The Oxford English Dictionary defines “magic” as follows:
1. the power of apparently influencing events by using mysterious or supernatural forces
2. conjuring tricks performed to entertain
3. mysterious and enchanting quality
4. (informal) exceptional skill or talent.
Well, if you’re looking to see this definition in the flesh, here’s your chance. From July 20 through August 6, in the rambling old Frank Ix Building, a dream team of Charlottesville performance and visual artists will conjure a cabinet of wonders (which is what a “Wunderkammer” actually is, if you didn’t know), presenting a mix of art installations and music, along with some wildly varied and talented performing acts, from drama to carnival to burlesque.
Since the dawn of time (or at least the mid-‘90s), mysterious and supernatural forces have conspired to bring about the Wunderkammer—a sideshow melange that seeks to amplify and expand on such scintillating and original Charlottesville performing companies as Foolery, Zen Monkey Project, the Performers Exchange Project and the Lunatic Carnival.
The project was born when longtime Fool Martha Mendenhall (currently known as Baroness Wunderkammer), visited the 2004 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, where she experienced the comfortably freaky atmosphere of the “Famous Speigeltent” venue, complete with cabaret acts, bizarre bands, and beer garden. And thus, the seed for the Wunderkammer was sown.
An air of inevitability, in fact, attends this particular confluence of artistic minds assembled by Mendenhall and Zap McConnell (a Zen Monkey, now Schotze Wunderkammer); as McConnell pointed out about the groups united here, “we had always been admiring each other from afar.”
Together at last, the Wunderkammer Family convinced the Ix Partners to grant them access to, as McConnell put it, “one of the last few urban relics remaining in Charlottesville,” the Ix Building. Soon, planned development will transform it into something perhaps more useful, but less flexible and gorgeously weird. Her job as Wunderkammer’s artistic director involves creating a throughline for the evening, carefully organizing the motley assortment of lunatics, fire dancers, burlesque ladies, aerial acts and musicians. For help in managing the chaos, McConnell looked to the space itself for inspiration. “It was telling me what needed to happen,” she says. “It’s extraordinary.”
“But what will happen?” you ask in an agony of curiosity. Well, here’s what the average mature audience member can expect: They will arrive on the scene and spend some time relaxing in the beer garden before Maestro Wunderkammer (Christian Breeden) begins the evening, regaling the crowd with music and charming, carnival-barker commentary. Some performances, such as “Zelda and Lucy’s Loony Bin Tragedy” (Mendenhall’s take on the story of Agamemnon) will be peformed to a seated assembly. Other times, attendees will be free to wander through the space, witnessing (and perhaps being accosted by) an array of performers wielding fire, ropes, stilts, guitars, garters and unicorns. (Yes, you heard that right: unicorns.) As Mendenhall says, “you know it’s not going to be real but you just don’t care. Good magic is like that.”
A Charlottesville Wunderkammer
The Old Frank Ix Building
July 20-August 6,
Thursday-Sunday, 8pm
Tickets $15 adv/$20 door,
Thursday-Saturday. Sundays Pay What You Can at the door.
Mature Audiences Only
Call 804-977-4177×108 or visit www.livearts.musictoday.com