By Loco 7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company
Through November 28, 2010
With its newest production, “In Retrospect,” LOCO7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company investigates how we each construct our personal memory box: how we keep our memories fresh and preserve the things that made us who we are. These include our mothers’ embraces, lost loves, childhood dreams, ideals of youth and struggles of age, loss and birth.
The production features giant puppets, marionette scenery, masks, choreography, acrobatics, live original music and video. A large marionette tree dangles fruits high above our reach which, when dropped, grow into our memories. Some of them summon feelings of being loved and secure, others evoke the opposite. For example, one scene depicts a huge Mother marionette and her little children, revealing the pleasure of hiding within the safety of her giant legs. Another scene has a puppet telephone and a character waiting for a call with a mixture of dread and excitement. We are reminded of our emotional dependence on the appliance as a “life line” which can be either a comfort or a monster.
Reflecting the compartmentalization of our feelings, the stage will have a room-within-a-room where a person lives her life locked behind a wall. With this self inflicted alienation, she watches the world living yet remains cut off, unable to interact with society, hiding behind to safety zone of technology.
The production will be designed, choreographed, and directed by Federico Restrepo, a Colombian-born master of puppet theater and physical theater. The piece is being written and developed by Federico Restrepo and Denise Greber. Music will be composed by Elizabeth Swados; this is her fourth collaboration with Restrepo.
Conceived by Denise Greber & Federico Restrepo
Directed by Federico Restrepo
Music by Elizabeth Swados
LA MAMA PUPPET SERIES
Through November 28, 2010