Goodnight, Absalom! presented at Grand Marais Rec Park September 5

 

A Twin-Cities based circus/ puppet/dance/art organization focused on compelling storytelling and social change will be coming to the Grand Marais Rec Park on September 5 for a 7:30 p.m. show.

This show is free to all-ages and open to the public, but a hat will be passed for donations.

Director Nat Allister said, “We’ve just finished building an 18’ traveling pop-up proscenium theater and will be using it to tour with our latest show “Goodnight, Absalom!” with a cast of 14 this September around the Great Lakes.”

Here’s a tiny bit about the show. In the fictional town of Absalom, a surreal chess match is played between two nefarious railroad barons for very high stakes. Their strange game moves through a series of poignant and unique vignettes– the Dance of the Pawns, the Dance of the Knights, the Dance of the Bishops, etc.– in which the unfortunate chess pieces find themselves being made to do battle inside a prison they do not fully understand. As the game progresses, the chess pieces begin to become cognizant of their bleak situation…and attempt to lead a rebellion against the game itself. “Goodnight, Absalom!” is a black comedy about a plutocracy that has gamified our world, obsessed with winning more and more wealth until the world’s resources are gone. The show fuses the Spaghetti Western genre with some contemporary coding (not to mention a barrage of Faulkner references), taking a hard look at a critically polarized nation and questioning who might gain from keeping it divided, distracted, and disenfranchised.