“Dead as a Dodo”, Festival of Two Worlds, Spoleto
Annie M Loui in Province of Perugia
★★★★★
29 June 2026
Wakka Wakka are a theatre company with a dual base in New York City and Oslo. They bring their Dead as a Dodo show to Spoleto and reading the plot synopsis, I note: “… two skeleton friends, a Dodo and a boy, are scavenging for fresh bones, as their ancient skeletal forms are deteriorating and without them, they will disappear completely.”
Photo credit: Erato Tzavara.
I attended expecting a clever puppet show with skeleton puppets and instead entered a complete world with sequential magic that pulled me deeper and deeper into the story. The plot itself, I must say, is fairly thin and has all the logic of a child recounting the adventures of a favourite toy. But in this case, that makes no difference.
In some very mysterious way, the integrity of puppet exploration using objects, projection, and early animation cartoon tricks (such as an underwater chase running in place, like multiplying demons, like disembodies arms and legs dancing by themselves) proved utterly satisfying.
The skeleton digs for bones, and projected dirt explodes in “kapows!” in the background with every shovelful. As if at an exceptional fireworks display, I oohed and aahed with abandon, and I cried at the end because the skeleton “died” and moved on, swept away by the grand forces of time.
Photo credit: Richard Termine.
A wooly mammoth appeared out of the shimmering dark to take him down the path where all extinct things go. If you see nothing else at the Festival this year, go and see Dead as a Dodo for the sheer force of theatrical pleasure it engenders in audience members.
The piece is oddly moving being a curious little story about death tricked out like a commedia. There are stock characters galore – a King of the Underworld’s councilor (who seems a lot like Darth Vader), an Italian boatman singing silly folksongs while punting his boat on the River Styx, and a group of Norwegian demons who are disappointed to meet the dried-up skeleton as “they only drink blood”.
The black sparkle of the skillful puppeteers’ costumes (and there are 10 of them) resemble nothing so much as lightning bugs appearing from the darkness until they come closer and we see them as a synchronized facilitator for the action. Kudos to the team, of note the voice and movement of Dodo, the almost Foley-like co-ordination of the through-scored music by Thor Gunnar Thorvaldsson, and the main creative forces of script, puppets, set and costume by Gwendolyn Warnock and Kirjan Waage.
The sung “musical-like” moments of the performance are one of the few aspects that don’t live up to the quality of the rest, but they do not detract from the whole. All of this pleasing, beautiful jumble adds up to a most satisfying experience.
