Weird Times in Lincoln Park
Rough House Puppet Arts’ House of the Exquisite Corpse has become a bona-fide Chicago theater tradition since 2021, when it began producing its annual autumn shows under the Exquisite Corpse name. Every year in the fall, Rough House focuses their devising process on a theme, creating an immersive walk-through “puppet anthology” perfect for chills and thrills. This year’s theme, Blood and Puppets, directed by Felix Mayes and Corey Smith, weds true arty freakiness with seasonal-appropriate eeriness. Presented in Steppenwolf’s Merle Reskin Garage Theatre, audiences are led through a dark black box space, stopping at six attractions which they view through holes in the walls of the set. The feeling of voyeurism that this presentation style engenders is one of the creepiest elements, particularly in “Blood and Letting”, where the audience is asked to pump the titular blood through tubes throughout the piece.
One of the most appealing elements of House of the Exquisite Corpse is how the show features the many mediums that fall under the puppetry umbrella. There are traditional rod puppets, as seen in “Blood and Miracles”, puppets that blur the lines between costume and puppet like the ones in “Blood and Transformation”, and even shadow puppets, deployed in “Blood and Ruin”. While the show is fairly thematically sparse, seeing the ways that the devisers took the concept of “blood” and ran with it is a testament to their interpretive skills. A highlight is “Blood and Memory”, which combines expressive choreography with a simple mask at the end of a rod puppet and a monologue about the corners of a memory.
Mike Meegan and Joey Meland’s sound design does a lot of heavy lifting for Blood and Puppets, piped through headphones (very high-quality ones, I would like to add!) at each stop. This silent-disco approach is brilliant, adding a “theater of the mind” layer on top of the expressive puppet performances that the audience sees. All of the design elements fit together, and the precision with which the stage management team of Kacey Lindeman, Lenny Fritsch, and Mallory Kimbrell runs the show is impressive.
Thematically, Blood and Puppets is a little sparse, but the innovation and artistry on display more than makes up for it. Chicago is a puppet city, and House of the Exquisite Corpse is an excellent spooky time, chock full of the freakiness that makes the Chicago puppet scene tick.
House of the Exquisite Corpse V: Blood and Puppets runs Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights through November 1st.
