Past Performances
Ashes: The Alchemy of Hope (2007)
Ashes: The Alchemy of Hope was a multi-media performance involving improvised and metamorphic movement, film, shadow puppetry, and live music. It was a menagerie of styles pulled together by director/choreographer Deirdre Morris in collaboration with members of High Mayhem, Wise Fool New Mexico, Synchronicity Pictures, and Meat Puppet Theatre.
Deirdre developed Ashes: The Alchemy of Hope as a way to converse about the unconnected, despairing and utterly profound state of the world as she sees it today. This is a piece about recognition and reflection. It’s about Hope, a laundress who dreams about how the ignorance, apathy and negative deeds found in the world can be appeased if we can just learn how to connect with one another. There is always going to be conflict, but wouldn’t it be profound if we could have true dialogue? Through the meditative act of “washing” she discovers a profound ability to connect to the “others” of her world who have been made separate by her fear. Through her recognition of herself in the others, Hope discovers her namesake.
H20 (2002)
H20 was an outdoor performance set in a living visual installation. Cast and audience alike entered a landscape built by water and drought; a landscape home to creatures falling through the air, lumbering on stilts, and flickering by torchlight. Through their distinctive and highly physical combination of movement, stilts, puppetry, and aerial arts, Wise Fool pondered this substance on which all life depends, exploring the myriad ways in which water and lack of water impact our lives.
The Curtain (2001)
Wise Fool's original work, The Curtain, performed for sell out audiences in Peñasco, Santa Fe, and Tucson AZ in late March and early April 2001. The Curtain addressed issues of borders and migration, personal, political and cultural. Created/directed by Wise Fool's four core women artists (coming from different cultural and social backgrounds) the making of the piece was a journey into each of our perceptions and fears. It was a piece which reached out and deeply affected many audience members, as well as changing the artists and their relationships to each other.
The piece involved seven performers, two musicians and two media artists in a rich weaving of the arts of puppetry, shadow puppetry, aerial fabric and ropes, stiltdancing and bungee, spoken word, slide and soundscape, dance, music and fire. The performances reached an audience of over 1,300 people and received great press as well as excellent feedback from audience members.