Cartooon at the Chicago Int’l Puppet Theater Festival
Performances:
Friday, January 23, 9pm
Saturday, January 24, 7pm
Part of the Chicago International Pupppet Theater Festival
A live-action three-dimensional cartoon performed by a cast of fifteen, Cartooon was created by Steve Ackerman and directed by Ackerman and Ellen Conn. The controversial animated program Tummy da Talking Turtle Sucks on Piano Keys was created by Earl Dives and Gerry ‘Crackjaw‘ Sanders while sharpening their lumberjack axes in the fall of 1940. Earl was a balding Protestant with a penchant for soft whiskey and women’s feet. Gerry loved the smell of tar and gasoline. They bonded over nudie magazines and the pitching form of Lefty Grove, claiming “one is a national treasure, and the other sure could throw a strike.” Knowing nothing about animation, children, or public decency, the two cobbled together obscure Bible passages about dynamite and ran them over a flip book of crude drawings of Gerry’s penis talking that they then put teeth on to resemble a crocodile. One episode of the show was created. It was a failure. This is that episode.
Cartooon was developed through Puppet Lab, In the Heart of the Beast’s experimental puppetry program for emerging artists. Co-sponsored by UChicago’s Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts and Theater and Performance Studies, with support from the Reva and David Logan Foundation.