A show about the body, Snuff Puppets’ Everybody was held in a small hall in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray; and while it was no snuff show, it certainly wouldn’t have been to everyone’s taste. Everybody pushed the craft of performance art and wasn’t afraid to make the audience cringe.
The production’s biggest draw card was the scale and variation of the puppets themselves; the central human puppet was so large, it doubled as seating for the audience. The puppeteers and their additional puppets – including various organs and even excreta puppets – as well as the show’s musicians, were seated inside it.
The build-up and execution of the performance was intentionally ambiguous, though it wasn’t without narrative. The show started with the birth of a child – a birth that became interactive for selected members of the audience, who were encouraged to help pull the giant mother puppet’s legs apart. The resulting child puppet then became the catalyst and embodiment of self-exploration; the production’s prevalent theme.
Each performance segment segued from the last, adding to the show’s layered interpretation of human development. The musicians used cacophonous and monotone sounds to convey the expressionless puppets’ meaning to the audience, to little avail.
Puppeteers Andy Freer, Stephane Hisler, Mitch Jones, Lachlan Plain and KT Prescott were the masters of the show, but remained faceless until the final segment, whereupon they surfaced from inside the giant puppet’s intestines. Their arrival began the last hysterical yet debauched celebration of the human body.
With a final flurry of dancing dismembered body parts, the performance ended with the large, and previously silent giant puppet pleading with the cast: ‘Please put me back together. For the send off.’
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Everybody
A Snuff Puppets production
The Drill Hall, Footscray
8 – 10 November
