By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
photo by Tim Fuller (with thanks to Kate Breakey)
If you are older than 12, this is your chance to feel like a kid again. If you're younger, it's a chance to experience magic unplugged. Unenhanced by special digital effects of any kind.
We are talking “Cloud Soup,” a solo piece of fantasy performed at the Scoundrel & Scamp Theater by Wolfe Bowart, an artist in the medium of physical theater. You could also call it “silent theater.” There is recorded music, often with a carnival or klezmer flare.
In Bowart's performances there are lots of sight gags, humor without words. Comedy that stretches the imagination beyond pantomime and pratfalls, taking punch lines from a time hundreds of years ago when most people spoke a local language, not a national, official language.
Finding work as a standup comedian once you went outside the king's court was difficult back then. So traveling entertainers had to find other ways to attract attention that didn't require speaking. Bowart has mastered many of these ways, pulling audiences in with his effortless manner.
"Cloud Soup” doesn't have a story to tell. It is built on the premise that if you didn't like the last bit, you may like the next one. He makes having a short attention span seem like a good thing.
For example, one brief skit creating the illusion of a mouse poking its head out of a match box leads Bowart to a trick with three bowler hats that transition into him juggling plates...and so it goes.
Having so many facets to enjoy makes this show a perfect way for introducing children to the concept of watching adults perform on stage. That is – seeing real, three-dimensional people you can reach out to touch. Much different from touching a picture on a screen in your hand.
Instead of having other actors on stage, there are lots of props and lots of creativity, such as turning a floor mop into a cheerful puppy. Or watching Bowart take a handful of feather dusters and turn himself into a big bird. Not the Big Bird from Sesame Street, more like a high strutting, short-winged ostrich.
Or, awhile later, throwing a blanket over himself and, after flopping around underneath the cover, becoming a long-necked turkey that emerges slowly from within. At first it isn't clear what this creature might be, but by the end it definitely was a turkey.
Other times, with a completely different attitude and bag of tricks, he became one of those hapless silent movie figures for whom life is a continuous series of discoveries.
“Cloud Soup” concludes this season of the “Scamp Family Theater.” This production will continue in the new year with 7:30 p.m. performances Jan. 10-11, again at 2 p.m. Jan. 12-13, at the Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre in the Historic Y, 738 N. Fifth Ave.
Tickets are $28 general admission, $20 if you are under 30, $15 if you are a teacher or student, $12 if you are 10 or under. For details, scoundrelandscamp.org
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