You are about to enter another dimension.
A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind and puppetry.
Next stop...
Animal Cracker Conspiracy.
Iain Gunn: Don't expect a regular puppet show if you are coming to an Animal Cracker Conspiracy
show.
Music montage
Iain Gunn and Bridget Rountree are the co-conspirators behind the puppet theater production of "The
Collector."
Iain Gunn: We're trying to create a world, a world that has elements of Victorian, elements
of kind of Edgar Allan Poe, 1984, it's a dystopian world where there should be some connections
to our reality but a lot of it is just something that allows you to go in with your imagination
opened up and on.
Bridget Rountree: We definitely try and change people's ideas about what puppetry is.
I think most people assume puppetry is for kids or it has something to do with the Muppets.
And the work of Animal Cracker Conspiracy does challenge expectations be it with shadow
puppets...
Bridget Rountree: It's just cardboard and packing tape and in the sun it looks like
this.
Giant creations...
Bridget Rountree: These are great for spectacle because you can see them from miles away.
Or puppets created from trash.
Iain Gunn: Shopping bag cut into little strips so you can see his elbow there...
why you looking at my elbow and cardboard, rolled up newspaper, and masking tape that
has been painted with acrylic....
And these heads we sculpted out of Styrofoam covered with masking tape and then papier-mached
and painted...
And then their eyes are just plastic beads.
Bridget Rountree: And hot glue.
High tech right?
Maybe not high tech but high concept.
Animal Cracker Conspiracy is pushing the notion of what puppetry can be.
Iain Gunn: If you can use it and tell a message and it's something outside of your body then
you are entering that kind of fabulous gray area that modern or contemporary puppetry.
Bridget Rountree: To me it's like taking the material which is an object... and animating
that, animus, to give something life....
And there's a bit of alchemy involved in bringing inanimate objects to life.
Bridget Rountree: Okay I have this puppet that has one flat expression how do I convey
that he's scared or she is excited so what do you do physically with your hands with
your movement with your head with your eyes with anything to do it yourself embody it
and then go back and pick up the puppet and put that movement into the puppet.
And when done right, it's magical.
For "The Collector," the artists use puppets without moving mouths because they can be
more eloquent on stage.
Bridget Rountree: We won't be hooded completely but we wear all black costumes and we're gloved
so you wouldn't see our hands so the footage that I gave you most of it it is in that vein
so we are really subdued...
The idea is for us to disappear.
Iain Gunn: We wanted to explore table top puppetry, we wanted to figure out how we could
combine video projection, tabletop puppetry, and a giant toy theater and create a compelling
narrative.
Bridget Rountree: It really to me feels like we're living in an age of hyper-materialism
and that objects and things are very important to who we are as people and our self worth
and so with The Collector I became really interested in too what happens when these
objects also go away.
So kind of looking psychologically at the need to collect.
A show that pushes boundaries needs a space that aspires to similar goals.
Gunn and Roundtree found that venue literally around the corner from their University Heights
home at Peter McConnell's 3rd Space.
Peter McConnell: It's a very different concept, it's what I call a private club for the creative.
In other words the perfect place for an experiment with puppetry.
Iain Gunn: We'd like to see it treated more on a level with theater that you are going
to see a play yes it is going to be shorter...
however it should have every nuance and depth of a play that you might see at a local theater.
Bridget Rountree: I think people will love it and be surprised by it.