Zombie fungi – the identical parasites that wipe out civilization within the sci-fi thriller “The Final of Us” —  are actual; fruit flies grieve; a bunch of 5 cities in 17^th century Italy filed a lawsuit in opposition to native caterpillars for pilfering from the townsfolks’ gardens.

These are among the many scientific and historic information that, blended with tales from Historic Greek mythology and scenes from Basic Greek tragedy, are became a visually splendid song-and-dance puppet extravaganza. “The 4 Lives” is the thirtieth creative manufacturing by Theodora Skipitares, one of many main puppet artists of New York,  whose expertise at sculpture and design merge with a penchant for wide-ranging if generally abstruse erudition and a playful strategy to the avant-garde.

The title and construction of her newest work, we’re advised, is derived from Pythagoras, a Greek thinker who lived greater than 2,500 years in the past and is healthier identified (if not essentially beloved) amongst highschool geometry college students for the Pythagorean Theorem. Pythagoras is alleged to have believed that every of us lives 4 lives: as a mineral, a vegetable, an animal and a human.

Each the classes and their order are considerably altered in “The 4 Lives,” which is split into 4 Acts, every of which will get 20 minutes and a separate stage, to which we’re ushered one after the opposite in several corners of La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theater.

Within the first, the Insect World, a narrator informs us in some element, illustrated with a small shadow theater, how fungi take over the our bodies of ants. Later, we be taught of experiments with fruit flies that demonstrated that, if they’re uncovered to fruit fly carcasses, they apparently get depressed and in any case die a lot ahead of they might in any other case.

 Interspersed with this data, we see large-scale bugs enjoying out the story of “Antigone” in music, which we’re compelled to contemplate as related.

We transfer on to the Human World, which focuses on two tales from mythology in regards to the start of the sexes (there have been initially three.) It encompasses a attractive puppet of a ship with two passengers (one among whom may very well be human) in a roiling sea of (brightly layered) waves. Then there’s a scene with an elaborate sequence of rock-people, and tiny individuals on balls that roll throughout the stage.

It’s on to Plant World that includes Charles Darwin

after which the Mineral World that includes Marie Curie, who found radium and polonium (that are extracted from minerals, the latter of which she named after her native Poland. This segues right into a Cranky-illuminated story of the impact of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe on animal life.

I harbor no bias in opposition to people or minerals (just a little in opposition to bugs) however the twenty minutes I spent in Plant World was by far my favourite. It had essentially the most tuneful of the unique songs composed by Sxip Shirey, and essentially the most elaborate and imaginative of the puppets.

It additionally included the caterpillar trial. It wasn’t clear to me why the trial was in Plant World reasonably than Insect World, however when you hadn’t regarded on the program, you may not have seen which world was which.

The 4 Reside
La MaMa by April 21
Operating time: 80 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $30. College students/seniors: $25
Created, directed and designed by Theodora Skipitares. Music composed by Sxip Shirey.
 Scenic co-design by Donald Eastman; lighting by Frederico Restrepo; costume design by Jan Leslie Harding; puppetry co-direction by Jane Catherine Shaw. The rating is carried out reside by Nathan Respasz, Brittany Harris (cello) and Alexandria Smalls (vocals). 
Brittany Harris – Musician/Narrator
Anthime Miller – Musician/Narrator
Nathan Repasz – Musician/Narrator
Jane Catherine Shaw – Lead Puppeteer/Refrain
Jan Leslie Harding – Narrator/Antigone/Puppeteer
Tulein Hamdan – Puppeteer/Refrain
Alondra Soto Ruiz – Puppeteer/Refrain
Alexandria Joesica Smalls – Narrator/Ismene
Sasa Yung – Puppeteer/Refrain
Kimori Zinnerman – Puppeteer/Refrain

Images by Richard Termine