Can Puppets Save The World From Extinction?

New York Times - Laurel Graeber

Two new productions use everyday materials and artistic ingenuity to gently warn young audiences of the perils of climate change.

Sifiso Mabena, right, as Aphra, with her best friend, Judomiah, played by Richard Saudek, in “Riddle of the Trilobites.” Credit...Cameron Blaylock

As an all-terrain vehicle rumbles through a serene desert valley, its driver unwittingly starts a devastating fire by flicking cigar embers out the window. In another landscape, volcanoes are erupting, acidifying the ocean and threatening the life within it.
These scenes unfold on different theatrical stages and in periods 500 million years apart. But both come from productions intended for children, an audience usually left out of the conversation on climate change. “PackRat,” presented by Dixon Place, and “Riddle of the Trilobites,” at the New Victory Theater, convey their messages through protagonists who aren’t human but who gain vivid life as puppets. Carlo Adinolfi, who designed the set, projections and larger-than-life puppetry for “PackRat,” has created amazingly expressive rodents, reptiles, birds of prey, a jack rabbit — and even Cowgirl, the cigar-smoking driver — from wood, papier-mâché, cardboard, wire and, fittingly, recycled trash. Some of the same materials help form the goofier-looking but no less compelling creatures of “Riddle of the Trilobites.” Designed by Amanda Villalobos, the prehistoric arthropods in this show gambol about with googly eyes and flicking antennas and tails. Each production has talented puppeteers who seem not to manipulate these marvelous inventions so much as merge with them.

From left, Alanna Strong and Maggie Gayford (Owls); Jenny Hann (Firestone); and Carlo Adinolfi (Bud) in “PackRat,” produced by Concrete Temple Theatre at Dixon Place. Credit...Stefan Hagen

“PackRat,” written and directed by Renee Philippi, who collaborated with Adinolfi in creating it, draws inspiration from “Watership Down,” Richard Adams’s 1972 best seller about rabbits in exile. But this Concrete Temple Theater production offers an allegory more ecological than political. It stars the lowly animal of the title, a hoarder named Bud. After the blaze ignited by the cigar, his fellow creatures banish him, convinced that the human set the fire deliberately to punish Bud for collecting people’s “treasures,” including a spoon and a bag of marshmallows.
Accompanied by the jackrabbit Firestone and eventually Happy, another rat, Bud goes on a journey of rescue and redemption, trying to find Artemisia, a land said to be free of human intervention. But despite the stage craft, which is thoroughly mesmerizing, the animals’ odyssey can be hard to follow. Not even adults will immediately grasp that a second, more skeletal set of bamboo puppets is supposed to be enacting dream sequences. And the prerecorded narration and dialogue, both delivered by Vera Beren, have the solemn austerity of an ancient fable. “PackRat,” which includes a wrenching onstage death, will appeal most to theatergoers over 10, who are less likely to be troubled that the wildlife’s arduous story has no clear resolution.

The puppeteer Alanna Strong as Cowgirl in “PackRat. ”Credit...Stefan Hagen

But what resolution can climate activists hope for? Prehistoric species saw their environments deteriorate, and we all know what happened to them. Still, “Riddle of the Trilobites,” geared toward a younger audience than “PackRat,” manages to be something unusual: a cheerful, peppy musical about extinction.
With a book and lyrics by Geo Decas O’Donnell and Jordan Seavey, and score and lyrics by Nicholas Williams, “Riddle” focuses on the trials of Aphra (Sifiso Mabena), a rebellious adolescent trilobite who learns on her first Molting Day that she’s destined to fulfill an ancient prophecy. She alone can unravel the riddle of her kind: “When the ocean changes, the trilobites cannot live but will not die.” With Judomiah (Richard Saudek), her initially fearful best friend, Aphra embarks on an adventure that is just as dangerous as Bud’s, but leavened with hefty doses of humor — sometimes corny, but still welcome — and rollicking song. (I kept writing “good score” in my notes.) These trilobites’ travels bring them into contact with other creatures, including Hai (Phillip Taratula), an early species of fish. The actors, who talk, sing and frolic while operating the puppets, multitask brilliantly. Directed by Lee Sunday Evans and produced by CollaborationTown and Flint Repertory Theater, “Riddle” dances around — sometimes literally — the ultimate fate of Aphra and her fellow trilobites. But even though the destructive powers of Homo sapiens are millions of years away, the show demonstrates that the ocean is a source of life and its pollution a harbinger of doom. It also cautions against any species’ assumed superiority: When the trilobite elders first see Hai, they lock him in a cage.
These productions emphasize that the young must take charge, and that environmental action is desperately needed. As Bud, the beleaguered pack rat, says: “I don’t want to just sit around! That’s what humans do.”

Links

• Climate Visuals Photography Award 2019: Winners And Shortlisted
• Meltdown: Chilling Proof Of Global Heating
• (Germany) Beethoven's 'Pastoral': Artists Revisit A Symbol Of Climate Protection
• When Climate Change Is Stranger Than Fiction
• The 1975, Jaden Smith, Billie Eilish & More Artists Fiercely Fighting Climate Change
• How Rising Sea Levels Erase Culture
• Why Science Needs The Humanities To Solve Climate Change
• Political Change Is The First Step To Stopping The Climate Crisis