Mortal City

Created in collaboration with D. Blake Love and Seth Eberle

We all live in the Mortal City. Much of our life, it is an aching, chilled, stiff, ill-protected, fragile, complicated place. We fight off the chill and aches as best we can. We brave ice storms to go on blind dates and eat spaghetti while wrapped in blankets inside the body of the city. We use tools to compensate and create a spark, find warmth, keep warm. Puppets are tools we use, simple tools that mirror us creating the spark. Cities are elaborate tool sets in which we all go about trying to strike a spark, keep the spark alive, and pay our rent. Here we are in a room in the middle of this city.

Available for booking and touring: please send a message with details via the contact form.

Inspired by singer-songwriter Dar William’s song of the same title, Mortal City uses music and visual imagery to puppeteer a poem of a city. Set during an ice storm at night, Mortal City explores creating and finding the warm pulse of the city in its layered soundscape, fragile infrastructure, simple light, and periwinkle winter skies. Mortal City was developed through Puppet Lab, In the Heart of the Beast’s experimental puppetry program for emerging artists.