News - sound for NUTMEG PUPPET COMPANY London performance October 2011
The Intangible Cities of Margharita Monticiano, October 28th 2011. Suspense Festival at The Pleasance Theatre, Islington, London. Co-devised by Meg Amsden - Nutmeg Puppet Co., Joy Haynes - Banyan Theatre, and composer Jane Wells.
A sly confection of shadows and projected images - a series of elusive and decadent, shadowy, reflections of La Serenissima, the seductive, rapacious city of Venice, that carries the seeds of its own downfall - personified by Margharita Monticiano, an ageing beauty who sees the world from her own voracious viewpoint.
"The Intangible Cities of Margharita Monticiano" was inspired by a story by Italo Calvino, and by Meg's first visit to Venice in the 1980s, when the stench, claustrophobia and decay of the city almost overwhelmed her (and led to her founding the short-lived and unpopular "Let Venice Die" campaign).
Initially it took the form of a collage shadow-puppet show made by Meg Amsden and Jane Wells, who first met in 1985 working as tutors on the OU Art and Environment summer school. The collage included images from Italian photo novels, romantic advertising, sweet wrappings, a cast of six bizarre characters (including Margharita), old 78 recordings of Italian opera, slushy romatic songs, and street and cafe recordings made by Meg in Milan in 1989. The show was an entirely personal fantasy, made without benefit of any funding. For Meg, it seved as an antidote to producing commissioned issue-based shows for family and school audiences for august public bodies. The character of Margharita is fictitious. Monticiano is a village in Tuscany where OU colleague, Michael Eldridge, ran eccentric courses and employed Meg, Jane and Tim Hunkin as teachers in the early '90s.
The show proved so difficult to perform that it was put away for nearly 20 years, until Meg saw an Italian puppet show inspired by stories from the same book, "Invisible Cities", and thought "My show was better!" She revived it in 2010 with the help of Joy Haynes (long-term collaborator with Nutmeg Puppet Co.), for Norwich Puppet Theatre's 30th anniversary Gala. The show was still no easier to perform, but it created quite a buzz. They decided to rework it, using film, and to incorporate it into a longer work, with the aim of performing the new piece at the Suspense Festival in October 2011. Jane compiled three new piecees of music for the sound-track, and Meg and Jenny Nutbeem went to Venice in April 2011 with a list of images to capture in film, photos and drawings. Steve Peck (who has worked with Nutmeg for seven years as a puppeteer) joined the group in September as co-performer and sound technician.
The two performances at The Pleasance are the premiere of what is an experimental piece and a work in progress.
Directed by Joy Haynes. Performed by Meg Amsden and Steve Peck. Design, puppets, projected images and film by Meg Amsden. Sound track by Jane Wells, Photos by Jenny Nutbeem. Technical assistance by Tim Hunkin.
Quotes in the show are from "Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino translated by William Weaver, pub. Virago.