Imagination, theatrical skill and physical puppet craft has had a home at HERE Arts Center’s
Dream Music Puppetry program since 1999. Endowed by his grandmother and run by the incomparable Basil Twist, twice a year the DMP salutes its own making merry with a variety show of short pieces, music, and song. If only it ran a week!
The intimate venue overflows with bonhomie. Basil welcomes us, gamely singing Tony Hatch’s “Downtown,” encouraging the audience to come in on the word. We do-robustly. These are predominantly artists who live without much security determined to create, evolve, and support one another. Being among them is not just inspiring, but moving. Pianist Jono Minelli opens with Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown theme. In addition to mercurially accompanying a wide range of performance, he later offers a spirited “Rhapsody in Blue”.
Ollie Goss
The old (written fondly) red curtain parts to reveal an inflated shape like a large, fat rain drop. It rocks back and forth morphing into white, cloud-like puffs, then defines itself as a swan…seeing to its toilette. A baby cries. We hear chirping. The swan lays both an egg and puppeteer Ollie Goss who opens the egg. She removes two expandable stands and shiny green cloth with a window cut out. A puppet theater is assembled. Across its stage, a keystone cop stretches yellow “Do Not Enter” ribbon. A duck rips it down. Up and down, up and down. They wrestle. The duck manages to push her adversary into a meat grinder. A long link of blue sausages spits out.
Ken Ard; Joey Arias and Basil Twist
Downtown diva Joey Arias (Arias with A Twist), appears tonight almost literally wrapped in a painterly pantsuit, sporting black fingernails and a Chinese top knot. Her face is surprisingly devoid of signature femme fatale make-up. The artist performs Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.” Phrases are short and tremulous, feeling sentimental, vocal sandy silk. Later, she’ll sing an original song while Basil – rarely seen on stage, collaborates with a Toots Thielemans (trumpet player) marionette usually in a case among its peers outside the theater.
Kenneth Ard, Basil’s long time love and newly minted husband, sings a jaunty, bright “Dear Mr. Kringle” (Kelly King) The dancer can sing! And he’s charming. He and Joey perform “Silent Night,” replete with manger animal voices as Basil gracefully choreographs a dancing, flying Stickman. Once in early days, the puppet master tells us, Stickman was misplaced just before a performance. Basil improvised with a piece of silk. “Let the thing do what it does to animate,” he notes. Fabric-based Symphony Fantastique would evolve.
Tristan Allen
Red-lipped Tristan Allen, wearing a plastic mini dress, is mostly hidden behind a puppet swathed in rich fabric whose bald head and small features resemble a figure out of Renaissance painting. Her hands emanate from folds in a robe. The puppet’s eyes seem to manifest expression. He opens a mouth that cuts from back to front of its head like a Muppet – and sings.
Little Brooklyn
Burlesque performer Little Brooklyn is inventively costumed and made up as a scarecrow, arms ostensibly extended across a horizontal rod. A fluffy, big-beaked bird (puppet) sits atop each shoulder. To the tune of Harold Arlen’s “If I Only Had a Brain,” the birds pull off items of clothing one by one until she’s down to a straw bikini bottom and patchwork pasties. As if that wasn’t sufficiently ingenious, beaks remove her hat to reveal a flat head. Pecking inside, they send straw flying.
Machine Dazzle
The extraordinary designer Machine Dazzle (who dresses Taylor Mac for the stage), inhabits a black plastic garbage bag deposited by a sanitation worker. As Machine is about 6’5”, the bag is sizable- also feminine and sweetly wistful. A big bow draws its top together. The ends of tin cans cut in strips form Betty Boop upper and lower eyelashes. I’ve no idea from what the ample red and white lips are made, but teeth look like marshmallows. Two balls? Balloons? indicate big breasts.
Except for the oddity of snakes for arms, she’s adorable singing Francesca Blumenthal’s “The Lies of Handsome Men” in a light, breathy voice. The artist has an upcoming exhibit at AP Space, 555 West 25th Street, January 1-15. Read my piece on the exhibition of their costumes at The Museum of Art and Design. here:
Left: Erin Orr, Right: Lake Simmons
Two of Basil’s puppeteers, Lake Simmons and Erin Orr, one with a half moon mask, one with a star, each control a female marionette in a printed dress who converse and dance. When the figures sleep, the ladies suspend a white, hand held curtain. Cut-out head silhouettes relate. A recording of “Gee But I’d Like to Make You Happy” by the Boswell Sisters establishes light-hearted mood.
Basil and Stickman balletically end the show as Jono plays Vince Guraldi’s “Christmas Time is Here.” And it snows.
Bail Twist and Stickman
The evening is artful, rarely twee, often adult in nature, a bit more loosey goosey than longer story programs.
It’s about time the assumption that puppets are for children is disabused. This marvelous art form is theater.
Photos by Richard Termine
Puppet Parlor: Dream Music Puppetry’s 25th Annual Celebration
Director Basil Twist
Lighting Designer – Ayumu Poe Saegusa
Dream Music Puppetry Producer – Barbara Busackino
Piano – Jono Minelli
Also featuring puppeteer Justin Perkins
HERE & BACK | PROTOTYPE FESTIVAL: EAT THE DOCUMENT | JAN 9 – 17
HARP: RHEOLOGY | APR 15 – MAY 10
DREAM MUSIC PUPPETRY: PUPPETOPIA 2025 | APR 30 – MAY 11
