Animate

We were lucky enough to get tickets to the closing performance of Animate, Jack Reuler's swan song for Mixed Blood, though done at Como Zoo. We went, although live theater is tricky right now and I generally don't like zoos. Confused yet?

Because that's all part of it.

Animate starts with a helicopter landing and a guy with a cooler full of pangolin sperm jumping out of it to deliver to the zoo before the female ends estrus (ok, to be honest, this scene isn't crucial. But it's damn cool!). The production logistics are enormous.

You are then part of a color coded group who sees various scenes spread throughout the zoo, in various animal areas, where often the actors, good as they are, are upstaged by the zoo's residents. Each scene brings up a moral or ethical issue about zoos (and zoo management), funding, racism, generational differences, love, politics, legacy, and more. None of it is too deep (these are fairly short scenes), but it's enough to at least bring up the idea.

In the end, you all meet in the amphitheater and the play takes certain directions based on how the audience votes.

We ran into our friends Greg and Teresa there (they were even in our group!), and in discussing the show afterwards, agreed this was a great case of "Art always does its job." It felt incredible to see great actors doing what they do best, mainly live (though there were some video screens in there). Though the way the issues were tackled was necessarily simplistic, it still got us thinking, and discussing. I'm still thinking over how Beatrix's take on several of the issues was very different from mine, and she made good arguments for her point of view. 

And it feels really good to write about theatre too!