Paperhand explores memory through puppetry

The show starts at seven. Dusky light still filters through the trees and plays its own shadowed puppet show on a stony stage built into a hillside. As the show goes on, night crawls in and stars ignite above University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Forest Theater, but the audience is unlikely to notice. Before them loom beautiful figures in intricately painted masks––playing, fighting and dancing on stilts.  These are the puppets of Jan Burger and Donovan Zimmerman’s theatrical collaboration Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Paperhand stages plays using huge characters fashioned from papier-mache and cloth, shadows on screens and undisguised actors who comfortably weave their way among these fanciful creatures. If your mind immediately associates the word “puppet” with cringe-inducing falsetto voices, silence it. Puppetry is an ancient art form and one of the earliest forms of theater. From the detail, beauty and creativity of the art they create, it is immediately clear that Burger and Zimmerman respect the potential power of puppetry. This summer’s show is The Living Sea of Memory. The work is separated into several different sections, one of which is an adaptation of Enuma Elis, a Babylonian creation myth. In the fantastical tale, an ancient god seduces the various other gods into exalting him as ruler. They surrender all power to him so that he can better fight Tiana, the mother of all things. How does he convince them? He lulls them into a stupor with those irresistible essentials: wine and pancakes.  In the following segements, Burger and Zimmerman examine how stories can move from the epic to the intimate. The most touching segment of the show features true memories of the cast members’ grandparents, performed as monologues. The simple, visceral nature of their stories allows them to successfully tap into the memories of listeners in the audience and on stage, literally forming a “living sea of memory.” The wizened grandparent figures perform the universal actions of sharing food and playing youthful pranks, creating a familiar but fantastic space. The audience gradually reconnects to their own experiences through the stories on stage. The wrinkled masks of larger-than-life grandparents tell us the narrative is more ancient and collective than anything personal. Tiny beside them are the actors, dressed simply in black. The collective, after all, is only individual stories, strung together. The show runs Sept. 4-6 at the Forest Theater in Chapel Hill and then moves to the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh for its final weekend, Sept. 11-12.