Saw a really good puppet show performed on the levee.

April 14, 2025. Day .

I heard about this puppet show from a Facebook group usually devoted to wondering where gunshots are coming from. It was to be performed on the Holy Cross levee near Reynes Street, I biked over there. Nice big crowd of young people (there were a few old people but I was probably one of the oldest.) Tons of young women in shabby (not tattered) work clothes, with lots of monochrome tattoos. Actually that describes a lot of the men too. And lots of little kids and dogs. I'm always baffled at gatherings like this: what do these people do for a living? They all looked so secure and employed and they were all laughing and hugging. Maybe they all work remote programming jobs like Yours Truly. But that still doesn't explain how they can appear to be so happy, living in one of the most economically untenable cities in the U.S., with astronomical, unpayable insurance rates. It's impossible to live here. I wish I liked it here that much.

But that's enough reviewing the audience. The play, presented by String & Shadow, opens on a sophisticated opera-loving fly (as in fly-on-the-wall) describing the final evening of a fictional famous opera hall. All done with puppets, many of them large ones. A lot of them were cutouts, (sort of like what I do with my art, so, interesting to me). For instance the "crowd" of fashionable women at the opera was just three puppeteers carrying a cut-out of three fancy evening gowns cut out of cardboard (I think, just plain old corrugated board) and painted. The fly narrator of course had a fly head and wings to go with his tuxedo. There were some delightful termites that looked like white bags of stuffing but were surprisingly effective through the puppeteers just turning and tilting their heads. The caterpillar, "Felice", was just five or six sections of fabric-covered ribs, with three puppeteers moving the sections slowly, one at a time, for a funny, believable caterpillar motion. People actually cheered when the caterpillar climbed up something. Caterpillars go through transitions, that's their nature, so I hope it's no spoiler to say that Felice's transition was surprising and delightful.

These puppets were not "muppety". They were not made of felt and didn't have focused eyes like Muppets. This came from another tradition, where the puppeteers are visible but disguised. The puppets were more like papier-mache heads, when the puppets had heads. A lot of the scenery was puppetized too, like the doors that the puppeteers would move sideways to make it look like the Opera manager was running fast down a long hall, or the fire --just cardboard painted to look like flames-- that appeared from time to time.

There were also plenty of human characters, each more ridiculous than the next. The industrialist costume was a top hat and tails but also a simple moustache on a stick the puppeteer would hold up in front of his or her face, for maximum industrialist-ness (villainy). The cruel King was played by a woman; the opera's diva was played by a tall man, I think (it was hard from my seat to tell the gender of the puppeteers, and why does it matter, just watch the puppets!). Though the weathy industrialist (named Cornelius Vanderfella, if I heard right?) keeps pressing his suit with the diva, but her actual lover is a Revolutionary named Maria. Maria and her co-revolutionaries have a plot to seize the king from his glassed-in opera box and give the Opera House back to the People (puppeteers groaning from hunger and wearing burlap feed sacks), who have been banned from the Opera for taunting and throwing things at the snobby King. In short, the plan is for the workers to seize the means of production, a classic theme. But the plan keeps getting thwarted for silly reasons that make sense in this production. (Including a certain diva's "agitated uvula", to give away one.)

The play ran for about an hour, maybe 1:05. Prior to the performance the M.C. (not the fly, a different person) came out with a bullhorn to encourage us to cheer and boo and gasp and clap at appropriate points; I thought that was goofy and infantilizing, and then I ended up enthusiastically doing it. A fantastic evening. I heard one of the cool young people in the audience yell "no notes!" to one of the performers at the end of the show, and that's pretty much my conclusion as well.

I'm sorry this is the only picture I took, it wasn't really possible to take pictures of the performance without being impolite. The set turned from these stylized "ruins" to a grand opera house's proscenium with elaborate moving backgrounds of clouds and cherubs.

The website for String & Shadow is worth a look, if you'd like to see what kind of elaborate puppets they've built in previous shows.

puppets String & Shadow Night At The Grand Opera (puppet show) revolutionaries The Levee New Orleans Louisiana