Shadows of Past Pandemics Surround Audiences at the Bitz Opera Factory, opening August 18th.
Uncumber Theatrics invites patrons into the Lumintorium to witness Wee Beasties, a shadow play about fleas, disease, and a girl named Louise. Whimsically macabre and fairytale-esque, Wee Beasties revisits the nineteenth-century landscape of a Typhus epidemic at the dawn of the “Golden Age of Microbiology.”
Small audiences will enter the “Lumitorium,” a shadow box where scenes occur on four screens surrounding the audience. Performers occupy the outside of the Lumitorium space, allowing their shadows to move freely across these planes while the audience is “quarantined” inside. Using light and proximity, both live actors and shadow puppets play with size and stature as power dynamics between microbes, fleas, gods, and men continually fluctuate under the pall of the pandemic.
“This piece examines our collective hubris when we confront the lowly microbe,” says Creative Director and Story Creator Ayne Terceira, a former graduate student in the History of Science whose body of mostly immersive theatrical work includes Her Things, Prof. Eldritch’s Asylum for Uncanny & Extraordinary Women, Mingled, award-winning alternate reality game Serpentine, Mass, and The Stray as well as projects with Bricolage and original development of ScareHouse’s Basement haunt. “COVID-19 was hardly the first plague to mischief humanity, nor will it likely be the last. It is folly to think otherwise. But folly is great fodder for both whimsy and the macabre!”
The cast of Wee Beasties includes Bayley Brown, Liam Gannon, Jalina McClarin, Christine Starkey, and Christian Allen Diaz, with Staging Direction by Connor McCanlus.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
A 20-minute, interactive, pre-show flea circus precedes each show’s time slot. The runtime for the main event is approximately 45 minutes, with multiple showings per day.
Wee Beasties runs from August 18th-August 27th at the Bitz Opera Factory (2425 Liberty Ave.) in the Strip District.
Tickets can be purchased online at the Uncumber Theatrics website (www.uncumbertheatrics.com). This experience will be open to the public and is suitable for persons 12+. Masking is strongly encouraged due to the enclosed space of the Lumitorium and the inherent irony of not doing so.
Categories: Show Previews
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