Children's theater: Magic and mundane

Antonio Catalano creates fantastic worlds with discarded everyday objects in ‘Tic Tac Tic Tac.’

By BARRY DAVIS
Magic and Mundane (photo credit: Courtesy)
Magic and Mundane
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Antonio Catalano makes a point of wearing his heart on his highly professional sleeve.
The 61-year-old Italian theater performer, who will present his Tic Tac Tic Tac work at International Festival of Puppet Theater Jerusalem on Monday and Tuesday (at the Train Theater at 4 and 5:30 p.m. both days), says he does his best to communicate with his young audiences in a suitable way but that it is not always easy to achieve that in middle age.
“We have an adult conception of emotion, but children live in a total and mysterious way,” he observes.
Tic Tac Tic Tac is a largely silent show, which Catalano describes as “made of micro-narrations, little actions, delicate and whispered movements.”
The work’s “cast” includes a bunch of weird and wonderful-looking clocks that maintain a dialogue about the passing of time and keeping up with it. The set is simple, and Catalano says that is a matter of design and going with the junior flow.
“I didn’t set out to keep the props and design simple because of the young age of the audience; young people drove me toward simplicity,” he notes, adding that there is universal value to be had from that approach. “The search for simplicity joins all the arts and all ages.”
The Tic Tac Tic Tac stage design features houses made of natural materials, such as branches, leaves and earth, little lights and clocks “that measure a poetic time without duration, made of tender, delicate, clownish movements.”
Catalano has been in the business for a long time, starting out as a theater actor in 1977. He does not confine his creative explorations to the stage and also engages in sculpture and painting. He says all his avenues of expression fuel each other and that magic can be found in everyday, seemingly prosaic, activities.
“The relation among the different arts is very important. When I say ‘art’ I also mean ancient types of craftsmanship like bakery and carpentry. For me, art is the simple relation between, say, a baker who makes bread and, at the same time, tells stories. This is theater.”
When asked about his sources of inspiration, rather than citing legendary thespians Catalano returns to his gastronomic analogy. “The imagine that has inspired me all these years and that has influenced the simplicity of my job is the image of my father making bread and telling me to put a thought in my pocket, to leave, to go from one place to another, from seed to seed, one fire to another fire,” he says without belaboring the point.
The seed of the Italian’s acting endeavor was sown many years ago, and he says he does his best to get everyone around him on board.
“I started out as a mime when I was very very young. Then I was an actor and, through the Sensitive Universes project, I make theater out of theater, a type of theater in which the audience is the protagonist.”
Sensitive Universes is a programmatic framework Catalano devised to incorporate his shows that feed off different areas. In it he utilizes his multi-pronged philosophy and his extensive artistic expertise to create fantastic worlds with all kinds of discarded everyday objects. Tic Tac Tic Tac pertains to this mix of the magic and the mundane. Over more than three decades, Catalano has taken his show on the road all over the globe.
There is plenty of pathos in Catalano’s work, but it is primarily humor that the Italian portrays. As the veteran of 35 years of trying to make his audiences laugh, Catalano is a good person to ask about how difficult it is to keep on getting people to smile or even chortle, and whether, with continued heightened exposure to all sorts of media vehicles, people’s funny bones may have taken on an ever tougher protective sheen.
He says that, basically, the root elements of comic work remain unchanged.
“Laughter is very ancient,” says Catalano. “It reflects people’s intelligence, and it is different in every historical period.”
He says that his shows are deceptively simplistic and are designed to entertain, as well as leave patrons with food for thought.
“My comic work is naïve, ingenuous; it reveals the trick. In my theater, all is revealed. The audience don’t ask ‘How does it do that?’ but ‘Why does he do that?’” As the youngsters who attend Catalano’s shows are often accompanied by their parents, he also tailors his output to keep the grown-ups suitably engaged and, possibly, bring out the child in them.
“I like to bring out emotion and amazement from people, that don’t belong exclusively to children, not just to infancy. By that I don’t mean an age of life but a way of looking at the world.”
The latter phase, claims the Italian, is present throughout our lives.
“I always say that infancy is a gift that children can also have.”
Catalano says he never tires of seeing people’s primary reactions to his shows. “The amazement, that’s what interests me – to restore that look of amazement.
If infancy is not really an age of our life but a way of looking at the world, amazement is an expression of that way, that look. The astonishment, the simple astonishment at something that passes under our eyes every day, whose essence we can’t see anymore – we can only see the shell, the form.”
Catalano has been happily performing Tic Tac Tic Tac for more than a year now – it debuted at the Teatro Fernan Gomez in Madrid in 2011. He says the work has evolved, as it has fed off the various groups of people who have come to see it.
“People from different countries and cultures respond differently to Tic Tac Tic Tac. For example, Spanish people are curious, while Germans have a healthy diffidence. The improvisational side of the show has changed, as has the relationship with the audience.”
It will be interesting to see how Tic Tac Tic Tac accommodates its Jerusalem audiences next week.
For more information about the puppet theater festival: 561-8514 and www.traintheater.co.il/puppets–festival/f–about.php.