Fuck Bumbershoot. With Brazilian clowns, Mexican rock, German puppets, and, most importantly, easy-to-navigate crowds of pint-sized people, the International Children's Festival is the place for unemployed stoners to while away the day. Or for gainfully employed stoners to take a vacation. Call in sick, amble down to Seattle Center, and eat a pot cookie or pack a pipe for booster hits before shows. Smoke up in the walled-off loading dock for the Seattle Rep or Intiman Theatre. There are never any people back there, and if there are, they're theater employees. Offer them a hit.
Don't worry about tickets. Just get close to a school group (but not too close) and slip in behind them. If that doesn't work, tell the ticket takers that your nephew is in the theater and you need to give him his lunch or insulin shot or something. If all else fails, show them this guide. They'll understand.
Here are our selections, the best of the fest for Seattle stoners:
Le Théâtre de Quartier Mon—Fri at 10 am and 1 pm, Sat at 10 am and 3:30 pm.
Glouglou, by Montreal's Le Théâtre de Quartier, is obviously the number-one ticket at his year's festival. First, because Glouglou is French for "glug-glug," which is fun to say (and to do). Second, because it's French theater for toddlers, so you can feel pleasantly infantilized and smart at the same time. Third, because it stars three young, attractive Quebecois. Fourth, because it is, according to the program, "a play filled with hiding places and first times—the first drink from mommy's breast, first time in daddy's arms, first smells, first—" wait, what? First drink from mommy's breast? Say no more.
Thomas Arthur Mon—Wed at 10 am and 1 pm, Thurs—Fri at 8 pm, Sat at 5 pm.
Luminous Edge by Thomas Arthur looks pretty good. Arthur is a zany New Age wizard-dick who's into the golden mean and physics (the hippie, everything's-all-connected-all-the-time kind) and juggles sticks and stones and spirals and stuff. Apparently he's got his own expressive, but not terribly communicative, language, and when he walks into the offices of whatever theater he's playing in, he's all "Whikkooooohgah boopa, eyeeee lieyeeek kruuuuupa" when what he means is "How's the show selling for next week? And do you have any gum?" But people put up with it because he's a zany New Age wizard-dick.
Los Patita de Perro Mon at 11:30 am, Tues—Wed at 10 am, Thurs—Fri at 1 pm, Sat at 2 pm.
It isn't kids' fault that they're taught to settle for bullshit music of the purple-dinosaur or jackass-with-balloon-animals-and-banjo varieties. It's the adults' fault for not weaning them on anything better. The Children's Festival is trying to change that. This year, check out Los Patita de Perro, a Mexican rock trio that sings about fleas, bears, emigration, girl soccer players, and police corruption. From their "Motoperros" (slang for "cops"): "I have seen a motoperro talking with my dad, he took my dad's money, oh my poor dad."
Figurentheater Wilde and Vogel Thurs—Fri at 10 am and 1 pm, Sat at 10 am and 2 pm.
Children are the future—future depressives included. For the dark motherfuckers of tomorrow, there's Maria on the High Wire, a German existential-crisis puppet show about a girl whose parents were circus performers and died after falling off a tightrope. The girl gets shipped off to her grandma, who tries to make the new orphan happy by buying her things. She even buys the granddaughter a dude. But the dude is sad about being owned, so guess what he does? He dies. That's children's theater in Germany.
Circo Teatro Udi Grudi Mon—Tues at 10 am, Wed and Fri at 11:30 am, Sat at 3:30 pm.
Ovo, by this Brazilian scavenger-clown trio, is about three magic hoboes who live in a dump and make all kinds of things out of plastics bags, rubber bands, and tin cans, including musical instruments and a dog that they cook and eat (and a little doggy soul that floats up to heaven). These guys could make a bong out of anything. Catch up with them after the show.
There's other promising stuff, like Share This Place, a stop-motion animation of bugs made of bits of eyeglasses and other unlikely objects, based on the work of Jean-Henri Fabre, an ornery and self-taught Frenchman who spent most of the 19th century studying the insects in his backyard. The animated bugs are by local filmmaker Britta Johnson, the music is by Mirah (of K Records fame) and Lori Goldston and Kyle Hanson, cofounders of the Black Cat Orchestra. And there's Les Parfaits Inconnus, rock 'n' roll clowns from Quebec who play a set while doing flips on roller skates, falling off tall ladders, riding bicycles while standing on their heads, and other improbable stunts.
So take the day off, get stoned, check out some French toddler theater, and regress. Year after year, the Children's Festival insists the Children's Festival isn't just for children, that its performers are international, sophisticated, fit for adult consumption. But since they're all scheduled during the day, who can see them except the unemployed? And how better to appreciate children's theater than stoned? It's better than spending another afternoon on the couch, spacing out to Nickelodeon.
