2024 Festival Archive: Alex and Olmsted

Alex and Olmsted: MAROONED! A Space Comedy

January 22-24, 2024

Chopin Theatre (mainstage)

Presented by Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival

UNIMA-USA Citation of Excellence in the Art of Puppetry

Scholarship and Resources

Marooned!: Stranded in the Space Between

An Essay by Ana Díaz Barriga

Alex Vernon and Sarah Olmsted’s hands emerged from behind black curtains to portray the history of life on Earth. In a scene reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey, they told the story of natural evolution from cells to fish to dinosaurs, and then to humans who reproduced and took over the planet. This history became the history of human achievements, culminating in the launch of an astronaut into space. With this movie-like montage set to tracks from the Voyager Golden Record, Alex & Olmsted introduced the audience of the Chopin Theater to Marooned!: A Space Comedy on January 22. Rapidly, this tale of success became one of tragedy when the Astronaut crashed into an unknown planet. Wearing a full space suit, including a helmet that concealed her face, performer Olmsted demonstrated the altered rules of gravity governing this new world as her glove floated away when she put it down on the ground and her speed was compromised, making her unable to retrieve it. Suddenly she was stranded. 

Marooned! was inspired by Alex & Olmsted’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and the feelings of isolation and loneliness that permeated those days (Baciocco, 2023). Marooned! combines shadow puppetry, projections of live-streamed hand puppets, and direct-manipulation puppets to tell the Astronaut’s story. As she looks through papers to try to figure out how to fix her spaceship, we see a picture of her and her child who waits at home. We get a sense of the urgency of the situation through an oxygen indicator that is slowly depleting, and we understand that the only way she can escape this uncharted planet is to reach out and ask for help. The music chosen for the performance adds to the sense of loneliness and a desire for connection: The Voyager Golden Record included songs sent to space in 1977 in an attempt to communicate with intelligent alien species (Jiang, et al., 2023: 1). 

Watching the Astronaut’s attempts to breach the limits of isolation, we come to understand the important role that others play in seeing and validating who we are. Assembling a machine that functions as a telephone, the Astronaut contacts various alien creatures, all of whom seem unable to empathize with her plight or offer help. But what functioned as a telephone comes to life as an autonomous task assistant (ATA), a cute little robot that is able to satisfy the Astronaut’s emotional needs. Manipulated by Vernon, the ATA showcases behaviors like those of a domestic animal: It scratches itself, leans into the pets that the Astronaut provides, and is generally excited to hang out with its human companion. An encounter with a monster that attempts to eat the ATA allows the Astronaut to display her humanity; her care for this creature and desire to rescue it are as strong as her desire to be rescued herself. When they reach higher ground, the Astronaut attempts to make another call that is answered by an automated system of the kind we all know too well. Placed on a waiting queue, the Astronaut’s oxygen supply further diminishes. The voice that repeats, “Your call is important to us, please hold,” might be human, but it strongly demonstrates the disconnect that was prevalent during the height of the pandemic. Through the ATA and the call-waiting voice, Alex & Olmsted portray the capacity that technology has to bring us together and to keep us apart. 

Ultimately through this tale of loneliness, Alex & Olmsted explore what it means to be human. As the Astronaut loses hope, she falls into an “almost void” where she sees visions of her child, her spaceship, her glove, and a marionette version of herself. Suddenly, “The Vapor” arrives. The voices of the entire audience working in unison make up The Vapor. Speaking from a script provided to us on the projection screen, The Vapor tells the Astronaut to be brave and jump into a black hole. In the darkness, she encounters the Cosmic Peanut. This blue, peanut-like hand puppet has the voice and speech of a toddler. The interaction with the Cosmic Peanut fails because the Astronaut cannot speak through her helmet. It reflects the failure to communicate inherent in messages like the Golden Record, where our inability to imagine an alien creature beyond human logic limits how we can conceive of communication. But these failures speak to the underlying motivation these attempts seem to hold: “to establish an enduring image of humanity’s essence, potential, and achievements” (Jiang, et. al., 2023: 2). The desire to find and communicate with the unknown is really, at its heart, about finding and naming ourselves. Finally, the Peanut says farewell and sends the Astronaut on her way into a black hole.

Spectators can connect with the Astronaut’s feelings of separation and with the frustration of speaking to creatures who fail to understand human needs, but Alex & Olmsted use their medium to literally breach the bubble of isolation. “Welcome home,” the audience exclaims in unison as the Astronaut lands on Earth. Prompted again through the screen, the spectators are now identified as earthlings. Alex & Olmsted state that they integrate audience participation in many of their shows to tap into the liveness of theater and the inherent connection that emerges from people who watch a performance together (Baciocco, 2023). The Astronaut stands up and realizes gravity is back to normal. She is an earthling, too: one of us. For the first time in the show, she removes her helmet, and we see a fellow human. The earthlings celebrate with the Astronaut; the audience celebrates with the performers. The performance moves us beyond isolation by reminding us that, whether earthlings or Astronaut, we all shared the same space.

Works Cited

Baciocco, G. (2023) Alex & Olmsted (Milo the Magnificent, Marooned! A Space Comedy). Under the Puppet [podcast]. Available at: https://saturdaymorningmedia.com/2023/01/utp-79/ . Accessed July 5, 2024. 

Jiang, J.H., et al. (2023) Message in a Bottle—an update to the Golden Record: 1. Objectives and key content of the message. Earth and Space Science, 10 (12), e2023EA003042.

Festival Performances

About the Performance

January 22-24, 2024
The Chopin Theatre (mainstage)
1543 W. Division St.

An astronaut traveling 87,000 light years into space crash-lands on an uncharted planet, where she must resort to emergency measures to seek rescue. From the award-winning team Alex & Olmsted, elegant puppetry design meets joyful, meaningful storytelling. Live performance, shadow puppetry and marionettes shine to delightful effect. This is puppetry life support of the best kind – at just the right moment.

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Past Performances and Further Reading

Past Reviews/Articles