Here you can get a peek into Monika Essen’s design process; her Woman Before A Glass will definitely be worth a visit.  Dressing the set, dressing the actors, dreaming a whole world into being, is so akin to what a novelist does: making that world of the unreal real enough to – almost – touch.  Although the novelist does have certain physical advantages: I’ve never stuck myself with a pin, say, though I did once staple right into the pink meat of my thumb.  Rigors of creation.

In another Ann Arbor note, there will be an event for Under the Poppy the novel hosted by Common Language Bookstore in October; date TK.  Don’t be surprised if a blackbird flies into the window …. I’ll also be at the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers‘ do in October, talking about Under the Poppy and surreptitiously eating chocolate, though I will use a napkin and keep the pages clean. I may be wild but I am civilized.

… and Eileen Blumenthal, since I was happily wading, again, in the gorgeous swirl of her Puppetry: A World History, to B) console myself for not being able to get to the toy theatre blowout in Brooklyn, and A), be ravished anew by the grave and astonishing, rebellious and terrible performance of the eternal corps of extra-human actors she spotlights … Like Ilka Schonbein, say.  Put some money in the little girl’s bowl, sir?

Federico Garcia Lorca, one of the great treasures of poetry and the stage – of civilization – wrote puppet plays as well. To wit:

“El retablillo de Don Cristóbal/The Farce of Don Cristóbal and the Maiden Rosita … Lorca’s puppet play that celebrates the defiance against dictatorial authority with knock-down-pratfall puppetry actually was performed on the battlefield to build troop morale against Franco’s forces. And what greater relief could there be than puppets in scenes of ribald joking and wild sex.” …Well, none. And PS, Blair Thomas‘ “Cabaret of Desire” stirs the same pot with a different spoon; I saw a production in Chicago a few years ago that I remember very fondly indeed. [Photo: Daniel Troconis.]

Lovely to see the Under the Poppy trailer held up again as an example of How to Do It Right: we had an intensely creative and talented team, and it shows, it shows, it shows. We coulda won a Moby! Which reminds me, isn’t there a sexy, funny, rockin’ “Making Of” video somewhere around here, Diane…?

Robert del Valle knows all about everything first (and I think we just negated the whole idea of a blind item …) Ask not for whom the Poppy petals fall, they drift for thee.

And draws, and thinks: about color, its seductions and its stringencies; about human bodies, their heft and glory and sadness; about animals – oh, the beautiful paintings of animals …. And he sent me a completely wonderful puppet who is within dancing distance at this very moment.  And he loves Under the Poppy! Clive Hicks-Jenkins, you rock.

We are over the moon to announce that Under the Poppy has found its theatrical home: the Chrysler Black Box Theatre in the Detroit Opera House, home of the Michigan Opera Theatre, in Detroit.

Presenting our show in this venue – the main theatre is host to, oh, Tosca, Don Giovanni, Ballet Hispanico, Pilobolus, among many many others – is beyond exciting  The Chrysler Black Box Theatre sits atop the Opera House, looking at Broadway below with the splendid gaze of a sleek downtown beauty, which she is.  And now she’s ours.

The show is slated for February 2011.  Stay tuned for a great many more details, and start lacing up that corset now ….

… like Mr. Punch and Mr. Loudermilk, who keep tipping the top hat, leaping off into the void, loving “free freedom” (thank you, M. Rimbaud), tossing that love into the air with a juggler’s brio and catching it on the fly.  Do something mad today, go play, in honor of yourself and of all the sweet, sly, fierce, ungovernable April fools.

And this article talks about only three of the theatre companies in town; there are more (hey there, Demetri and BreatheArt!), all busy doing, as Igor Gozman says, what artists always do, in good times, tough times, for all time: thriving and surviving by making their art.  [Photo: Model D.]