DOCTOR SUPERHELGA'S
THEATER OF FAILED OPERATIONS
THEATER OF FAILED OPERATIONS
Mini Manifesto on (Puppet) Theater #1 (02.15.2017)
I believe in magic. I believe in a imaginative, curious, active audience.
I believe we don’t always have to understand what we see for it to affect us.
I think a puppet can be a whole room. I think furniture can have soul. I love when the distinctions between set, costume, performer and audience gets pushed and challenged. I love to make objects that can transform, morph, come alive.
I don’t think an object needs to have eyes to be a puppet.
I do think everything that gets put on a stage needs to have a higher purpose, a deeper meaning, and should and get used in as many ways as possible, including the space itself.
I do not believe in decoration.
I believe that I as a theater artist do not have to define myself as a puppet maker, set designer, costume designer, performer, playwright or director.
I want to be part of a devised process of making art on a stage for a live audience.
I think the visuals and performers are equally important parts of a performance, and all parts should be connected and integrated through the process.
I’m a small scale megalomaniac.
I love Puppet Theater because free of conventional human scale I can make so much more with a whole lot less.
I generally believe that less is more, but I also believe it doesn’t necessary apply to me.
I dream about making an enormous puppet move convincingly. I want to fill an entire opera stage with a gigantic breathing, singing Flesh Mountain. I want to make scenic rooms that are like dangerous living, moving machines.
I don’t think you necessarily have to hide the mechanics of the theater. I want people to be aware of the different realities they are in simultaneously.
I like to see the human behind an illusion. I like to see them juxtaposed.
I like layers.
I enjoy theater being seductive, but also unpredictable.
I think theater should be beautiful, ugly, terrifying, unexpected. It should be highly entertaining but it should also itch and shake your core beliefs. I do not believe in art as escapism.
I think what we make as theater artists needs to relate to our history and society.
I know I’m very privileged who get to use my life making art.
I feel a responsibility to make it worth it, and to be a voice for those who do not get to have one.
I believe there are things that can not be said or written, but they can be explored in other ways. Making images, metaphors and stories is my preferred way of reasoning.
I don’t believe in nice or pretty. I want to find beautiful surprises in what we conventionally consider plain, ugly or dangerous.
I live to give life to objects, creating stories larger than life and beings smaller than me. I want to dig deep, deep down into darkness and find amazing, unexpected universes. I want to ask questions and explore our lives and ideas as we know them from different point of views.
I love to create in groups of people.
I believe the most interesting work comes from collaboration.
I also see my audience as collaborators.
I refuse to get too old to play. I have decided to get better at playing the older I get.
I want to believe in ghosts and I intend to be one myself one day.