An Evening of Shorts | Ten Sentences: On the Life of Robert Walser

Adult and teen audience, 13 years +

One of three short pieces presented during An Evening of Shorts, with Lucien and Song/Book.

In English

A native of Biel, Switzerland, Robert Walser has been described as “a clairvoyant of the small.” A writer of keenly detailed observational prose, he published feuilletons, stories, and short novels in the early years of the 20th century. With limited means of support and suffering from a mental breakdown, he later moved to a sanitarium where he walked the countryside, producing no further writing.

A collection of microscopic texts, written on the backs of visiting cards, envelopes, and matchbooks, was found in a shoebox after his death in 1956.

Ten Sentences: On the Life of Robert Walser uses a “cranky” – a hand-cranked moving scroll – with flat paper puppets and rear-projected video to evoke this solitary and contemplative life.

Photos

Photos : Mark Sussman

Company

Great Small Works was founded in 1995 by a collective of artists, all veterans of Bread and Puppet Theater, to keep theatre at the heart of social life. The company draws on puppet, avant-garde, and popular theatre traditions to tell contemporary stories, performing in theatres, schools, parks, libraries, museums, prisons, street corners and other public spaces, producing work on many scales, from gigantic outdoor spectacles with scores of volunteers to miniature shows in living rooms.

Through curating and producing variety evenings and festivals, the company provides opportunities for diverse artists and encourages young artists to find their voices. In community-based pageants and parades, GSM works with community groups to address issues of concern to them. On any scale Great Small Works productions seek to renew, cultivate, and strengthen the spirits of their audiences, believing in theatre as a model for participating in democracy.

Credits

Stage direction: Mark Sussman

Story: Adapted from works by Robert Walser

Scenography: Mark Sussman, with the assistance of Jennifer Jack

Performance: Mark Sussman

Design assistant: Jennifer Jack

Dramaturgical support: Roberto Rossi

Cranky box design: Heather Caplap

Aditionnal construction: Jennifer Jack and Isabella Donati-Simmons

Great Small Works gratefully acknowledges the support of Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, the Scherman Foundation, the Building Stories studio in Brooklyn, Roberto Rossi, Clea Minaker, and MJ Thompson.

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