Garden of the Wild is a series of 6 vignettes featuring a variety of puppetry styles set to live music.
"Enter the Wild" starts with a call to the wild as several drummers, who are themselves creatures, explode into a dynamic rhythm and watch as fantastic creatures arrive from all around and dance in an exciting revery that harkens back to ancient times.
"Man and Monkey" is a comic vignette that is sprinkled throughout the show to create a common thread. "The Man and Monkey (part 1) - The Deep Dark Jungle" is the first of 3 which focuses on the monkey being captured from the wild.
"Morphos" is a masked dance piece that looks at transformation, connection, and spiritual evolution. It is performed by 6 dancers who use their bodies and masks in many ways, ie.masks worn on back or top of the head, to express the continuum of change witnessed in the universe.
"Man and Monkey (part 2) - Practice Makes Perfect" continues the saga with the man training, and ultimately being foiled by, the rascally little primate.
"Hog Wild!" is just that. The scene opens on a full blown hoedown with, of course, all pigs! Everything is going great until a big pink cowboy arrives on the scene (a la Clint Eastwood) and starts showing them all about real "freedom." Things heat up as the the cowboy turns out to be a butcher in disguise. Luckily the hogs are just to smart to fall for his goofy tricks.
"Man and Monkey (part 3) - The Big City" finds the two gathering an audience on the street to perform their routine. A strange cast of masked characters, including a giant baby, assemble and enjoy the show. There is a crooked keystone cop chase that ends with them on the ground and the man and monkey seperated momentarily. When the monkey returns and offers its friendship and some fruit, to the destitute man we all learn a little humility and get to ask ourselves many important questions.
"Endurance," the biggest and longest portion of the show, features several 6-person puppets including a huge "Beast" of the wild, an all consuming black hole,
a 20-foot-tall goddess, not to mention a 40-foot-long "Hero." All these characters come together in a dynamic and boldly stated look at the undying cycles of life and our own human interaction with nature and the wild.
"B is for Bird" is performed using shadow puppets to tell the story of co-creator Jan Burgers' childhood, along with the ivory-billed woodpecker story,