Elephant
(2013) Created by the Museum of Everyday Life’s Chief Operating Philosopher, Clare Dolan. Alternating scenes between the streets of Shanghai, a savannah in Africa, and her parents’ modest Chicago bungalow, Dolan weaves the stories of these diverse locations into a brief, humorous, and ethereal meditation on her mother’s last few days on earth. Unfolding in a traditional toy theater tabletop proscenium, the scenes play with extremes of scale, light, and color accompanied by a live soundscape played by a solo musician on toy piano, trombone, and bells.
from a review of Elephant by Emma Weisman in Hyperallergic: http://hyperallergic.com/74421/politicizing-puppets-at-st-anns/
“Elephant has a narrative woven from Dolan’s personal experiences in Shanghai, her changing relationship with her mother in the last weeks of a mentally debilitating illness, and actual facts about elephants. Specifically, the piece explores the nature of memory: in Shanghai entire neighborhoods have been razed to make way for more modern buildings, which in turn are torn down in favor of fake historical buildings for tourists; tribes of elephants mourn over the dead body of a companion and then return much later to the same place to actually cradle the bones with their trunks; a mother ceases to recognize her own daughter. I was utterly charmed and transported by the work…”