If you think a puppet show is bound to be childish, predictable, or overly simplistic, then you’ll be in for a serious shock when Wakka Wakka’s “Dead as a Dodo” bursts to unexpected life at Oklahoma Contemporary October 23rd through the 25th..
The newest boundary-pushing and expectation-inverting offering from award-winning NYC-based Wakka Wakka Productions, “Dead as a Dodo” blends video projection, creative stage design, and groundbreaking live puppetry into a fantastical tale of skeletal friends navigating the darkness and evolving mystery of the afterlife.
“I first saw it, really, on a whim in New York and I really didn’t know what I’d gotten into,” said Jackson Gifford, Artistic Director of OKC’s Southern Plains Productions, who are bringing Wakka Wakka’s national tour of the show to Oklahoma Contemporary and coordinating its rapid, three-day run.
“And I kid you not, it was probably the most fabulous 80 minutes of my life, honestly,” Gifford told Free Press. “We were in a theater of primarily adults – and a really established, discerning kind of theatre audience – and when I started getting choked up, I looked around and everyone around me was in tears.”
If it’s still tough to believe that a puppet show can elicit that level of awe and emotion, then it’s only because you’ve never seen a Wakka Wakka show before, like “The Immortal Jellyfish Girl,” which came through OKC early last year for a brief run presented by Theatre Crude.
These are puppets, yes, but they’re not stiff, goofy marionettes whacking one another and yelling.
Wakka Wakka’s puppets are deeply expressive, heavily articulated, and performed with human movement and human emotion by real people right on stage, covered head-to-toe in “blackout” costumes that allow them to disappear into the scenery as they guide their characters through their adventures.
“I’ve been describing it, in a way, like a Pixar film brought to life on stage,” Gifford said. “It’s a visual feast for the eyes, and there’s original sound design and original songs and it’s basically a musical as well, with the puppets singing, which is crazy. It’s just a really meaningful, moving piece of theatre that speaks to generations, no matter what age.”
Though the look seems dark and a more than a little “Gothic,” the show is designed for ages 7 and up, and the tone of “Dead as a Dodo” is one of deathly fun and morbid fascination, closer to the works of Tim Burton than Ingmar Bergman.
It’s the story of a skeleton boy and his best friend, a skeletal dodo bird, that spend their time searching the underworld for fresh bones to replenish their own deteriorating skeleton “bodies,” only to be left dumbstruck when the dodo spontaneously sprouts new feathers.
Thus begins a wild adventure that nudges them back toward a mysterious land of Earthly life that they don’t quite understand, an adventure that sees action, comedy, chases, transformations, flight, and even a skeleton shredding on an all-bone electric guitar.
As you might expect, it’s quite an undertaking, and one that the Southern Plains team has had to work hard to incorporate into Contemporary’s Te Ata Theatre.
“What’s crazy is that they’re playing mostly to large theaters on this tour, like houses the size of the Thelma Gaylord Theater at the Civic Center,” Gifford said. “But I just thought it would be super awesome close up and intimate, the way I first saw it in a small black box in New York. So we’re throwing the kitchen sink at it to make it work in this really small venue with this real intimacy so close to the action.”
So while it took a little convincing by Gifford – and a little serendipitous timing in the tour schedule – to get the Wakka Wakka team to bring the show to Contemporary, it means OKC audiences will get to experience this unique production the same way NYC theatergoers did when it premiered.
“We get a lot of Broadway tours at the Civic Center, and a lot of big commercial theater comes through OKC, but we don’t often get the chance to see such critically acclaimed off-Broadway theater in Oklahoma, straight from New York, you know?” Gifford said. “This is the original production. It hasn’t been altered. It’s the same show and same team that’s been in France and South Korea and El Paso and Louisville, and now it’ll be here in Oklahoma, which is so exciting.”
Wakka Wakka’s “Dead as a Dodo” runs in four performances at Oklahoma Contemporary’s Te Ata Theatre October 23rd through October 25th, presented by Southern Plains Productions.
For more, visit southernplainsproductions.org, wakkawakka.org, and oklahomacontemporary.org.
Brett Fieldcamp is our Arts and Entertainment Editor. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for 15+ years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
