Rapture Study in Seven Songs

Promo Video

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General Information

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TITLE: Rapture Study in Seven Songs

COMPANY: Green Fools Theatre

GENRE: Theatre, music, puppetry

AUDIENCE: Adults

LENGTH: 60 minutes

LANGUAGE: English

AVAILABILITY: Year-round

Contact Information

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PHONE: +01-403-237-9010

EMAIL: admin@greenfools.com

WEBSITE: www.greenfools.com

ADDRESS: 2404 Erlton Road S.W. Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2S 2X2

FAX: 403-266-1508

Rapture

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Rapture: To be caught up or snatched away in ecstatic joy, delight, ecstasy, bliss or to be transported to another realm or sphere of being.

Rapture is duplicitous, two-faced, requiring either positive or negative induction and resulting in both bliss and impairment. Dangerous euphoria. Terrible beauty.

Rapture must be induced. It is the effect of a cause. Some methods of induction include love, drugs, nitrogen narcosis (rapture of the deep), sex, art/ music/ dance, faith/ religion, illness/ sensory/ sleep deprivation. It is these seven means that are explored through individual vignettes of puppetry and song in Rapture Study in Seven Songs.

The Play

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A solo performer enters with a box of records. Seven records are played, each piece of unique music opens a portal to a seven distinct rapturous stories animated by a twisted toy box illuminating a sing-song dream world.

LOVE: A girl and a horse fall in love and ride into the sky
"...The ground is sprouting loving things/ The sky imagines loving wings
Rain is heavens tears/ She cries joy and life appears

Twisting down a darkening way/ What peering light greets the day
They smile at each other then/ Moon descending and sun again
Perfect lovers wrapt in bliss/ One for each and life persists

All the universe agrees/ Singing out in harmony/ True love is ecstasy..."

DRUGS: Plant hallucinogens provide access to an altered reality
"...Psychoactive substances i know im more alive
The ultimate in feeling good botanical derived
Altering conciousness entheogen
Entheos from the greek meaning god within

Higher take me higher/ I want to be one with everything
Higher take me higher/ I want to be one with everything..."

NITROGEN NARCOSIS: A scuba diver seeking treasure goes too deep, nitrogen fills his blood stream
"...The deep sea. More is known about the surface of the moon than the deep ocean. Where temperatures lower, pressures rise, and the dark reigns complete....
...A teacup. Small, delicate, intricate. Dire. Many brave have met their end on this fragile hunt. Not by the terrifying creatures below, but by something else. Glorious and sinister. A monster within.
Come come I come for you
Come come I come for you
Dream your eternal sleep
Beware: Rapture of the Deep..."

SEX: A sorrowful madam opens a brothel and leaps to her death
"...In one great moment in time, Madame was able to reach the greatest height of delight...
Her lover unknown. But hidden. Elusive.
Exquisite. Divine. Like Cupid to Psyche.
And like Psyche, Madame could not live without knowing who could bring her to such ecstasy but with a touch. She waited to see his face. Never forgetting her taste of paradise. But alas he never returned.
What could Madame do? Only what any of us would do. Open a maison de tolerence.
Voila la Maison de Bonheur! ..."

ART/ MUSIC/ DANCE: Tortured Vincent Van Gogh meets his muse and creates a masterpiece
"...I know youre hurting troubled lullaby/ Just turn to me a figment in your minds eye
I'll be the light i will show you the way in the storm
Dont you see madness illuminates
Cant you feel heartbreak radiates
The brightest star is granted to the darkest of nights
I will take the fall for you
Butterfly
A muse to amuse you
You shine shine..."

RELIGION: Images of earthly despair and horror are matched by abstract transcendence
"...Give me something to believe in/ End times come
We will not die/ But be changed / In the twinkling of an eye
Give me something to believe in/ All my gods have gone
Meet midair..."

SLEEP DEPRIVATION/ FEVER: A puppet can't sleep and enters into deprivation euphoria
"...Well there aint no point in sleepin/ i just push the night
I break through to the other side/ Where the madmen all reside
Theres a pretty lady singin/ Shes luring me to bliss
Rainbows shootin from her eyes/ And honey dripping from her lips..."

The Special Process of Creating Rapture

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Seven distinct composers were selected and each created a song inspired by one of the seven means of inducing rapture. Individual stories, developed in response to each original piece of music, were created utilizing miniature puppetry and a single performer.

The seven musicians were carefully selected for their special gift of music and their own distinct sound. Each musician presented their top three favorite rapture themes from the seven themes selected; almost all were offered their first choice. Each composed their song- music only (no words or communicated story) inspired by their rapture theme of any length or style independently without further input.

To write the stories, research was conducted regarding rapture and the chosen ways to acheive rapture, in addition, images and ideas surfaced and were collected in meditative response to each musicians composition and corresponding theme. These images and ideas, guided by the collected data and research, were developed into stories and the stories translated into song lyrics (some spoken word) and images/ designs.

In a similar way, and in tandem, dolls and objects surfaced and were collected: arms and legs and tiny clothes from a thrift store in New York. A porcelin head found in South Africa. A suticase full of strange dollies that materialized one by one over months at the Goodwill.

A team of artists built and modified all of the elements in the show: turning barbies into marionettes, ripping off doll heads, building brothels, etc. These dolls and parts and additional handcrafted sets, props, and puppets were constructed.

In rehearsal, with the performer, director and stage manager, plus the odd outside eye, we continued to develop the scenes to the recorded music. Big picture story and meaning questions continually arose. Great technical challenges of the single puppeteer were presented and surmounted.

This unique artistic process culminated in the development of an original 60 minute puppet production featuring music and miniture puppetry, a solo performer and the work of over 15 artists.

The show was presented in Calgary last season for a brief run and is now packed up and ready to travel.

Media Sound Bite

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Green Fools Theatre presents Rapture Study In Seven Songs.

Seven songs, seven stories, seven ways to be swept away.

To be caught up or snatched away in ecstatic joy, ecstasy- Rapture is duplicitous, two-faced, requiring induction and resulting in both bliss and impairment. Dangerous euphoria. Terrible beauty.

In our latest production, seven distinct composers each created a song inspired by seven means of inducing rapture: sex, drugs, love, art, nitrogen narcosis, fever, god. Individual stories, developed in response to each original piece of music, are shared utilizing miniature puppetry and a single performer.

Technical Brief Overview

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On it's way!

Production Credits

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CREATOR & PERFORMER: Jennie Esdale

DIRECTOR: Dean Bareham

COMPOSERS: Vi An (Love), Danielle French (Drugs), David Rhymer (Nitrogen Narcosis), Dave Clarke (Sex), Susan Faulkner (Art/ Music/ Dance), Cameron Falkenhagen (Religion), Bryce Kulak (Sleep Deprivation/ Fever)

CONSTRUCTION TEAM: Dean Bareham, Jennie Esdale, Bill Beauregarde, Sam Longbotham, Julia Jungwirth, Jamie T

PREMIERE STAGE MANAGER: by Julia Jungwirth

PHOTO/ VIDEOGRAPHY: SAW Productions

Green Fools Theatre

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www.greenfools.com

Established in 1991 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Green Fools Theatre is a non-profit, charitable society that creates, performs, and teaches physical theatre arts focusing on masks, puppets, and stilts for diverse audiences locally and internationally.

Artists are the centre of our Fools' society; we are writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, inventors, singers, actors, acrobats, instructors, puppeteers, and clowns led by Co-Artistic Directors Dean Bareham and Jennie Esdale. We are a magnet for physical theatre artists and offer multiple training, creating and performing opportunities. We have also been a building ground for artists and have fostered the development of other puppetry troupes and performers, including The Old Trout Puppet Workshop, the Calgary Animated Objects Society, and several Cirque du Soliel performers. In addition we develop strong relationships with other sectors, including the Calgary Zoo and International Crane Foundation, the Glenbow Museum, and the Alberta College of Art & Design to research, produce or present our work in traditional or non-traditional theatre venues.

Our diverse programming, including workshops, puppet and mask shows, street theatre, spectacle animation, events, and fundraisers allow artists and audiences to fully explore our art form across a wide spectrum of artistic styles and forms.

With an eye on the past and hands on tradition, Green Fools Theatre also strives to advance our work and our art form by inventing and engineering new puppetry styles and ways of storytelling as well as innovative artistic processes merging content and form to create new world mythology. We utilize a variety of physical theatre, puppet and mask techniques as well as multiple artistic disciplines to tell our original stories, producing puppet shows and physical theatre productions that are literally out of the box. Styles meet the needs of the story; puppets share the stage with actors and masked characters. In a single production we may we also challenge the boundaries of scale from a finger puppet to a giant stilt character. Often, our work explores non- text based storytelling. In our performances we include music and on occasion dance, performance art, video, and animation. Our work is contemporary, handcrafted, original, and collaboratively created.

Green Fools Theatre reaches thousands of audience members each year through performances, community events, festivals, and creative training by extensive local touring, as well as some National and International touring.