"Uprising: The Creation of the World in 4 parts" ~  This was one of our first big shows at the Forest Theater in 2001. Our theme that year was creation and how humans fit into that whole thing. We started out with a giant energy bubble thing that had fire slowly erupting out of it until they broke loose and began forming into.... forms. There were fire creatures and fire mandalas and other shapes created. Big spinning comet-like things were also flying by at great speed. These fires tuned into a god or a giant puppet and then we saw a phoenix, a stilt walking fire demon,
everything became a chaotic dance of flame. Thus ended part one.

Part 2:  Then from out of the woods giant tectonic plates in the shape of blobby body parts began to appear. The pieces coalesce to form a huge goddess that is all brown and lusciously lumpy. Out of her body surfaces green things began to appear and new life came to the landscape. A 40 ft. wide giant sun stands over her body lovingly shining upon the ground. From the grasses and plants, insects emerged (praying mantis, beetle...). Predator prey relationships begin to develop as everybody's gotta eat. There are strange little shaggy critters with long gourdey noses who
noodle about and do stuff.

Part 3: as a big black bird swoops in and tries to make a meal of one of the bugs on stage. This opens the way for more beasts and they are all beautifully black. A boar, an ape, giant deer and its baby, a wolf all make their way through forest. Mystical crow women in the form of marionettes enter and through their magic fire the wolf is impregnated. She gives birth to a blue-faced- krishna-like person who represents the 1st human in our strange myth of creation. Did I mention the dragon? The dragon is another one of the beasts and the human has weird desires and thoughts that it can't seem to control. These tendencies lead to a hunt, which leads to a killing of the dragon. The human removes the dragons teeth and plants them into the ground. From the teeth comes humanity in all its gray legions of glory.

Part 4: The masses, as we call them, are then visited by the "instigators" (suits and ties and derbies circa 1920). They bring with them a machine that manufactures words, as well as slapstick antics of all kinds. Objects are created; a chair and table a t.v. and a bed that say sleep or relax. They create a giant "Golem" which of course is built to help the people, but... things don't always work out like we think they will. There is a outburst of revolution against this trend toward sleepiness and Bigifying everything but, it is quickly squashed by the huge arms of the Golem, one is a fist and the other a pointing finger. The arms are painted with words like Order, Justice, and Law. The great head of the Golem is fed trees and flowers and people and it grows, it's arms assemble into the huge monster that it truly is. The people are ordered to conform and they are forced into buildings to work for the good of the global economic infrastructure. Inside the huge buildings we see the shadows of the people suffering in different ways like climbing the same stairs or a man lying in a bed reaching for a window. Dante?

The torch that is illuminating the shadows is carried out to the front by a group of women who begin to sing "Why have we forgotten, earth is holy, earth is whole..." a song by our friend Cynthia Crossen. They sing in a gorgeous 3 part harmony and it stirs an insurrection. The phoenix flies on and claps its wings together causing the buildings to shatter apart. The sun enters once again and fills the stage with its luminescent presence and there is much hoopla and celebrating and of course very triumphant music. A somewhat overly simple ending, but, we were really still just finding our puppet legs back then.

I need to add that throughout this show there was a magnificent marionette, made by Victoria Ralston, that performed small vignettes. The puppet was called Icarus and it came with all the themes one would imagine of such a character. At the end Icarus learned to fly and flew his illuminated self out over the audience as a symbol of hope that we may all, someday, transcend.