i PETER GAFFNEY CATALOG

Transcription

1 i PETER GAFFNEY CATALOG

2 THEORY & PRACTICE Peter Gaffney is a puppet maker, theater director, and multi-instrumentalist who teaches and performs in Philadelphia and Munich. He also teaches philosophy and theories of visual culture at The Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Information about recent performances with links to photos, videos and music can be found online at Links to published work and academic portfolio can be found online at

3 ABOUT PETER GAFFNEY I have worked in the American theater for over twenty-five years and have had the fortune of working with many brilliant artists. Peter is one of the two genuine geniuses I have met. His work is of the highest aesthetic standards; his craft is unquestioned; but more importantly, he knows what he wants to do. His intelligence is extraordinary, his vision is clear and his ambition immense. These are, sadly,three things you can t say about many American theater artists. John Clancy John Clancy is an OBIE-Award winning theater director and playwright, and founding Artistic Director of the New York International Fringe Festival... Philadelphia is already known as a physical theater hub in the United States, and now our puppet arts movement is growing. Imaginative creators like Sebastienne Mundheim, Aaron Cromie and Peter Gaffney are at the forefront of the charge. Victor Fiorillo, Philadelphia Magazine Victor Fiorillo is Arts & Entertainment Editor for Philadelphia Magazine Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Peter Gaffney is a composer, puppet maker, and theater director who has lived, taught and performed in New York, Prague, London, Paris, Philadelphia and Munich. As co-founder and director of Cabaret Red Light ( ) and composer/music director on original works at BRAT Productions ( ), he has helped create more than thirty theatrical productions with over 150 performances, chosen at times by TimeOut New York and Philadelphia s City Paper as pick of the week and must see performances. More recently, Peter created story, text and puppets for Gesualdo in Heaven, depicting the life, crimes, and musical inventions of Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo. As 2014 artist in residence at Leonrod-Haus für Kunst, he created Clown Death Peep Show, a site-specific performance in a WWII-era barracks shower, and will be giving lectures and workshops on his own counter-puppetry techniques as 2015 artist in residence at PLATFORM, a think tank for contemporary art and culture in Munich, Germany ( In 2016, Peter s work will be performed at the 10th International Puppet Days festival in İzmir, Turkey, and at DOT in Istanbul ( where he is also working with artistic director Murat Daltaban on an adaptation of Zargana (Needlefish), a novel by Hakan Günday. Peter has studied puppetry, mask work and physical acting techniques with Pig Iron Theater (US), Divadlo Continuo (CZ) and Rootless Root (GR/SK), and has led workshops on physical theater at Leonrod-Haus für Kunst (DE), and seminars on theories of visual culture at Fidget Space (US). A graduate of Stanford University (B.A., 1996) and University of Pennsylvania (M.A., 2000, Ph.D., 2006), Peter also teaches philosophy, cinema and theories of visual culture, as well as French and Italian, and is Assistant Professor at The Curtis Institute of Music. His edited volume on philosopher Gilles Deleuze, The Force of the Virtual: Deleuze, Science and Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 2010) was nominated for the Michelle Kendrick Book Award in See You ll find more about Peter at or click on one of the following links to go directly to recordings of Peter s recent music ( a video of him on stage ( and a full portfolio ( that includes showby-show production details, original design work, photos and press. 2

4 FULL BODY PUPPETS Designed and built by Peter Gaffney, life-size puppets await their cue in Gesualdo in Heaven, a postdramatic puppet show about a composer haunted by signs he does not understand, and by a musical invention that will never redeem him. Watch them make take the stage at

5 / POSTDRAMATIC PUPPETRY COUNTER-PUPPETRY Whereas most puppetry emphasizes the artist s ability to imbue matter with meaning, recent puppets and techniques by Peter Gaffney revolve around a medium that resists this role. In Gesualdo in Heaven puppets are strapped limb-to-limb to the puppeteers, so that the puppeteer is constrained to the movements of the puppet just as the puppet is subject to the will of the puppeteer. This relationship becomes increasingly strained over the course of the performance, to the point where we are compelled at last to face the brutality underlying the struggle for artistic control. Heinrich von Kleist already touched on the possibility of a kind of movement that is free from human control and consequently not motivated by the psychology of the puppeteer. In On the Marionette Theater he suggests that the true potential of puppetry lies not in the cleverness or comprehensiveness of the mechanisms for controlling its movement, but, on the contrary, in the presence and expressiveness of an object at the moment it escapes human control. This speaks to the general need to free human expressive forms from the (popular, commercial) demand for aesthetic wholeness, together with the ideological demand for meaning, by which they are typically made to serve the interests of control culture. As Antonin Artaud writes in The Theater and Its Double, we need to create new forms of theater in order to rescue it from its servitude to psychology and human interest. The aim of counter-puppetry is to seek out new impulses for movement in real time, with the body and with objects, in combination with language, images, sound and matter. GESUALDO IN HEAVEN Carlo Gesualdo may be best remembered as a triple murderer obsessed with alchemy and the arcane, but he was also a pioneer of musical chromaticism, and a major influence in the works of Wagner, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and other key figures of modern music. Gesualdo in Heaven mixes life-size wooden puppets with an original score inspired by his musical inventions to investigate the insomnia, delirium, paranoia and genius of one of Western music s most troubling figures. The show features an original puppet design paired with a technique inspired by Eastern expressive forms such as bunraku, kabuki and noh theater, and explores the tension between an expressive medium and our efforts to control it. With story, text and puppets by Peter Gaffney, music by Ben Diamond, puppetry by Jordi Wallen, Sarah Schol and Tabitha Allen, and directed by Obie-Award winner John Clancy, Gesualdo in Heaven played to sold-out audiences in Philadelphia, February 14 22, 2014, and has been selected by the 10th International Puppet Days festival in İzmir, Turkey, and 2016 season programming at DOT Theater in Istanbul. Video (Fidget Space, April 4, 2014): Brochure 2016: Puppet design: Photos of construction: Press release: Featured on WHYY's Newsworthy: Featured in Philadelphia Magazine: Promotional video: Official website: 4

6 Photo by Kate Raines THE FUTURE Justin Rose performs the role of Karl, a down-and-out clown in a garbage dump whose only distraction from the slow march of time is a machine that works in fits and starts and the fading amusement of failed suicide. Always Coming Soon: The Future also features performances by Jess Conda, Tabitha Allen, and Rob Cutler (also pictured here), and was subject of a photography exhibit by Jauhien Sasnou at Painted Bride Art Center (

7 / IN-YER-FACE CABARET BRAT PRODUCTIONS Peter Gaffney joined BRAT Productions ( in 2012, working in various roles (musician, music director, composer) for Jess Conda s cabaret cycle Rock and Awe and The Last Plot in Revenge by Brian Grace-Duff (page 13, below). In 2014, BRAT used his concept album The Experiment as jumping off point for a devised theater piece combining bouffon clown work with rock-and-roll musical theater. The result was Always Coming Soon: The Future, an in-yer-face cabaret featuring a time machine in a garbage dump that is home to three down-and-out clowns. Looking for a way to pass the time, and motivated by a deep-rooted fear of solitude, they find an unsuspecting passer-by and coax her into the machine with promises of a better life. Stand-and-deliver cabaret songs mingle with the sounds of shifty vagabonds in the background hocking their goods, in a musical described by theater critic Deb Miller of Phindie.com as A Toulouse-Lautrec painting come to life [with] time-warped reminiscences of 1931 Berlin and a distinctly Parisian flavor of late 19th-century Montmartre. Performing to sold out audiences at Performance Garage, May 15-18, 2014, the original cast went on to mount the show again in a co-production with Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia. Video (Painted Bride Art Center, January 15, 2015): Brochure for 2016: Live recordings of music: Publicity & set design by Peter Gaffney: Interview with Peter Gaffney: Featured on WHYY's Newsworthy: Reviewed by Deb Miller, Phindie.com: Photos of devising process & backstage, by Jauhien Sasnou: The Future also featured set and publicity design (right) by Peter Gaffney. See more designs at 6

8 Photo by Johanna Austin LEGEND OF THE RATMAN With dance, music, puppetry and movement theater, Cabaret Nutcracker combines the familiar Christmas story by E.T.A. Hoffmann with Peter Gaffney's concept album "The Legend of the Ratman" ( about a twentysomething forced to sign a contract with a mysterious creature half-rat half-man, the bogeyman of adult life. Pictured here are mechanical owl and ratman mask created by Peter Gaffney. You can see pictures of their construction here:

9 2015 / MOVEMENT THEATER THE 200-YEAR OLD PARADOX There is something suspicious about the Nutcracker story. Critics and scholars have recently pointed out that the traditional holiday favorite is thematically ambiguous, unsettlingly adult, at times even perverse. At the heart of this ambiguity is the story of a child coming to terms with the dangerous impulses of her body, but confronted with an adult world that hides the body from view or what is worse, claims to speak for the body in the voice of Reason. Meanwhile, lurking in the wings, egging her on, is a figure whose role is disturbingly avuncular, whose intentions could not be less clear, and whose actions are thematically linked to the blind will of animals and machines. THE ORIGINAL GOTHIC CHRISTMAS STORY The holiday classic that everybody knows as Balanchine s Nutcracker began as an 1816 story by Hoffmann called The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, about the troubling visions of its protagonist Marie on Christmas Eve. In later adaptations by Alexandre Dumas and Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the conflation of fantasy and reality is in service of a rather bland story about the joy of Christmas, presumably from a child s perspective. But the original tale strikes a darker tone. The fantastical scenarios are not dream sequences but flights of delirium. What they reveal is not the purity and innocence of youth but the precipitous awakening of adulthood. Hoffmann inserts himself into the story as Marie s godfather, a Prospero-like figure who is at once an ally and a traitor, winning her trust only to lead her deeper into the web of moral problems that await her. CABARET NUTCRACKER Currently in production for December 2015, Cabaret Nutcracker confronts the ambiguities of this popular Christmas ritual by staging them as such that is, as a story about the body as problematic locus of desire, movement and play, especially as envisioned by French theater pedagogue Jacques Lecoq. Children gain their understanding of the world around them by miming it, he writes in Theater of Movement and Gesture. They replay with their whole body those aspects of life in which they will be called on to participate. We find the results of Lecoq s teachings in nouveau cirque and clown work, puppetry and dance in a form of theater that begins with the body, its impulses and rhythms, its place in the physical world. Drawing on these performance styles, Cabaret Nutcracker aims to revive the Nutcracker tradition by restoring its thematic complexity but also by telling the story in a way that speaks to the imminent danger of giving the body its own voice, of listening to what the body has to say. CREATIVE TEAM The creators of Cabaret Nutcracker are an award-winning international team representing a wide range of professional experience in puppetry and masks (Peter Gaffney, USA), cirque nouveau (Compagnie Rasoterra, BE), music (Rolf Lakaemper, DE), physical theater (María Sánchez Cortés, ES) and dance (Sophia Mage, DK). For a complete resumé of the Cabaret Nutcracker team, with links to recent work and reviews, please see the creative team dossier at Official website (under construction): Music by Rolf Lakaemper & P. Gaffney: 8

10 THE RIDICULOUS MARTYR Clown Death Peep Show is comprised of short tragicomic performances exploring the relationship between spectatorship, performativity, the body and time. Watch video of the segment Anthem here:

11 2014 / SITE SPECIFIC CLOWN DEATH PEEP SHOW With influences that range from Antonin Artaud to Andy Kaufman, Clown Death Peep Show is a site-specific work that explores the relationship between spectatorship, performativity, the body and time, presenting short, physically demanding miniperformances about a clown, a clock, and four cold walls. At intervals of ten minutes, the audience is admitted in groups of three into a discrete viewing room with a sliding shutter. The shutter goes up. The clown performs for ten minutes. The shutter goes down. Inspired by the tension between demands for unmediated presence (of the body, of the performer) and technologies that mediate presence (internet, visual culture, social media), Clown Death Peep Show explores our contemporary predicament through the figure of the clown, who is charged to satisfy our need for a kind of ridiculous martyr. Clown Death Peep Show was performed in 35 mini-performances, October 2 18, 2014, in a WWII-era barracks shower at Leonrod-Haus für Kunst (Munich), and was made possible by the generous support of Landeshauptstadt München Kulturreferat, Bezirksausschuss 9 Neu- hausen/nymphenburg, and DOKU e.v. München. The performance was preceded in September, 2014, by a reading of Clown Manifesto interrupted by the growing clamor of a clown horn and cartoon sound effects. The complete text of the manifesto can be found at Official website: Video: The figure for Clown Death Peep Show was built entirely out of discarded steel, wood, polystyrene foam and other materials from a waste container at Halle 6 in Munich, which donated workshop space to the project. See photos of construction at 10

12 REPURPOSING FOR A GLOBAL THEATER Rather than making costumes in one location and distributing them (incurring prohibitively expensive material and transportation costs), a digital package will be distributed with patterns for repurposing/transforming discarded plastic bags and bottles, polystyrene foam, cardboard and paper products, etc. into Les Agents uniforms and tactical gear.

13 2016 / FLASH MOB RECLAIMING THE PUBLIC SPHERE The challenges of contemporary theater are often expressed in terms of an aesthetic problem: how to get beyond the old-fashioned formula of proscenium theater, with fourth-wall realism on one side and passive audience on the other. In recent years, however, activists have been turning to theatrical tactics flash mobs, street puppets, pranksterism to create acts of civil disobedience. Perhaps the real challenge has nothing to do with aesthetics, but with the material restrictions faced by artists and activists alike in directly engaging the public sphere. Who has the right to tell stories? How do mainstream narratives make use of the spectacle to generate the authority of the storyteller, regardless of the story? Publicity image for Les Agents Provocateurs by Peter Gaffney. As activists turn more and more to political theater, Les Agents Provocateurs tells the story of a task force that uses those same tactics to win back popular support for a culture of consumerist obedience. Dressed in riot gear, and representing the abstract notion of the authorized use of force, they sing and dance their way into the hearts and minds of the people. Written by Peter Gaffney and directed by John Clancy, the performance will consist in a series of flash-mob events performed simultaneously in various major cities worldwide, culminating in a staged musical finale. The aim is to solicit mainstream media coverage as a platform for telling a story about the mechanisms of manufactured consent. Whereas mainstream culture is sustained by high production value and facilitated by technology, Les Agents Provocateurs is an experiment in the power of live performance to democratize the spectacle. Rather than making costumes in one location and distributing them (incurring prohibitively expensive material and transportation costs), a digital package will be distributed with patterns for repurposing/transforming discarded plastic bags and bottles, polystyrene foam, cardboard and paper products, etc. into Les Agents uniforms and tactical gear. Participating theater companies can then acquire these materials at little or no cost and modify them according to the design. Other objectives of Les Agents Provocateurs include: (1) creating the organizational structure for a worldwide coalition of artists and theater companies; (2) extending the stage to mainstream channels of public discourse (print, broadcast and internet media), in order to participate in public discourse without commercial underwriting; and (3) developing long term strategies for sustaining interest and narrative coherence over a variety of events in a global transmedia theater experience. Check the official website soon for more details: 12

14 THE LAST PLOT IN REVENGE Award-winning Philadelphia actress Sarah Schol, performing the opening number A Song to Move Through Time (music by Peter Gaffney, lyrics by Brian Grace-Duff and Peter Gaffney). You can listen to the song online ( or watch a video of the first half of the show (compiled by James Stapleford) at Video still by James Stapleford

15 2013 / LIVE CINEMA THE LAST PLOT IN REVENGE Written by Brian Grace-Duff and directed by OBIE-Award-winner John Clancy, The Last Plot in Revenge presents a new twist on Brecht s epic theater, invoking a cinematic setting and then pulling the audience back and forth over the line between gritty realism and self-reflexive melodrama. Music composed by Peter Gaffney was inspired by contemporary folk and cinematic Western music, but with darkly Victorian waltzes and melodramatic songs. The soundtrack continues without breaks throughout the play, even during spoken dialogue and fight sequences, underscoring the action or offsetting the realism with counterpunctal rumbas. Music: Video (Act I only): The music of Peter Gaffney transforms the theater into the old west and helps flawlessly transition the scenes...the Last Plot in Revenge is sure to be a new Philly Favorite for theater goers. Molly Moon, Adventures with Molly On a stage behind this bar is a live band of three dusty-looking musicians...they will continue to provide a nearly unbroken accompaniment to Brian Grace-Duff s The Last Plot in Revenge...a risky, ambitious show. It combines puppetry, dinner theater, and live music with a complex, richly themed plot. Julius Ferraro, Philly News 14

16 A MODERN-DAY SPEAKEASY During its three seasons and 80+ performances, Cabaret Red Light ( came to the fore of the Philadelphia cabaret scene, combining Brechtian agitprop with original live music, dark comedy, puppet theatre and burlesque. Photo by David Palumbo

17 / CABARET RED LIGHT Cabaret Red Light ( was a 30+ member troupe of Philadelphia s most talented vaudeville performers, combining Brechtian agitprop with original live music, dark comedy, puppet theatre, dance and burlesque in the spirit of the decadent 1920s cabarets and speakeasies. Under co-artistic director Peter Gaffney, the troupe created more than 20 original productions and performed to sold out audiences at Painted Bride Art Center, Adrienne Theater, Plays and Players Theater, L Etage, Chaplin s Music Café, the Palace of Wonders in Washington D.C. and PortSide New York. In their three seasons, they were listed three times by Philadelphia s City Paper as Agenda Pick of the Week, by TimeOut New York s online entertainment guide as must-see, and were the subject of an article in the New York Times ( and one-hour radio special on National Public Radio affiliated WHYY ( Cabaret Red Light closed its doors at the end of its 2011 season, following a run of seven consecutive sold-out performances of its cabaret adaptation of Nutcracker (more than 1400 tickets were sold, grossing over $25,000 at the box office). Co-founding the company in 2008 with Anna Frangiosa, Peter Gaffney was head writer, composer and music director for the troupe, and also created publicity, graphic design, set pieces, props and masks. You will find samples of Peter s work for Cabaret Red Light at the links below. NOVEMBER JULY 2009 NOVEMBER JANUARY 2010 MARCH - JUNE 2010 THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS Inspired by Kurt Weill s cabaret music by the same title, The Seven Deadly Sins was a monthly cabaret series at L Etage in Philadelphia, featuring variety-style agitprop theater in a speakeasy setting. Music: THE TAKEOVER & OCCUPATION Created as a co-production with Plays and Players theater, these shows were based on the story of a cabaret that uses military force to take over an established theater venue. Music: THE EXPERIMENT A sci-fi cabaret at L Etage, with a time machine... Music: Photos: Set design: 16

18 Co-produced by the venerable Plays and Players Theater in Philadelphia ( Cabaret Red Light s The Takeover (right) presented a lavish Busby Berkeley-style variety show telling the story of the armed takeover of a venerable theater. MAY SEPTEMBER 2011 JULY 2010 OCTOBER 2010 DECEMBER 2010 & 2011 THE SEVEN DEADLY SEAS A series of shows aboard the Tall Ship Gazela, featuring real-life pirates Calico Jack, Mary Read and Anne Bonny, as they contemplate the economic crisis, retirement and the derivatives market. Music: and Photos: Website: LUST Created as a co-production with Plays and Players theater, these shows were based on the story of a cabaret that uses military force to take over an established theater venue. Music: LOOKING PRETTY & SAYING CUTE THINGS Written by Anna Frangiosa with original music written by Peter Gaffney and arranged by Chris Aschman, Looking Pretty follows the obscenity trials of cabaret legend Mae West. Music: Video: CABARET RED LIGHT S NUTCRACKER Cabaret Red Light's Nutcracker combined the familiar Christmas classic by E.T.A. Hoffmann with Peter Gaffney's 2005 story "The Legend of the Ratman" about a twentysomething face to face with a creature half-rat half-man, the bogeyman of adult life. Music:

19 Photo montage by Peter Gaffney