{"id":8292,"date":"2018-08-22T07:29:30","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T11:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=8292"},"modified":"2018-09-01T15:34:02","modified_gmt":"2018-09-01T19:34:02","slug":"paradox-teatro-migraciones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/08\/22\/paradox-teatro-migraciones\/","title":{"rendered":"Paradox Teatro\u2019s Shadow Puppet Show &#8216;Migraciones&#8217; Illuminates The Harrowing Journeys Of Refugees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cRefugee puppetry and poetry in English and Espa\u00f1ol,\u201d is how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ParadoxTeatro\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Paradox Teatro<\/a> has described their shadow puppet show &#8220;Migraciones.\u201d \u201cIn light of expanding border walls around the globe, \u2018Migraciones\u2019 follows the voyage of refugees as they travel through sand, water and shadows, in search of a new home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I saw the duo\u2014Sof\u00eda Padilla from Mexico and Davey T. Steinman from the United States\u2014perform \u201cMigraciones\u201d for the Bread and Puppet Theater company and friends at the troupe\u2019s Papier-M\u00e2ch\u00e9 Cathedral in Glover, Vermont, one evening last week. The presentation represented the end of a tour that took Paradox Teatro to Minneapolis\u2019s Open Eye Figure Theatre, Cincinnati\u2019s Contemporary Arts Center, and, this month, to New York\u2019s Puppet Fringe Festival and Worcester\u2019s Sprinkler Factory.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/253739480\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/253739480\">&#8220;Migraciones&#8221; Clip &#8211; Paradox Teatro<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/daveytsteinman\">Davey T Steinman<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMigraciones\u201d is a series of heartbreaking vignettes, presented as the impressions of a human-sized puppet-man of the refugees he sees through his camera. His \u201cphotos\u201d are projected onto a screen for us in a spectacular bit of magic. Padilla and Steinman use a pair of what look like overhead projectors for a version of shadow puppetry. In fact, the devices are light boxes with video cameras mounted above, and the footage run through a laptop. This allows them to project their performance live plus added special effects.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8291\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8291\" style=\"width: 900px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0594w.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-8291\" src=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0594w-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Paradox Teatro performs &quot;Migraciones&quot; at Bread and Puppet Theater's Papier-M\u00e2ch\u00e9 Cathedral, Glover, Vermont, Aug. 16, 2018. (Greg Cook)\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0594w-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0594w-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0594w-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0594w-370x247.jpg 370w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0594w.jpg 1170w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8291\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Paradox Teatro performs &#8220;Migraciones&#8221; at Bread and Puppet Theater&#8217;s Papier-M\u00e2ch\u00e9 Cathedral, Glover, Vermont, Aug. 16, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>But the main \u201cspecial effect\u201d is Padilla\u2019s dazzling live drawing in baking soda on top of the light boxes. As she sketches with her fingers in the sandy material, a man appears on the screen, crossing a desert speckled with a few cacti, under a blazing sun. Then Padilla draws in a border wall. The feeling is as if it\u2019s being erected right before our eyes. She draws people crowded in the back of a truck, the face of a crying woman above the desert, people packed into a boat amidst wild seas that overwhelm them.<\/p>\n<p>Steinman plays spare trumpet, harmonica and mandolin (I think) to accompany Padilla\u2019s spoken lines, which echo <a href=\"https:\/\/genius.com\/Warsan-shire-home-annotated\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Warsan Shire\u2019s poem \u201cHome.\u201d<\/a> That text has become a rallying cry for refugee and migrant supporters, with lines like \u201cno one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck \/ feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled \/ means something more than journey\u201d and \u201cno one puts their children in a boat \/ unless the water is safer than the land.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/wonderlandlandfanclub\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And <a href=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/subscribe\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don&#8217;t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8290\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8290\" style=\"width: 900px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0592w.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-8290\" src=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0592w-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Paradox Teatro performs &quot;Migraciones&quot; at Bread and Puppet Theater's Papier-M\u00e2ch\u00e9 Cathedral, Glover, Vermont, Aug. 16, 2018. (Greg Cook)\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0592w-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0592w-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0592w-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0592w-370x247.jpg 370w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/picParadoxTeatroMigraciones180816_0592w.jpg 1170w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8290\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Paradox Teatro performs &#8220;Migraciones&#8221; at Bread and Puppet Theater&#8217;s Papier-M\u00e2ch\u00e9 Cathedral, Glover, Vermont, Aug. 16, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cRefugee puppetry and poetry in English and Espa\u00f1ol,\u201d is how Paradox Teatro has described their shadow puppet show &#8220;Migraciones.\u201d \u201cIn light of expanding border walls around the globe, \u2018Migraciones\u2019 follows the voyage of refugees as they travel through sand, water and shadows, in search of a new home.\u201d I saw the duo\u2014Sof\u00eda Padilla from Mexico [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8289,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[13,423,123,422,196],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8292"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8467,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8292\/revisions\/8467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}