On March 6th, 2009, I was the recipient of a Special Project Fund from the Theater School at CalArts for a workshop of Bride of Wildenstein – The Musical.
In Bride of Wildenstein – The Musical, an aging socialite grows fur and claws to recapture her philandering game hunter husband’s attention. Using puppets and masks to augment the body, this solo cabaret performance playfully unpacks desire and the contagion of identity with songs that examine the making of a monstrosity.
The weird and tragic love story wildly reimagines tabloid accounts of the real-life “cat woman”, Jocelyn Wildenstein. As the protagonist’s marriage dissolves, she begins to reinvent herself through drastic measures. But biomedical and surgical procedures to become more feline only heighten her sense of estrangement and embolden her quest to find a fiercer sense of self.
CalArts teaches artists to develop the skills and personal drive to reach their creative potential, question received ideas and expand forms of knowledge and experience in the world.
The Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts (1998-2012) was a teaching laboratory situated in The School of Theatre at CalArts that offered a framework for the practical training, artistic innovation, aesthetic inquiry and interdisciplinary investigation of puppets and performing objects. The Cotsen Center strived to combine puppet theatre with the use of new technologies and emerging forms and practices that cut across traditional boundaries.
Bride of Wildenstein was developed at CalArts and the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center with funding from The Durfee Foundation and Ibex Puppetry.
