Gisèle Vienne / Dennis Cooper / Puppentheater Halle

UPDATE July 6: This piece's World Premiere in July at Theater Halle had to be postponed and will now take place on August 14 at The International Summer Festival in Hamburg!

World Premiere & Co-Production

Overpowering French artist Gisèle Vienne puts on a puppet show for adults – that will take you into ventriloquism’s craziest corners.

Every year, the world’s biggest ventriloquism convention takes place in Vent Haven, Kentucky next to a museum showcasing the dummies of dead ventriloquists. At the convention, the dummies are integrated into daily life, inserting their frequently over-the-top behaviors into normal human conversation. Dennis Cooper, an American master-chronicler of obsession, has written a fictional piece based on documentary material about the convention. Gisèle Vienne now brings it to the stage with members of the legendary avant-garde Puppentheater Halle. Centered on a meeting of nine ventriloquists and their dummies, the event combines show numbers, dialogue between dummies and performers (as well as between the dummies themselves) and »third voices,« performances in which there is no physical medium to carry the ventriloquist’s voice. The disjointed nature of ventriloquism spurs absurd and witty situations, and gives free rein to the subconscious and the bizarre like in earlier synesthetic theater experiences Vienne brought to Kampnagel – most recently at the 2013 Summerfestival THE PYRE with music composed by Duo KTL, whose Stephen O’Malley also performs at the festival as part of the drone band Sunn O))).