bad moon rising 3

Third: Deus Ex Machina 3 (again)
How much: $5
Why: Puppets.

3D has rarely been good to me. Or you, or anybody. With the exception of Captain EO. That shit rocked. Otherwise it's pretty dismal. A couple of years ago some friends and I went to a 3D porno. I was expecting we'd be holding up umbrellas afraid that old Peter North was about to blow a few quarts at our faces. The whole affair was pretty tame. Not to mention the projectors were a little too far apart and we never achieved the real 3D effect. Don't get me wrong though; we were high, we heckled, laughed our asses off and had a hell of a time. It was just...disappointing.

The RubberMonkey guys are the only practitioners of 3D shadow puppetry. They achieve this by spacing out both a red and blue light to create the shadows. In past shows, like "Looong", they focused on a mix of shaddow puppetry, music and traditional European storytelling with a rod-puppet narrator. In their old collaborations with the Mammals theatre troupe, Boris Karloff's head appeared massive and impressive like the Wizard of Oz or a million Gods in a million issues of Heavy Metal magazine in 3-dimensions. The puppetry worked as more of a bridge between live action segments. It'd been a couple years since I'd seen them so I was excited when someone told me at the opening that I should come back the next night for a puppet show.

The show was all shadow puppets. Some were made of thick hinged cardboard and others were rod marionettes. The music was performed live by members of the Guild of Acquired Technology, who play instruments made from rewired electronics, mostly old children's toys from thrift stores. It was the first collaboration between the circuit bending and puppetry arms of RubberMonkey and, to be honest, it was less than the sum of its parts. The show had a pretty straightforward linear narrative, but I was too dumbshit to get it. There was a dragon, eating houses (as dragons are wont to do), and it either fell in love with some lady or ruined her life. And there were skeletons. The 3D worked half of the time and was a little jarring when it didn't and the music never seemed to come togethor. It all ended up in a heartless mesh of noise (and I don't mean that in a good way). The circuit benders instruments are pretty awesome creations but the majority of them are pretty limited and sometimes fall flat when it comes to performance time. Especially when you can't watch them at work. I'm not sure if the performance was improvised or not, but it didn't work (at least not for me). They're trying it again next week, with a more established show, The Palm Wine Drinkard. Also Lord of the YumYum, so ignore what I have to say and head out over there.