urban excavations

Small Acts of Daring Invention
Featuring Amanda Glynn Card, Simon Catillon, Takemi Kitamura, Ariel Lauryn, Andrew Murdock, and Tracy Weller
Mason Holdings Theatre | HERE Sublet Series
May 1, 2024 – June 1, 2024
production site

As a child, i was both mesmerized and haunted by the black and white photos and the dark story of abandonment and found family in Dare Wright’s book The Lonely Doll. Whether this work that deals with death and abuse and solitude is a children’s book is a matter of debate for some but not for me. In the story illustrated in this book about a doll, Mr. Bear and Little Bear, an old New York apartment, and scenes in and around Manhattan, we follow a lonely doll (we’re never told where her parents or caretakers were or what happened to them), her dreams of companions, the bears who come to visit, and how they all learn to be a family together.

Several biographical treatments of Dare Wright (1914-2001), the Canadian–American author of this eerie powerful book, model, and photographer, have been published. Details from her own lonely life evoke shades of Edie Beale and Grey Gardens without the physical decay, and are drawn upon, along with dolls and stuffed bears and other toys, in the dark and delightful musing Small Acts of Daring Invention presented by Mason Holdings Theatre.

In this Mason Holdings Theatre production, creator and primary human character, Tracy Weller, portrays a mute version of Dare Wright, or so I assumed as this character is not named for us in the course of the show. This is a choreographed piece of puppetry, scenic maneuvering, and physical movement by Weller and a community of human puppeteers and their puppet creatures resident in the small and carefully illuminated basement space at HERE.

The melancholy musings of Small Acts of Daring Invention, as with the book that inspired it all, are contemplations of memory and loss and inspire wonder. I do question whether an audience member unfamiliar with the source materials or facts of the author’s life would easily enter the magic world Weller has crafted with her design collaborators (set components by Christopher and Justin Swader, costumes by Natalie Loveland, subterranean sun-through-dusty-windows lighting by Daisy Long, lighting, and puppet design collaborators at Simple Mischief Studios). Regardless, the themes resonate, as if this were a dance production.

Named in the script but not in the production credits on line, the Simple Mischief Studio puppeteers are “Shepherds of Memory” who manipulate objects including a Lonely Doll doppelgänger, bears, and other creatures. These guides urge the unnamed woman played by Weller to unpack the objects and perhaps to explore her past. She is also occasionally moved as if a puppet herself by the puppeteers. Her movements, and projections on cloth, on walls, on objects, are a memory play commenting upon and presenting shards of meaning to us.

This a work of detailed storytelling, crafted as a dark and eerie mood by director Kristjan Thor and the design team. The set’s color palette, the projection design by Yana Biryukova, props designed and assembled by Patricia Marjorie, and the exquisitely subtle and nuanced lighting by Daisy Long feel black and white, not of the real world yet inspired by it.

This is a work that envelops you, welcomes you in and embraces you, while inspiring some measure of awe and even more unease. A masterwork of assembled components that may or may not congeal, depending upon the viewer’s patience with elliptical and elusive story telling. We are never lied to, never cheated, offered no false notes, yet each audience member may need to assemble their own discordant melody.

© Martha Wade Steketee (May 9, 2024)

Playwright | Tracy Weller
Director | Kristjan Thor
Set Design | Christopher and Justin Swader
Costume Design | Natalie Loveland
Lighting Design | Daisy Long
Projection | Yana Biryukova