History and Time
History and Time
Chapter Three of The Dinosaur Opera
Work in Progress performed June 2025 at Agitator Artist Collective, Chicago, IL, USA
Writer / Director / Audio Designer, Set Designer, Puppet Designer / Fabricator: Gretchen Hasse
Puppeteer (Dahlia the Dinosaur as Time): Mike Triplitt
Performer / Musician (The Artifact Thief): August Boyne
Performer / Dancer (History): Yue Deng (Moon)
Documentation by Danny Smitherman, EEI Media
Using puppetry, dance, and original music, History and Time is a fairly rollicking examination of how the historical record is created, trying to conceive of the vast difference between the length of recorded history and the age of the planet. The Artifact Thief comes across a pile of possibly valuable ancient objects. As he tries to steal them, he awakens History, a sassy eternal prankster who enjoys feeding precious evidence of ancient civilizations to the prickly and ever famished Time. The Thief knows he is essentially doing the same thing, but this somehow feels different.