UnterWasser: Untold

In UnterWasser’s Masterful Untold, Concealed Emotions Cast Illuminating Shadows

An Essay by Jesse Njus

Created and performed by the company’s cofounders, Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti, and Giulia De Canio, UnterWasser’s Untold is an expressionist excavation of the inner lives of three nameless women that unfolds through shadow puppetry coupled with an exceptional naturalistic soundscape. The innovative whimsy of the performance belies its intricate choreography, as the shadows of the puppeteers blend with the diverse array of shadow puppets in a perfectly timed dance that reveals the characters’ veiled emotions. 

The three dramatis personae are first introduced as stationary figures in transparent mini-tableaux constructed from plastic and wire, each of which simulates a stereotypically feminine space—a kitchen, a bathtub, and a bedroom. The female forms are immobile and fastened to the dioramas, but the shadows appear to move and change as the performers shift the light sources and the models in relation to each other (and to the backdrop). Although the women’s daily routines seem unremarkable (washing dishes, taking a bath, sitting on the bed), Untold asks viewers to push past the apparent normalcy of their façades to witness their secret tumult. The play is a beautiful and brief snapshot of the societal networks that ensnare and isolate women, inducing shame and anxiety in those who confront their struggles alone despite the comfort provided by sharing one’s fears with others. The liminal space inhabited by shadows—an absent presence and a metaphor for the subconscious—perfectly illuminates the existential turmoil of the women’s hidden selves.

The company is already onstage when the audience enters, with three large box frames covered in plastic spaced across the playing area . Every cast member enters a box as the lights dim, and a spotlight highlights each box in turn, emphasizing the silhouette of the solitary woman confined within. Music from a violin plays alongside a variety of ambient noises that signify both loneliness and the passage of time—dripping water, echoing footsteps—before the opening scene ends in a blackout. As the lights return, the actors pull the plastic off the boxes and drag one to center stage. This box is crisscrossed with string like a giant cat’s cradle, and the changing brightness of the light alters the texture of the shadows thrown on the white cyclorama that serves as the backdrop. The artists puppet small figures on rods, moving them throughout the twine lattice as the shadows on the cyc reveal multiple silhouettes in the midst of climbing, sitting, and falling, caught in a web of fate from which there is no obvious escape. Some figures are stationary, enmeshed in the filaments and arrested at a single moment. As the shapes become crisper or softer with the intensity of the lighting, the spectators are immersed in the expressionist milieu with the implication that we are all climbing through—or caught within—the matrix of destiny that both surrounds and connects us.

Untold journeys narratively from the mythic to the individual psyche, illustrating UnterWasser’s interest in storytelling that begins on a cosmic scale and slowly zooms in to a global scale, then homes in on a human scale, and finally moves inward to a psychological state. Following the opening scene, Untold’s conceptual focus narrows from the boundless threads of fortune to the features of a cityscape. The cast unfolds a series of transparencies with the outline of a modern skyline, overlaying it with a transparency that has slits like a linear zoetrope and gives the impression of a train running between the skyscrapers whenever the transparency is moved. The rattle and movement of the train continue for a brief moment before the women move to the next large box, pulling out three tableaux. Each model is introduced separately, transitioning into distinct vignettes that investigate the interior worlds of three female figures as they “sink into themselves,” in the creators’ words. Although the strands of the women’s experiences begin separately, the artists stress the importance of demonstrating that the women’s discrete “internal journals” eventually mix, as shadows themselves blend together.

UnterWasser’s unrestrained use of shadows incorporates the silhouettes of the cast, melding them with the shadows of the figural tableaux to visualize the abstract psychological journeys of the three characters. The first diorama represents a woman in a bath; the second depicts a woman standing at a kitchen sink; and the third portrays a woman sitting on her bed with a desk and her cat nearby. After introducing each model, the puppeteers light the kitchen scene, and the audience hears the splash of someone washing dishes, as the shadow tilts and spectators are suddenly looking down into the sink from the perspective of the woman. She dangles her fingers in the water—the shadow of a performer superimposed on the shadow from the tableau—and the viewpoint shifts to a kettle on the stove, with a red light representing its slow heating, until the sharp blast of the whistle signifies that it’s boiling. The realism of the acoustic milieu endows the images with an extraordinarily naturalistic sensibility, while the shadows enable observers to immerse themselves in the environment. Untold’s expressionism places viewers in the mindset of the characters, and without a linear story, the sounds facilitate the onlookers’ experience of the women’s day. The banality of the moment in the kitchen fades as argumentative voices become audible and a red light–infused haze indicates the presence of a fire. A silhouette appears in the fire accompanied by the plop of dripping, before the scene transitions via an overlay to the figure in the bath.

Throughout the piece, the artists move the lights and the objects to alter the directionality, size, and texture of the shadows. The movement of the shadows almost mimics the appearance of a silent film, even though the miniatures themselves are motionless. The silhouettes of the actors frequently overlap with the shadows of the female figures, bringing the vignettes to life in surprising ways. As the dripping continues, a puppeteer uses her profile to show the woman in the bath sliding her head underwater. Another silhouette seems to whirl down the bathtub drain as the scene transitions to the patter of rain and multiple figures that appear to be underwater float past. The third miniature centers on a woman in her bedroom, with the loud tock of a clock ticking just off rhythm as the cat meows. The shadows and transparencies of the third vignette immerse observers in the head of a woman whose fond memories of walking through a library are supplanted by the oppressive image of an enormous book and the opening and closing of an office door as a man’s raised voice—her advisor, stern, unhappy—adds tension to the scene. During the transition another lone silhouette spirals out of control and a cat meows.

In the final section of the play, the profiles of the women appear together, a voice intones “make an effort,” and spectators see the sink, the bathtub, and the bed while hearing footsteps and the jingle of keys in the door. The hostility and stress of the tableaux—the fire, the drowning, the unraveling of a beloved safe space—are bookended by the women’s choices to leave the seclusion of their individual rooms where their emotions are overwhelming. An actor “walks” with her feet in the air, outlined against an image of a city sidewalk moving past. A spinning cylinder projects a landscape with green grass and a blue sky on the cyc, and a black outline informs viewers that the passing landscape is being seen from a train window. One performer sits so that her profile appears in the frame, looking out at the scenery passing by. She is joined by the two other women, and after a moment the women remove the window frame, freeing themselves. They look around the open landscape and join together laughing as the lights slowly fade to black. 

Untold is an expressionist exploration of the shrouded life of women, externalizing an internal world of apprehension, struggle, and loneliness, as well as pleasure and friendship. The use of frozen tableaux hints at the degree to which women can feel stuck and unmoving, while the shifting shadows and light suggest that such feelings are a matter of perspective. Most importantly, the use of shadows is intimate, as though onlookers are seeing the world that persists inside the women’s minds. The joy at the play’s end exists not only because the women are united—nothing diminishes isolation like being with friends—but also because the actors quite literally remove the frame that represents the train window, opening the women’s world. The freedom of the women’s shadows—released into the outside world with no boundaries—implies that social connection bestows liberty.

The goal of expressionism is to implicate the audience in the feelings of the characters, and Untold’s shadows and soundscape re-create the worlds that many people have within their heads—the thoughts that refuse to go away, the noises and voices that continue even after the anxiety-inducing moments have passed. The play’s aural environment is remarkable—the sounds seem to be made by the shadow world. In fact, the UnterWasser collaborators disclosed during the Ellen Van Volkenburg Symposium that the audio cues are on a single continuous track, which requires the performers to follow the soundscape as though they are dancers. Yet the puppetry is equally crucial to their storytelling because the goal of the performance is to highlight the inner shadow world of the psyche. Importantly, the three rooms could be inhabited by anyone. Spectators should be able to insert themselves into any of the three stories—something that shadows encourage because they provide a tabula rasa that observers can fill with themselves.