The Cruel Circus is the newest play from Trouble Puppet Theater Company. It’s a darkly whimsical work set in the world of a collection of strange circus performers, who are embodied onstage entirely by original puppets. Trouble Puppet never has a shortage of unique and interesting puppets in their works, but this show let them create characters that are interesting and different even by their standards. The misfit circus performers that make up the cast aren't traditionally human-shaped creatures; there's a guy with a unicycle for legs, a living cannonball, and a few animals (among others). Most characters are performed by three puppeteers at once, so the performers have to work together very closely, in both the mental and physical sense. The Cruel Circus is...
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After selling out the cafetorium for last year’s musical (The Wizard of Oz), the kids of Rawson Saunders School for children with dyslexia are moving to a larger venue this year – the Stateside at the Paramount. They’ll be staging the musical Peter Pan, with not just a student cast, but also a student crew. It's the first time the Stateside has partnered with a school; the young actors will get a chance to perform on a real-deal stage while the student tech crew will get to work with the professional staff of the Stateside. Peter Pan stars Surya Garcia-Crow in the title role, Ruth Black as Captain Hook, and Emmett Griffin-Baldwin as Hook's right hand man, Smee. All the ensemble parts (pirates, lost boys, etc) are played by younger students at the...
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