing the piece. I wanted to share here a few of Yaxi's thoughtful photos. Follow along on the #Fashion+Puppetry hashtag for documentation of the final performance and more behind-the-scenes!
