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Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass. By Julie Taymor and Elliot Goldenthal. Based on a story by Horacio Quiroga. Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, New York City. 22 December 1996.
The 1996 production of Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass was a revival of the puppet and mask spectacle which premiered in 1988. Juan Darién unites the moral themes with which a mass and Quiroga's story are each concerned: the celebration of a martyr; the prevalence of greed and prejudice; the promise of rejuvenation through nature, compassion, and (reflexively) the artistic imagination.
The 1996 Juan Darién was a multidimensional, polyvocal spectacle generated by nineteen puppeteers and nine musicians. Goldenthal's score was a rich hybrid of themes, evoking "the worlds of the church, carnival, and rain forest" (Elliot Goldenthal, "Notes on Juan Darién," Theater 20.2 [Spring/Summer 1989]: 53). Taymor's display of puppet and mask forms was equally diverse, with bunraku rod puppets, shadow and hand puppets, half-puppet/half-human performers, and commedia-derived half-mask characters sharing the stage with singerpuppeteers and, eventually, the human character of Juan Darién. The scene in Juan Darién where puppets and masks from many traditions cavorted and recombined freely pressed the boundaries of the puppet-human connection into new and revealing contours.
This recombination was most striking in...