INTERVIEW: A packrat’s story comes to life thanks to inventive puppetry
Photo: Jenny Hann (Firestone), Maggie Gayford & Carlo Adinolfi (Bud) star in Packrat produced by Concrete Temple Theatre at Dixon Place. Photo courtesy of Stefan Hagen / Provided by Karen Greco PR with permission.
How’s this for a whimsical premise: a rodent who likes to collect objects from humans and pack them away in his humble abode faces a soul-searching crisis. His packrat-ways have caused a wildfire, and the rest of the animals in this desert valley want nothing to do with him. This rodent, named Bud, must now face life alone, yearning for answers from both the human and animal kingdoms.
This premise, according to press notes, is the story of Packrat, a new puppetry show courtesy of the Concrete Temple Theatre. Performances run through Friday, Feb. 14 at Dixon Place in New York City.
Carlo Adinolfi serves as puppet designer, while Renee Philippi is the writer and director of the piece. Lewis Flinn provides an original score.
“I, along with Carlo, we have a company together called Concrete Temple Theatre, and we’ve been around probably for about 15-16 years,” Philippi said in a recent phone interview. “When the Jim Henson Foundation used to have their puppetry festival, we were big fans. [Back] in the day, the Henson grants were some of the easiest to get, and my colleague, Carlo, is a great maker of things and can make almost anything. It was just a natural progression to start working on puppetry. We call what we do devised visual theater, so we don’t just do puppetry. We think a lot about what people see on stage and how it relates to the narrative.”
Packrat came about after Adinolfi and Philippi separately visited a retreat in the northeastern corner of Nevada run by the Montello Foundation. The residency program is intended to increase participants’ awareness of the fragility of nature, and both Adinolfi and Philippi had memorable experiences in the desert.
“Carlo and I had very different experiences,” she said. “Carlo is … very dear and very sweet, and likes small creatures. He befriended a packrat that lived underneath the deck, which I certainly did not. That was sort of how the whole thing started, through this residency and his friendship with a packrat that lived under the deck.”
Philippi said the story of this new puppetry show is also inspired by the classic novel Watershed Down. Bud, the title character, is leaving one destination in search of somewhere else to call home.
“We’ve been working on it for two years, a very long time,” the writer-director said. “Puppetry takes what seems like forever. … You kind of have to see what the puppets would do to change the story. It’s a very back-and-forth process. … It’s taken us a long time, but I feel we are very ready. I think it’s going to be a very magical performance, I have to say.”
Philippi said the show is recommended for everyone in the family, and she is excited to see the different reactions based on age.
“I think someone who is 7 is going to get something much different than someone who is 55, but I think there’s something for everyone,” she said. “There’s a lot of humor in it, and there’s a lot of action and adventure. It is very much about humanity’s relationship to the natural world, and so I think it’s relevant to everyone.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Concrete Temple Theatre’s Packrat, written and directed by Renee Philippi, features puppetry design and construction by Carlo Adinolfi. Performances run through Feb. 14 at Dixon Place in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
