Slowly, ominously, the sound of someone striking a woodblock fills the dark room. The show is about to begin.
With the woodblock in his hands, renowned Chicago puppeteer Blair Thomas announces not only the beginning the evening’s show, but also the convergence of four diverse art forms in a unique presentation.
The Blackbird, a shadow-puppet show based on the Wallace Stevens poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” that uses parts of the poem as backdrops, was first performed by Thomas in 1997.
Tonight’s presentation celebrates the release of the book “The Blackbird,” a collaboration between Thomas and artist Jason Greenberg that brings the magic of the puppet show to the static medium of paper.
The ensemble will open the 7:30 p.m. show at the Sherwood Conservatory of Music, 1312 S. Michigan Ave., with their own musical selection before joining Thomas for the puppetry.
The Blackbird originally was set to a recorded version of Ben Johnston’s string quartet “Amazing Grace.” But now the Aurea Ensemble plays that difficult score live in front of the puppets.
In “Amazing Grace,” Ben Johnston takes the spiritual folk tune of that name and develops it into a dramatic musical journey. In intimate sections his just-intonation microtonal techniques give the piece an almost archaic flavor.
Against this musical backdrop, Thomas sets four scrolls of translucent paper, lit from behind by candles to reveal crude yet powerful ink drawings. During the show he advances the scrolls as part of the changing scenery.
Behind the screens, Thomas tells his story with shadow puppets: a man, a woman and several wing-flapping blackbirds. The story is vague — there is a relationship, something happens — because Thomas gives the audience more feelings than narrative.
“The themes in Stevens’ writing are the same as the visual story I’m telling,” Thomas said. “But the story itself is not as important for the audience. The blackbird symbolizes something — different things for different people.”
What is important to Thomas is the way his show combines music, poetry and puppetry. A former musician himself, Thomas considers music an integral part of his puppetry and designed The Blackbird to fit with “Amazing Grace” in its original form.
“I serve Ben Johnston the way theater artists serve Shakespeare,” he said. “There’s something about, say, Chekhov, that you don’t want to mess with. The same with music. Music needs to have a more honored place in theater.”
Thomas emphasizes the show’s music by placing the four string players on stage with the puppets.
“It is so exciting to have the vibrancy of a live performance,” he said. “It is incomplete without the string quartet actually sitting there, doing its thing.”
The Aurea Ensemble is no stranger to mixed media performances. Based in Rhode Island, its members include an actor and a pool of musicians. Many performances focus on the interplay between music, visuals and the spoken word.
And the handmade book being released at tonight’s performance is yet another example of mixed media. Greenberg and Thomas strove to distill the motion of the puppets into illustrations and decided to include a recording of the Aurea Ensemble playing “Amazing Grace.”
“We could have done a cheap book, like anything at Barnes and Noble, but we wanted the book to have its own identity as an art project, a manifestation of the Blackbird performance,” Greenberg said.
