Local Video
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| Something monstrous this way comes |
By: DAVID HENKE, Staff Writer
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Posted: Friday, January 29, 2010 9:17 pm
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How do you bring two of the most feared monsters in Western lore to life on a theater stage?
St. Olaf College student and artist Joey Fleming drew his inspiration — and the answer to that question — from fairy tales and the natural world when he designed and constructed two larger-than-life puppets in the image of Grendel and Grendel’s mother, the two demons who haunt the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem “Beowulf.”
The monstrous puppets, with teeth like piranhas, arms like baboons and other characteristics taken from the horrors found in children’s tales, will stalk center stage in St. Olaf’s upcoming production, “Brother Wolf.”
The play, an adaptation of “Beowulf” written by Preston Lane, is set in the 1800s in Appalachia. In it, Grendel and his mother are recast as “Grin Dell” and his “Maw” — two mountain monsters who meet their match in Brother Wolf, a sword-toting itinerant preacher who roams the backwoods of Tennessee and North Carolina. The play also features music written by Laurelyn Dossett.
Each puppet is propelled by three actors, who man the bulbous head and each sinewy arm of Grin Dell and his gruesome mother. The puppets took Fleming a month to design and build, and are made of chicken wire, backpack frames, spindly tree branches and papier-mâché.
Their ingredients may be humble, but the puppets’ effect on the stage, cast member and St. Olaf student Braden Larson says, is powerful.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before in theater,” Larson said. “I think the puppets add a lot of creativity.”
Larson operates the head and mouth of one of monsters. Working with the large puppet, Larson says, has not only helped bring the story of “Brother Wolf” to life, but has challenged the actors working in and around the puppets, which stretch more than 12 feet from claw to claw.
The puppets reinforce the strong story at the heart of the play, and will push the limits of an audience’s imagination, according to director and St. Olaf professor Karen Peterson Wilson. Wilson, who originally concocted the idea of adding puppets to the play, believes the monsters play an integral part in the meaning of “Brother Wolf.”
“The monsters become, to me, that part of human beings when we get together and too much gossip occurs, or when we raise the level of fear in groups,” Wilson said. “They sort of become the monsters of society.”
‘BROTHER WOLF’
WHAT: A play written by Preston Lane and based on the Anglo-Saxon epic poem “Beowulf.”
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 12, 13, 18 and 20; 2 p.m. on Feb. 14 and 20.
WHERE: Kelsey Theatre at St. Olaf College.
TICKETS: Tickets are $8 apiece and are available at the door or at the St. Olaf Theatre Box Office. To purchase tickets from the box office, call 786-8987.
— David Henke covers the city. He can be reached at dhenke@northfieldnews.com or 645-1100.
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