WORLD PREMIERE:
Demolishing Everything with Amazing Speed
The Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College
July 7-17, 2016
Futurist puppet plays by Fortunato Depero
Translated, designed, and directed by Dan Hurlin
Original music by Dan Moses Schreier
Created by the ensemble
Produced by MAPP International Productions
A wondrous elevator racing up to the heavens, a rich red woman with a single green eye, a baby smoking a giant cigar. . . . Award-winning puppet artist Dan Hurlin creates a surreal “puppet noir,” based on four beautiful but disquieting plays written at the height of World War I by the Italian futurist artist Fortunato Depero. Hallucinogenic, fast-paced, and shot through with dark humor, these astonishing plays celebrate the energy and possibility of technology, while revealing the chilling parallels between their time and ours.
Hurlin, who lives and works in the Hudson Valley, discovered Depero’s scenarios during his Rome Prize Fellowship in Italy. They have never before been translated into English, published, or performed. Hurlin’s unique fusion of puppetry, music, and technology brings Depero’s images and visions—sometimes whimsical, sometimes disturbing and violent—to life on stage for the first time. With a live score by Dan Moses Schreier and combining the latest technology, from 3D printing to sound sampling, with centuries-old bunraku style puppetry, Demolishing Everything with Amazing Speed is a rapturous and wholly original wild ride.
Dan Hurlin’s Demolishing Everything with Amazing Speed puppets come to life in this preview by the New Yorker’s Joan Acocella and video by Emily Rhyne.
Join us for the following special events:
July 9 Opening Night Reception for Friends of the Fisher Center
July 10 Pre-Performance Talk at 1 pm
July 13 Post-Performance Conversation
Read more in the New Yorker “Forgotten Futurist Puppet Shows”
