2013-521 Arts - Rob Hamilton for Fall 2013 Art Grant Agreement $1,000

Browse Search

The Misdirection of Henry Walker: a Tragedy for Constructed Actors Proposed Project: The Misdirection of Henry Walker a Tragedy for Constructed Actors is an adaptation by Rob Hamilton of Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician by Daniel Wallace,designed and written for puppets, i.e. constructed actors. It is scheduled to be presented by the Performance Studies Unit within the UNC Department of Communication Studies,opening on March 27th,2014 at Swain Hall. Synopsis:It is 1954,somewhere in the backroads of the American South. Henry Walker performs as "The Negro Magician"in a worn-at-the-edges traveling sideshow. On Halloween,he humiliates a knife-wielding racist and in retaliation is beaten horribly. The story then takes us back and forth through Henry's life to reveal how he arrived at this ultimately fatal encounter. His fellow sideshow performers—the"Strongest Man in the Entire World,"the"Ossified Girl,"and others—embrace him as family,but Henry is incapable of accepting their love and support because he is haunted by the disappearance of his sister Hannah,whom he believes was stolen by the Devil when they were children. He has dedicated his life—even sacrificing his white privilege by transforming himself into a Negro —to finding and vanquishing Satan and thereby achieve vengeance as well as absolution for what he thinks was his contribution to her abduction. In the end,however,we realize that Henry's life—and death—was little more than a cascading series of mistaken assumptions and false perceptions,made all the more tragic by capricious happenstance. The script has been in development since June,2011,and was presented to extremely positive response this past March in public readings. It retains Wallace's zest for eccentric characters and poetic use of time and space while reinforcing his magic realism visually through its use of constructed actors in a deeply evocative medium. Given the varied and complex iterations of the characters in the show—Henry alone appears as a white child,a black child,a black teenager,a young white man,an older white man in blackface,and the same older man after the beating;a series that could not be accomplished onstage without a half- dozen human actors—the adaptation has been designed from the very beginning for puppets. To best present the narrative,the production technology intends to augment traditional overhead- projector shadow puppetry with digital camera/projection systems in order to create a new type of performance methodology;the equivalent of stop-action animation performed live. Adding the capability to show surface detail/design—rather than be limited to just silhouette—will expand the expressive range of the puppet and puppeteer alike. This approach will also contribute greatly to the design concept of the show,rooted in German Expressionism as illustrated through its use of woodcut,chiaroscuro,and distorted perspective in creating a unique visual vocabulary. In order to accommodate the restrictions of time and space,the text of the adaptation will be recorded locally(with a cast made up of both professionals and students)far enough ahead of the rehearsal process as to permit the puppeteers to work with the tracks from the first day,so the syncing of action to dialogue will be integral.