![]() ![]() This production of Avanti Da Vinci also features two new performers, Evan Phillips and Kristin Storla. I’m privileged to have been in their company all these years.” To go to Europe with this show was the most incredible adventure with some of the best artists in this field. “My reason for moving to Atlanta was to puppeteer here under Jon. “Being asked to join the cast in 2004 was a dream come true,” she said. Maxwell is another cast member excited to return. Ludwig, who received the Suzi Bass Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022, has inspired generations of puppeteers with his work. We were gonna make this, no matter what.” Ludwig continued, “There was no one standing there with a warning sign, not that we would’ve paid any attention. Now, coming back to it, I look at it in wonder, like ‘How did we do this? There’s so much in the show.’ There was no one who could tell us what we were doing was so big.” “We just didn’t know any better and built something that was just massive, like we just kept going and going, doing what felt right. “I don’t think we understood when we first did it,” he said. And he was reminded that the show is huge. Because it had been carefully packed in shipping containers after two separate Atlanta stagings and a festival performance in Slovakia, Hines said a lot of the pieces were in good condition. “It’s like opening up an old journal and looking at something you wrote 17 years ago, remembering who you were back then and all the things you were thinking.”Įven the sets and puppets used during the original productions have been pulled from the Center’s warehouse for use. “Putting this back up has really been like time travel,” Hines said. Da Vinci scans Venice with his telescope, seeing if Renaissance Man needs to spring to action. Puppet and set builders who collaborated on the first productions have returned to prepare the show. Of the five original cast members, four have returned: Ludwig, Hines, Reay Maxwell and Michael Haverty. ![]() “Of course, we’re appropriating it and twisting it for our means.”įor the creators, revisiting the material has been like a family reunion. “I think people may be surprised at how much of the wit comes dire ctly from Da Vinci,” Hines said, holding up a large volume of Da Vinci’s collected works. I can tell which way the wind blows and keep track of you.’” One farts, and the other guy says ‘I know you’re fond of me. “There’s a joke where the two henchmen are out in the garden waiting to get Mona Lisa. “He would appreciate the fart humor because he wrote the fart jokes in the show,” Ludwig said. Much of the humor comes from the artist’s own notebooks. “But it’s still just silly, and we’re having a really good time being the goofballs we are.”ĭa Vinci himself would approve, Ludwig said. “It is an adult show, but it’s only an adult show because the ideas are a little more complicated and the story’s a little darker than what we can do for kids,” he said. A winged Da Vinci helps Mona Lisa escape from danger. The show makes you feel like a kid again, Hines said. It’s a chance to show off what we can do in terms of spectacle and melodrama.” ![]() “It’s sort of just fluff, in a way,” Ludwig said. The show, intended for ages 16 and older, is an absolute blast. It’s farce and wild storytelling, intended to appeal to fans of comics, Da Vinci and puppetry. In the plot, Da Vinci confronts the evil, incestuous Borgia family with his contraptions, fighting crime in Venice as “Renaissance Man” while saving local damsel Mona Lisa from danger. There is a helicopter-like vehicle, glider wings and The Vitruvian Man used in a surprising way. The show that emerged combined elements of the 1960s Batman sitcom starring Adam West with Da Vinci’s own sketches and notes. And I guess once we started digging into the germ of an idea, we realized there was a lot of puppet show in this material.” “It was a really fun thing to research and explore. “He said one day, ‘If Da Vinci’s machines worked, he’d be like Batman.’ That intrigued us because, in studying Da Vinci’s life, he was kind of like a masked hero.” “Basically, the idea came from Jason,” Ludwig recalled. Ludwig, the artistic director for the Center, said the suggestion for the zany show began with Hines. The production, written and directed by Jon Ludwig and Jason Hines, runs until June 25. These and other strange noises are expected to echo across the sky at the Center for Puppetry Arts this month now that Avanti Da Vinci, the puppet show that imagines artist Leonardo Da Vinci as a caped crusader superhero, will be restaged for the first time in 17 years. ![]()
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