Gandhi was famous for walking, both for exercise and for the liberation of India, clocking some 49,000 miles on his protest marches. Aristotle believed that great thinkers are all great walkers. Virginia Woolf walked to find joy and stave off madness, although her final walk was into a river, where her body was found weeks later. They are part of “Footnotes,” Theodora Skipitares’ clever, cleverly-named, and enlightening hour-long puppet theater about the history of walking, which has the feel of an insanely ambitious school project. Also featured: Thoreau, Rimbaud, Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh, medieval pilgrims, prehistoric humans, members of the Los Deliveristas Unidos union of delivery workers, as well as figures of Greek mythology, an oversized mechanical ape, Octarina the Octopus, and Kelly the Kangaroo.
Above: Delivery Workers ( puppeteers: Eva Lansberry, Natthew Marvan. Victoria Forbes, Rosa Enginoli, Sasa Yung)
Top: Gandhi (entire company), Foot Dance (puppeteer Jane Catherine Shaw)
The show is divided into a prologue and thirteen scenes full of puppetry, presented with poetry, prose and songs in voiceover in four different locations within La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theater, to which audience members must get up and move (which I suppose fits in with the theme of walking, but the seating areas are only a few feet from one another.) It is accompanied by a little black-and-white booklet of folded paper, inserted in the program, that’s full of illustrations, sayings and unconventional insights (“Historically speaking, going out for a walk has been the privilege of white men”; “Walter Benjamin’s 3 conditions for walking: a city, crowds and capitalism.”)
Above all, every walker is a different kind of puppet or animation, sometimes against a gorgeous backdrop, a colorful sample of which is below, photographed by Richard Termine.
Footnotes is at LaMaMa through March 15.
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