“Little Carl”

***  There is a Puppet Theater Festival running all over the city of Chicago. One of the younger companies, Theatre Y along with Michael Montengro are presenting the third incarnation of “Little Carl”. The “Puppet Festival” was founded and is run by Blair Thomas. This is a name that Chicago theater audiences have seen and heard for many years. Many of the best of the best shows are with puppets created by Thomas. Thomas truly believes that mixing actors with puppets allows the audience to get into what is being told in the story being presented.

The story is written by Montengro and the prologue and epilogue by Marvin Tate, who plays the father in this 80 minutes story. The story is very dreamlike and combines poetry, acting, puppetry, and music to bring us a tale of the despair that comes with a young person being shot for no reason. In the tale we meet Marvin’s character at the start walking onstage and seeing a body smack dab in the middle of the stage. This is his son, Little Carl (Richard Bonds) we also see him in a younger stage as we travel back in time (Christopher Bonds handles the very little Carl).

The story is about the relationship between adults and children- and of greater importance what a shooting can do to a family. As we know from watching the news and reading the newspapers ( some of us still do that), there are senseless shootings every day. Some are as simple as gang initiations. “You want the gang to protect you, you need to show your ability to kill!”

While the subject matter of this production is not one that you would think offers a reason to attend a theater, I must say that it is designed to open our eyes to things that we may never anticipate being part of our lives. “It only happens to others”. Guess what? It happens everywhere and in many different types of neighborhoods.

The sensitivity in which Theatre Y brings this story to light is sheer perfection. I still believe that this is a work in progress and it still needs some fine tuning. When the story was over and the cast came out to speak with us for about 20 minutes ( bringing it to the 80 minute mark), we could see that these performers love that they are indeed doing what they do. Theatre Y  is a starting point for young actors many of whom are growing and this production may be the reason they go on to become major players.

This show is only here for this weekend, so unless you can go to The Biograph Theater ( yes, the Biograph on Lincoln Avenue- listen to my show on WCPT820 Sunday at 2p.m. and learn more) Saturday (the 27th) at 2 p.m. or 7:30 p.m. or Sunday at 3 p.m. you will have to wait until it returns to a theater in the future ( and I believe it will).

The theater is located at 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue

Tickets are $30 ( students and seniors $20)

The sixth Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival runs Jan. 18-28 at various venues across Chicago.
Visit ChicagoPuppetFest.org for schedules and tickets.