Iktu Blas
The Actors Gymnasium & Lookingglass Theatre

Component of Chicago?s Puppetropolis festival

A part of Puppetropolis Chicago, the city's international puppet pageant, featuring dozens of performances, workshops and exhibitions by local, national and international puppetry artists at locations throughout the city, June 14 - 24, 2001. Play is about a fictional dictator Iktu Blas.


6/11/01 - 6/11/01

8:00pm


A part of Puppetropolis Chicago, the city's international puppet pageant, featuring dozens of performances, workshops and exhibitions by local, national and international puppetry artists at locations throughout the city, June 14 - 24, 2001. Play is about a fictional dictator Iktu Blas.
Iktu Blas is a dictator. On a worldly plane he is another Hitler or Milosevic - one of the ?hungry despots? whose compulsions scar history. But he is also an inner reality: a personification of anger, anxiety, egomania, denial. Of our own infantile refusal to accept the fact of death. Writer/director Michael Montenegro portrays Iktu Blas through a series of images ? dreamy, comic, monstrous, poignant that exploit all the imaginative freedom available to the puppet artist.
?In Michael Montenegro's new, darkly funny puppet play, one becomes a monster by abandoning one's conscience in exchange for power, a process embodied in the interior world of the fictional Iktu Blas as he transforms himself into a dictator.

"Since the play has little dialogue and all six actors wear large, slightly menacing papier-mache masks, the story of Blas's rise is told almost completely in pantomime. Rick Kubes excels at the subtle gestures needed to define Blas's slimy charisma, but he founders when he needs to convey meaning--especially when the usually capable ensemble is not backing him up. More effective are the tiny puppets used to illustrate Blas's feelings and memories. To show that the young Blas feels controlled by those around him, one small figure writhes desperately in a frame like a fly caught in a web. In a comment on nationalism and the pull of power, people push Blas around before he gives up his conscience (surgically removed by figures wielding meat cleavers and scissors), but afterward, as long as he shows strength, they support him.
The play occasionally slips into cliches and sentimentality--Iktu Blas was abused as a child. And it is sometimes obscure. But that's a small price to pay for an hour of interesting issues thoughtfully raised.? Jennifer Vanasco, Chicago Reader May 18, 2001

The Actors Gymnasium presents a six-week preview production of Michael Montenegro's original puppet drama Iktu Blas, an epic about a savage dictator. He is portrayed as another Hitler or Stalin-one of the "hungry despots" whose compulsions shape history. Montenegro and his ensemble use a series of images-dreamy, comic, monstrous, poignant-to tell the story in the best traditions of imagination open to the puppeteer.? Mary Houlihan, Chicago Sun-Times May 4, 2001

Author
Michael Montenegro

Tags: Theater, American, 2001