ArtsEmerson presents 69’s (The Shackleton Project)

Photo: Phantom Limb

69°S. or The Shackleton Project, a sixty-five minute multimedia performance piece created by the touring Phantom Limb Company, brings Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 Antarctic expedition to the stage. The story of misadventure and rescue is “told” through puppets, music, dance, and images which, while impressive, occasionally leave the spectator as lost as the explorers. A program insert gives a terse description of each of the nine “tableaux,” a surprisingly ineffective and untheatrical device given the creativity of the Phantom Limb’s artistic directors Eric Sanko and Jessica Grindstaff.

The live and recorded music, mostly composed by Erik Sanko, is a performance highlight. As a member of the Skeleton Key rock band, Sanko is one of two percussionists. The other two musicians play the guitar. Sanko collaborated with the Kronos Quartet who recorded the atmospheric music. At times, Skeleton Key’s pulsating rhythms merge with the Kronos Quartet’s classical sounds. Early recordings of popular music of the period add to the dreamlike feeling.

Most of the production’s visual aspects are haunting. It opens on an almost bare gray stage. Silver drapes hang on either side. Downstage left and right and upstage center lie small mounds of what appear to be silver fabric. Hanging from the flies are four straight red ropes. Recorded music plays, the lights slowly go down. Everything turns white, lights play on the upstage wall revealing striking images of icebergs, snow covered mountains, and the aurora australis. Both the images and sounds – music, wind, storms, cries – lead the audience into a surreal world.

Dancers clad in red jump suits caper athletically, if confusingly. The program insert explains that they are conjuring “the memory of Shackleton’s story.” Part of that memory is the omnipresent threat of death in this frozen landscape, here portrayed as a white figure with a black skeleton attached to his/her body. The world becomes more threatening as the mounds grow into snowy mountains, pulled up by the red ropes. A photo of a ship immersed in ice is projected as a skeletal wooden boat rolls onto the stage to collapse later. The six dancers, now ghostly puppeteers on stilts, enter slowly holding their charges by long strings. Dressed all in white, with long robes, legs and feet wrapped in cloth, their heads and faces hooded, these puppeteers seem to be forces of nature controlling mankind which is represented by the three-foot high marionettes. The marionettes, all with identical sad faces – or are they just blank? – and the same inadequate clothing are no match for their puppet masters. We see the “men” trying to survive, sitting close to a fire – another puppet figure made of rope. We see them starving as one unsuccessfully tries to catch a puppet seal that wriggles across the stage. Despite their suffering, they have moments of joy or seem to. Watching a piece of theatre with no dialogue and no human expressiveness, despite the presence of the dancers, makes the spectator work harder at finding meaning.

What does the spectator make of the images of war projected onto the mountains of snow? The figures in red who return after the departure of Shackleton and his men? What of the recurring symbol of death who, at the play’s end, enacts a singer entertaining the audience? Thoughts of Nero fiddling as Rome burns come to mind.

One by one the mountains recede giving the impression of melting. The ropes disappear, pulled up into the flies. Sparkling lights glimmer and fall like rain. Nature is no longer the same kind of force it was when the Shackleton expedition first set foot on Antarctica. The creators of 69°S’ exploration of climate change through metaphor is stirring, beautiful, and largely successful.

 

ArtsEmerson presents 69°s. (The Shackleton Project)

at the Paramount Center, Boston, MA

Created by Erik Sanko and Jessica Grindstaff

Production by Phantom Limb

Directed by Sophie Hunter

Conceived in collaboration with

David Harrington/Kronos Quartet

Music composed by Erik Sanko

Set Design by Jessica Grindstaff

Puppet Design by Erik Sanko

Choreography by Andrea Miller

Video Design by Shaun Irons & Lauren Petty

Costumes by threeASFOUR

Lighting Design by Andrew Hill

Performers: Kira Rae Blazek, Sabrina D’Angelo, Takemi Kitamura, Rowan Magee, Aaron Mattocks, Carlton Ward

Skeleton Key: Benjamin Clapp, Craig Leblang, Erik Sanko, Bob Vaccarelli

Sound Design by Martin J.A. Lambeek