Community Notebook

Art for the River’s Sake

If Arm-of-the-Sea Theater can be accused of being “behind the times,” it is because the troupe honors a primitive era when theater was not about Broadway, but about oral history that educated the tribe about its past and destiny.
Since 1982, co-founders Patrick Wadden and Marlena Marallo have been operating with the haphazard nature of traveling mountebanks but the conviction of prophets. Arm of the Sea Theater employs puppets to tell the history of man’s ecological follies. The bottom line—the damage is reversible, and we must start now.

Their messages are not the clumsy sloganeering that often hobbles agit-prop theater; Arm-of-the-Sea educates with an open hand. “We’re not always trying to hit people over the head with a sledgehammer politically,” Wadden said. “The first order of business is enchantment; a dream shared together that envisions a better reality, be that personal or political or social or ecological.”

Enchantment radiated from their latest work, the Esopus Creek Puppet Suite, performed August 17th and 18th in Saugerties. (Wadden says they do not produce plays, but “works of the imagination.”) The piece adroitly straddled that territory between art and politics—for retelling the life of the Creek involves the sour story of how a Native-American oasis became a commercial center for European immigrants.

PHOTO BY ELENA GUZMAN

The work, said writer/director/narrator Wadden, was inspired by the eight years that his troupe worked in their Saugerties studio, the shell of an iron mill that once perched mightily on the Creek’s edge. After a grant came through, he brought the concept to the Village of Saugerties Board of Trustees. “They didn’t come up with any money, but [they] were supportive from the get-go.”

Wadden envisioned an annual pageant; a storytelling ritual that would be passed down to subsequent generations. He spent hours reading histories of the Creek and its environs. Its evolution reflected the history of the United States, replete with a can-do enthusiasm that inevitably involved killing Native Americans, stealing their land and befouling the waters in the name of business.
The Esopus Creek Puppet Suite marks a departure in format, Wadden explains. Unlike previous shows, with more traditional narratives, the Puppet Suite is “more of a string of visual poems,” he says.

In 75 minutes of dizzying images, taking us from the beginning of the world to the present, Arm of the Sea traced the life of the Creek and its inhabitants, from one-celled organisms to multi-celled modern corporations. Along the way, the troupe employed puppet styles ranging from the masks of Mexico, to the shadow theater of Indonesia.

“Masks and effigy-kind of figures come from more ancient places; have been used by cultures for tens of thousands of years, so they can evoke something older, something more elemental, more than electronic media can.”

If Wadden and the troupe eschew modernism, they also eschew orderliness. While there is a core group of people, Arm of the Sea offers no pay and relies on volunteers for its presentations, a method that results in missed cues and sluggish pacing. Wadden called the reliance on volunteers “an act of faith,” and genially admitted that “[t]here’s an element of dread to the process.”

But a communal spirit in creating art is far more important than highly-polished work, he adds. “One of the drawbacks to the electric sea we swim is in that so most {in is that so much} of it is created elsewhere. You don’t have the feeling that you can do this too. It’s very expensive and very technical. This type of theater and storytelling can be done on a shoestring, and you can do it yourself with your friends. We wanted to show that art can be homemade; the plumber, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, and the artists are all part of the community, not just the experts living out in the palaces of the TV or film capitals of the country.”

Neither Marallo nor Wadden claim any mentors. He assays the writing and direction, while she creates puppets and scenery. “For better or for worse, we have been inventing it ourselves as we go along. It probably means it has taken us much longer to learn the rudimentary stuff.” But they are savvy enough to recycle; many of the puppets and flats used to tell the Esopus Creek tale figured in previous productions. Local musicians known as the Big Sky Ensemble accented the dramatics with music that moved effortlessly between Native-American sounds and dive-bar jazz, notably including gamelan, a traditional Indonesian percussive music that accompanies shadow puppet theater.

Named for the local estuary of the Hudson, Arm-of-the-Sea sprang from Wadden’s twin passions of theater and ecology. When not performing at arts festivals, the company visits schools or takes part in rallies for causes ranging from the PCB bespoiling of the Hudson to farm worker rights in Albany. Current presentations in repertory include “Rip Van Winkle on the River of Time,” a meditation on the ecological history of the region, and “City That Drinks the Mountain Sky,” an epic explaining the disruption of nature that attended the building of New York City’s water supply system in the Catskills.

In late August, they traveled to a school in the Berkshires for youth in crisis, an annual event that involves students in mounting a production. A residency at Bard College, to commemorate National Estuary Day rounded out September. Beyond that, Wadden wants to create a new cycle of work that illuminates the natural and social history of the Hudson Valley.

He likens the quest of Arm-of-the-Sea Theater to that of the Hudson River painters: they created art in response to the Industrial Revolution, to remind people that a majestic but fragile ecosystem was in danger. Almost two centuries later, the threat, Wadden said, remains all too real.

—Jay Blotcher