2024 Festival Archive: Wakka Wakka
Wakka Wakka: Animal R.I.O.T.
January 19-23, 2024
Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theatere
Presented by Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival
With special support from: The Ferdi Foundation, Manaaki Foundation, Cheryl Lynn Bruce & Kerry James Marshall. With additional support from Cheryl Henson
Scholarship and Resources
The Fox Screams (But Do We Listen?):
Bio-Eccentric Guerilla Theater in Wakka Wakka’s Riotous and Righteous Animal R.I.O.T.
An Essay by Jesse Njus
Wakka Wakka’s Animal R.I.O.T.—“a guerilla-style, eco-manifesto”—is a stunning solo performance that veers from stand-up comedy to Theatre of Cruelty while maintaining a tonally cohesive critique of anthropocentrism, the conviction that Homo sapiens are intrinsically superior to all other components of the cosmos. Presented as a meeting of the eco-activist collective Animal R.I.O.T., the play takes place on the lawn of the group’s leader, The Fantastic Mr. Fox (“The real one!” Mr. Fox proudly announces). At the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival (CIPTF), Mr. Fox’s home was located in Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s 1700 Theatre, an intimate black box with an informal cabaret arrangement of chairs clustered around small tables. The modest nature of the space enables spectators, who are placed on two sides of Mr. Fox’s yard, to feel as though they are seated on his patio. Enhancing the atmosphere of a group meeting are the camper, cooler, and microphones that are spread around the grass waiting for Animal R.I.O.T. supporters to have a beer and speak (or yell) into the mics. The quirkiness of the production’s premise belies the profound ideology that sustains both the play and Wakka Wakka’s real investment in performance-based environmental activism, which includes an Animal R.I.O.T. website, Umwelt workshops, and an Animal R.I.O.T. manifesto.
As the founder of Animal R.I.O.T., Mr. Fox opens the performance by welcoming the audience and warning them that the name means “‘Animal Resurgence In Our Time!’ Because if it doesn’t happen in our time, then we are done for, finito, kaputt, game over!” Portrayed by Kirjan Waage wearing a ski-style mask in the shape and color of a red-and-white fox, Mr. Fox represents the heart of Animal R.I.O.T., “an anthropomorphic organization with a bio-eccentric worldview” as the website proclaims. Fittingly, Mr. Fox is an anthropomorphic fox (portrayed by a human in a mask), but he is also a bio-eccentric human hiding anonymously behind an animal mask for purposes of eco-activism in an intriguing parallel to the art activism of groups like the Guerilla Girls.
The members of Animal R.I.O.T. who attend the meeting include not only Mr. Fox but Dr. Yellowfish, Walrus, Elephant, Turtle, Koala, and Jellyfish, all played by Waage cycling through a series of ski-style masks, each of which is a different color and represents a different animal. The back of each mask is sewn to the front of the next mask, and Waage pulls each one over his head in succession as the play continues. Each character speaks with a distinctive accent and employs unique mannerisms, allowing them to rejoin the discussion even when Waage is no longer wearing their mask; the characters simply reappear verbally and physically as Waage puppeteers the appropriate mask, now hanging down in front of him.
The physicality of Waage’s performance is a reminder that the 1922 Eccentric Manifesto, which defined an extreme form of physical theater, serves as an inspiration for both the production and the Animal R.I.O.T. “Bioeccentrism Manifesto” (linked to above). Despite the different approaches that Animal R.I.O.T.’s adherents take towards environmental engagement, they are all searching for ways to enable (or force) humans to adopt a bio-(ec)centric perspective. Dr. Yellowfish holds workshops to teach humans about the Umwelt; Turtle is a bioengineer attempting to use gene splicing to create regenerative (perhaps immortal) animals; and Elephant considers killing poachers. Unfortunately, the group cannot agree on a single course of action, only on the desperate urgency of their cause.
More than a theatrical event, Animal R.I.O.T. is a performative eco-manifesto led by Mr. Fox and—through him—by Kirjan Waage, who is one of the company’s two main writers and directors, as well as the puppet designer. Wakka Wakka’s real-world activities are framed within the supposedly fictional narrative of the play when Dr. Yellowfish screens a video from one of his Umwelt workshops. These workshops offer humans the opportunity to experience the world from another animal’s perspective, and the video is an example of a real workshop in which participants attempt to crawl from the hatching ground of baby sea turtles into the ocean—an almost unfathomable distance from the perspective of a baby turtle. The videos in Animal R.I.O.T. remind viewers that the fantastical portions of the story are a veneer masking the dire reality of climate devastation, just as the characters themselves are represented by fanciful masks.
While Animal R.I.O.T. is framed by the calming presence of Mr. Fox and the humor of Dr. Yellowfish (who is attempting to hone his stand-up comedy routine), there are also several moments of shocking violence. As Antonin Artaud argues in The Theatre and Its Double when putting forward his manifesto for the Theatre of Cruelty, the goal of such a theater is to shock the audience into action and to awaken the sleeping masses. The extensive mask work, coupled with the camerawork from a handheld, live-streaming video and the puppeteering of a small mouse and a (human) stuffed doll, makes Animal R.I.O.T. a deeply engaging and immersive performance, but the play has no intention of allowing spectators to remain complacent. If human beings cannot change, there may be no future. In the end, Mr. Fox despairs and leaves his DNA to the Turtle, clearly having decided that although bioengineering is dangerous and possibly unethical, it is the best option for survival in the event of an environmental catastrophe. While the ending may seem hopeful—life ultimately finds a way—observers have seen enough of the Turtle to know that Mr. Fox’s decision may have unforeseen (and possibly ill-fated) results.
Animal R.I.O.T. is the first installment in Wakka Wakka’s Animalia Trilogy, which also includes The Immortal Jellyfish Girl and Dead as a Dodo (which premiered at the CIPTF in January 2024). The performance style of each play is unique, but the plays are nonetheless philosophically united through their cautionary depictions of the consequences of an extreme anthropocentric worldview that humanity seems unable to alter. As the first play in the trilogy, Animal R.I.O.T. articulates the stakes for the whole series and introduces characters who will continue to reappear in various guises, particularly Mr. Fox (the trilogy’s Everybeing, who appears in all three plays) and the Turtle, whose bioengineering forces a reckoning in the two later plays. Even in its frantic struggle to preserve nature, Animal R.I.O.T. illuminates the perils of extreme methods. Saving ourselves and our planet is important, but a truly bio-(ec)centric perspective means recognizing that we are neither the only—nor the most important—feature of the universe.
Festival Performances
About the Performance
January 19-23, 2024
Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theater
1650 N. Halsted St.
World Premiere of Wakka Wakka’s Animalia Trilogy
Animal R.I.O.T (Animal Resurgence In Our Time) is an anonymous anthropomorphic organization, founded by the Fantastic Mr. Fox (the non-fictional one). Can you believe it? The human species will come together and save all animals from extinction (including ourselves)! Become a real life masked avenger answering the CALL of the WILD and join the BIO-ECCENTRIC PACIFIST FIGHT CLUB! Join us or die out!
Reviews + Interviews
ChiIL Live Shows On Our Radar: Dead as a Dodo, by Bonnie Kenaz-Mara in ChilL Mama
The best things we saw at the 6th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, by Kimzyn Campbell, Irene Hsiao and Kerry Reid in the Chicago Reader