You are invited to a graduation party. Yes, it’s the season and you’ve maybe been to a few, but think about accepting the invite for this one, too, from Victoria and Jacob, Aunt Bertie and Cousin Cygna in honor of their dear Alex — and in celebration of the many forms this thing we call theater can take and the many ways it can delight.
Over the next three weekends, the Boulder-based theater company the Catamounts is bringing its gift for artisanal adventure to Greenwood Village and turning the grounds of the Museum of Outdoor Art into something akin to a sky-box theater. Because the experiential show “Impossible Things” — written by Jessica Austgen, directed by Amanda Berg Wilson, and graced by the imaginative flourishes of installation artist Lonnie Hanzon — unfolds beneath a dusking sky.
Audience members are the guests at the party for the graduating high schooler. When the bespectacled Alex (Mel Schaffer) greets us at the start of the evening, there is a bit of uncertainty in the air. Or, as the grad (pronouns they/them) joked with a kind of aw-shucks charm, “Maybe I should say ‘I’m both melancholy and exhilarated to be graduating.’”
The celebration is the work of Alex’s parents, Victoria (Betty Hart) and Jacob (Mark Collins), aided by Barb (Maggie Tisdale), owner of Touch of Barb! Event Planning, Barb wears a pink-and-orange (it works!) skirt ensemble that resembles that of a flight attendant. She comes off a little high-strung, not the sort of antsy demeanor you’d want during turbulence, but she’s kind and turns out to have quite the agenda for the increasingly flummoxed teen’s night.
Alex’s hippie aunt Bertie (Joan Bruemmer-Holden) attends. And cousin Cygna (Min Kyung “Cecillia” Kim) has flown in from New York, where she’s becoming something of a star. All are there to send the youngster off on their next adventure. While no one proselytizes plastics and there’s no Mrs. Robinson flirting, there are plenty of guests with advice for the graduate.
Family members take turns saluting Alex. When Alex’s very proud, slightly bossy mom hands them the gift of a pocket watch, Alex’s mixed feelings bubble up. “Thanks, Mom. This is … wow,” they say with a pause, “an heirloom and a lot of pressure.”
To add to that sense of weightiness, Alex’s mom, dad, Aunt Bertie and Cygna begin to echo one another: “Time is ticking … time is ticking … time is ticking.” Clocks chime madly and off goes Alex — and as many as four separate “guest” groups — heading deeper into the museum’s invitingly landscaped 2.5-acre sculpture garden.
Looking-glass confidential
By now you have gathered that Alex and “Impossible Things” share DNA with a young girl named Alice and her travels to Wonderland. The looking glass that the graduate and guests pass through is one where the questions pertinent to high schoolers (and often the rest of us, too) hinge on making decisions — even if outcomes aren’t certain — and making the most of time, even when we don’t quite understand all the things time means and demands.
As the Queen will soon tell Alex, “Here you have all the time you need … not all the time you want.”
In “Impossible Things,” Alex’s family members play their whimsical doubles in the world of Alex’s — and our — adventure. In front of a bronze sculpture of the White Rabbit, Alice and the Mad Hatter, Hart is clad in a royal embellishment of Alex’s mom’s chic attire (zany and fetching costumes by Jayne Harnet-Hargrove). The Queen requests the guests address her as “Your Royal Highness,” “Your Majesty,” or “ma’am-pronounced-like-mum.” With precise royal-ME diction, she engages the guests, asking them to play a game (which she’ll no doubt win) and riffing on what a Queen wants, what a Queen needs and what a Queen does (hint: a lot).
Down a path stands a little booth manned by a puppeteer (who looks a lot like Alex’s dad). Back when the party started it was clear Alex’s father — head of a security firm — worried about his kid’s safety out in the wider world. So, of course, his doppelganger, Mr. Grimm, mans a wee theater where stories of adventure become tales of misadventure, and none seem to end well.
It is a family affair, and Aunt Bertie will make her appearance as Mother Goose, inviting guests to sit on the lawn and listen to her string theories. In a colorful caravan tent, a once ugly duckling turned celebrity swan shares her story. If Duckling’s a little vain, she’s earned it.
The Hanzon touch
No matter which group you find yourself traveling the adventure with, it’s unlikely the Cabinet of Curiosities won’t be the night’s centerpiece. Up a tiny berm, the space is the creation of local artist Lonnie Hanzon (of “Camp Christmas” fame). It’s chockful of fairy-tale fodder and nursery-rhyme artifacts, mementos of the natural world and other “impossible things.”
This permanent installation used to be at the museum’s former headquarters, and the show christens its new location. The wonderfully peculiar, obsessively curated Cabinet is striking on its own. (I’d return just to browse each crack and crevice, toy and novelty.) But it is Austgen’s writing and actor Chris Kendall’s embodiment of the melancholy, touchingly humane Collector of the evocative cache that add a profound dimension to the visit. The beverage the Collector offers his guests by way of a parting toast (a special concoction of artistic director Wilson, a darn inventive mixologist) didn’t hurt, either.
In “The Book of (More) Delights,” poet-essayist-mensch Ross Gay riffs on wonder and what René Descartes didn’t get quite right. The French philosopher thought it only came into being when it encountered the new, the novel. But, writes Gay, “most everything is new — or becomes so when we look longer or closer.”
Longer. Closer. Ahh. That’s what the cabinet and Alex’s adventure did for this one audience member. I can’t imagine it not doing something similar for you.
Lisa Kennedy is a freelance writer specializing in film and theater.
IF YOU GO
“Impossible Things”: Written by Jessica Austgen. Directed by Amanda Berg Wilson. Creative direction Lonnie Hanzon. Featuring Joan Bruemmer-Holden, Mark Collins, Betty Hart, Chris Kendall, Min Kyung (Cecillia) Kim, Mel Schaffer, and Maggie Tisdale. At the Museum of Outdoor Art, 6331 S. Fiddler’s Green Circle,Greenwood Village. Through June 16. Tickets at thecatamounts.org.
