Ko’olau (and Carnival of Samhain)

November 1st, 2008 · 1 Comment

My column in this month’s CUNY Advocate includes my review of Tom Lee’s extraordinary Ko’olau and a recommendation to check out the 7th annual Carnival of Samhain, curated by Drama of Works:

Photo courtesy of Jonathan Slaff

Tom Lee’s puppet theatrical Ko’olau is a beautifully crafted, highly emotional iteration of the story that draws on a variety of puppetry and musical traditions; Lee focuses less on violence and disease than on the bond that holds this family together as they fight to live and die together, on their own terms. [...] There has long been a thread of theatre theory that claims theatricality must be as invisible as possible if the audience is to become emotionally involved with the narrative on stage. This idea has been perpetuated, in part, by misreadings of Brecht’s writings, and by simplistic statements like “Wagner turned the house lights off; Brecht turned them back on.” It is not my intention to enter into such debates here, but it is sufficient to say that the same audiences who smiled delightedly at Lee’s ingenuous craftsmanship could be heard sniffling back tears at the death of Kaleimanu.

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This year’s Carnival runs for only three days (November 6th through November 8th), and misses the more spine-tingling potential of both October 31st and November 4th, but promises to be an exciting event nevertheless. An eclectic mix of puppet and burlesque acts that run the gamut from the genuinely creepy to the semi-sexy gothic farce, the Carnival of Samhain may well be the best way to dispose of $15 in early November.