The opening performance of Out There will be starting in less than four weeks with Betontanc/Umka.lv’s Show Your Face! The Museum of Contemporary Art have a fantastic trailer up for the show, as the performance will be heading there after its stint at the McGuire. I was excited for Show Your Face! before, but anticipation has grown exponentially after watching this:
In case you were wondering, Betontanc are a Slovenian physical theater group and Umka.lv are a Latvian puppet theater group. Although we can assume their collaboration resulted in much fluidity between the groups and shared roles/responsibilities in the performance, it might be a helpful dissection to know that Betontanc are responsible for the more physical theater aspects of the piece (the yelling, standing, riotous people in the trailer) and that Umka.lv are responsible for the baby-snowsuit manipulation and other puppetry moments. FYI, “Umka” was the name of a teddy bear that belonged to one of the artists in the company and “Betontanc” means “Concrete Dance.”
The music for Show Your Face! will be performed live by Slovenian pop group, Silence. You can stream clips from one of their albums here, although their score for Show Your Face! is more steampunk cabaret than the synth-pop featured on Germany’s Amazon.com page—phantastastiche musik!
The jury at a Slovene theater festival where Show Your Face! was presented wrote: “The central figure [snowsuit baby…is] a kind of postmodern Woyzeck” which ties in nicely with a certain William Kentridge puppet play later this season.
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