Goodnight, Absalom!

Fox & Beggar Theater presents this surreal dark comedy that fuses street theater, puppetry and contemporary dance into a whimsical critique of American capitalism, performed out of a hand-painted pop-up solar-powered double-decker vaudeville stage.

Performances are Sept. 3-4 near the Arising sculpture at Gichi-ode’ Akiing Park on the Lakewalk Plaza. Attendees are invited to bring a lawnchair.
Opening acts start at 6:30 p.m. Charlotte Montgomery performs on Sept. 3 and Sugar on the Roof plays on Sept. 4. The play starts at 7:30 and will run approximately 75 minutes with a short audience Q and A afterward.

Synopsis: In the fictional town of Absalom, a larger-than-life chess match is played between two sinister railroad barons. Their strange game moves through a series of vignettes — the Dance of the Pawns, the Dance of the Knights, the Dance of the Bishops, etc. — in which the unfortunate chess pieces find themselves being made to do battle inside a prison they do not fully understand. As the game progresses, the chess pieces begin to become cognizant of their bleak situation … and attempt to lead a rebellion against the game itself.

Goodnight, Absalom! is a surreal comedy about a plutocracy that has gamified modern life, obsessed with winning more and more wealth until the world’s resources are gone. The show fuses the spaghetti western genre with a barrage of Faulkner references, taking a look at a frighteningly polarized nation and questioning who might gain from keeping it divided, distracted and disenfranchised.

A workshop production of Absalom was created as a two-week residency-in-quarantine last August at the Lookout Arts Quarry in Bellingham, Wash.