FOOTNOTES
Directed by Theodora Skiptares, Produced by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and Skysaver Productions
Ellen Steward Theatre, 66 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003
February 27th, 2026- March 15th, 2026
Photo credit by Richard Termine
Ever so often theater mesmerizes with breathtaking imagery. Footnotes by Theodora Skipitares is a production that is an homage to walking. How often does one ponder the very nature of “walking?” Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust, a book on the history of walking, Skiptares uses puppets and a grand stage to go on a visual journey of how walking is essential to the spirit that drives humanity.
As you wait in anticipation in the halls of the great La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club at the Ellen Stewart Theatre, you are given a tiny pamphlet artfully woven together with hand drawings of historic figures, quotes, reflections, and thoughts. What exactly does any of this mean in relation to what we are about to see? What portal are we to enter? Take me away anywhere, but let me leave my worrisome realities of this current harsh world at the door!
Theater doors open to be escorted to rows of seats and any seat is ours for the taking. Little do we know we are about to experience, a world of crafted puppets, each with crevices echoing the dreams of those they are meant to represent. With puppetry there are no limits. To be able to externalize humanity, to breathe life into an inanimate object as puppets do, is where danger or salvation can potentially lie. The choice is ours to find within our hearts just exactly how much deeper past any surface we are willing to go.
We are asked to stand and face the back of our chairs where we are met with a grand giant ten foot aluminum wood ape-man crawling on all fours that gradually rises on two feet. What is this mechanical titan rising before us? The sky is the limit! At one point a shadow screen appears off stage into the balcony where Orpheus ascends to entrance us. From his depths into the underworld to losing Eurydice, we must brace his painful emotions. The ambiance is truly such a whimsical affair and you can sense the audience’s excitement for whatever is to come next.
The use of the space as a mechanism to propel the story flows as musicians to the side narrate, provide voice over, play instruments, while also making quizzical and electric sounds with mixing bowls. The director intentionally places the musicians to the audience’s side so that our attention is undivided on the puppeteers navigating their way on and off stage to showcase an extensive array of puppets. A variety of puppets convey different points in the story whether it be marionettes, bunraku, shadow puppets and more! This visual spectacle is a feast for those who hunger to see puppet mastery. A moment that particularly struck me is how the stage was filled with puppets of literal walking legs and watching the puppeteers carefully navigate them walking endlessly on stage.
The director’s choice in using the entire theater space evokes limitlessness. Like puppets, we audience are usually tethered to our seats. The director breaks us free when we are asked to look in different directions, stand in different directions, and at some point walk to the other side of the theater to an entirely different set of seats that we are free once again free to select. Walking from one side of the theater there is a sense of satisfaction as you walk by the elaborate display of musical instruments and musicians.
The entire show is comprised of vignettes of mythology, pilgrims, philosophers, luminaries such as Orpheus, Hephaestus, Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor to name a few, to modern day familiarities such as food delivery workers. The vignettes all seamlessly interweave how humanity is in continual motion throughout history.
The ingenuity of the puppets is a work of art in itself. Now more than ever can the use of puppets help to tell stories that would normally be deemed too cruel in human form. For the puppeteers themselves, imaging the level of skill required to operate them, that in itself a form of healing from the scars of humanity. A quote by Henry David Thoreau in the program most directly relates to what the show encompasses overall, “The moment my legs begin to walk, my thoughts begin to flow.” As we watch the puppets walking we are in turn moved with the stories that overwhelm our thoughts towards inspiration. Footnotes is a meditation on our instinct for motion. In motion lies our drive.
Review by Bianca Lopez.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on March 7th, 2026. All rights reserved.
