PUPPETRY PERFORMANCE
FANTASQUE
Fantasque, with its NYC premiere at NYU Skirball November 2019, is an ebullient and magical pageant created by choreographer John Heginbotham and puppeteer Amy Trompetter. Giant puppets and human dancers join forces to create a fable of a battle of light and darkness, with a fantastical cast of characters featuring giant babies, blue angels, devils, rats, and a restaurant where the customers are tuxedo-wearing fish.
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Performed to live music composed by Gioachino Rossini and Ottorino Respighi, Fantasque ruminates on morality and immorality as seen through a child’s eyes in a series of connected vignettes bound by an unconventional and tender merging of puppetry and dance.
The Fisher Center for the Performing Arts Presents
REQUIEM FOR ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA
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Libretto and music by Alexander Bakshi
Puppets and direction by Amy Trompetter
May 18-20, 2018
A unique puppet oratorio commemorating the dissident Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who was assassinated by the Russian government in 2006. Created by Russian composer Alexander Bakshi and Hudson Valley puppeteer Amy Trompetter (whose Fantasque premiered at Bard SummerScape 2016), Requiem for Anna Politkovskaya is a timely and moving tribute to Politkovskaya's bravery in the face of state control, her exposé of political folly, and her lament for the suffering of women and children in the war in Chechnya, transfigured by Trompetter’s astonishing and spectacular puppet pageantry. Featuring musicians and singers from the Bard College Conservatory of Music and undergraduate performers.
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"A bejeweled circus performer-orator, marvelously delineated and bracingly sung by tenor Gregory Corbino (a guest artist, as other singers and actors are volunteer Bard students), delivers Miltonic monologues defending dictatorial policies in defense of a hoodwinked public, the audience. This devilish role is loosely based upon the magician in the opening scenes of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master & Margarita. Part of the genius of the orator’s role is to implicate the audience in his evil as he delivers improvisational flattery to members in the audience: how individuals have dressed for the occasion, what they may be thinking, or anticipating, etc. Wouldn’t they all be driving a Mercedes-Benz if they agreed with him?"
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