“Life in Five Seasons” was a durational big-head puppet show about the cycle of failure and success that governs our human experience of growth and aging. The performance used cardboard bling, big-head masks, and contemporary-baroque costumes to blur gender, race, and species towards androgeneous archetypes that performed as puppets do—under the constant manipulation of the puppeteer (me) whose theatrical role commented on power and questioned free will in society.

The piece was staged in a former classroom by a rotating cast of seventeen volunteer performers with minimal rehearsal and varying degrees of performance experience. It unfolded over the course of six hours at Play/Ground immersive art festival in Medina, NY.

The scenes were structured around five phases of life and five seasons:

SCENE 1: Spring / Conception-Birth-Infancy / Garden of Eden / Orgy

SCENE 2: Summer / Childhood / Innocence / Play / Power / Bullying / Fantasy / Emulation / Attention-Approval Seeking / Homework / Pied Piper

SCENE 3: Fall / Adolescence / Broody / Melodramatic / War / Vanity / Transition / Courtship / Identity / Fantasy

SCENE 4: Finter / Early-Middle Adulthood / Working Times / Assembly Line / Productivity / Repetition / Affairs / Efficiency / Purpose / Anti-Climactic / Mundane / Powerful / Sexy

SCENE 5: Winter / Adulthood-Old Age-Death / Peace / Love / Wise / Kind / Amnesia / Responsible / Grumpy / Painful / Broken / Nostalgia / Reality

The formula for the play was such that everything was content, including the “backstage” negotiations between director, audience, performer, character, and props. The exposed gears of a (recycle-bin-sourced) cardboard magic world aimed to enchant the audience by way of celebrating the ephemeral, the disposable, and the flimsy.