thaddeus

story:

making it:

Thaddeus grew up without developing any real communication abilities.  While he hears, sees and understands the people and things around him, he is unable to outwardly respond or express himself.  The story is revealed in glimpses of Thaddeus’ life with his hopeful mother who, unsure he ever hears a word she says, keeps talking to Thad just the same.  It is a simple tale of the difficulty and mystery of talking to each other.

From the beginning, I knew we wanted a puppet attached directly to a performer.  The next question was, “What’s a good story to tell with a man with a puppet stuck in front of him?”  Rather than having the puppeteer simply animate the puppet, it seemed more interesting to have him be part of the character.  So,

                  puppet+puppeteer=Thaddeus

While the mother can only see and hear what the puppet is capable of expressing, the puppeteer shows the audience what Thaddeus understands, wants, and enjoys, but almost never shows.

Though early versions involved murder scenes and mistaken identity and lecture scenes and all sorts of pirouetting plot twists, it soon became desperately clear that our story was a simple one.

written and directed by:

developed and performed by:

david j amaral

fannie hungerford and james whittington

The clip below shows one scene, recorded during our final tech rehearsal, 3/13/2009.

part of the Objects in Motion festival

March 14 to April 5 at the building stage