Life under the sea is raising questions about the future of humanity in the age of technology in “Human,” a show featuring five performers, sea creatures as puppets, music, multimedia imagery and African spirituality themes at the Center for Puppetry Arts, Jan. 17-28.
The 60-minute spectacle created by Nehprii Amenii is headlining the third installment of Puppetry NOW, the Center for Puppetry Arts’ annual effort to spotlight performances and original works created by Black puppeteers and other puppeteers of color. The story follows a young seahorse who encourages an octopus in a sunken submarine to re-create a new human being with one of his hearts.
“The octopus is down there at the bottom of the sea with all of the Africans who were thrown or jumped overboard, and the two worlds came together,” Amenii said. “It became more about marginalized people, who gets to speak and whose voices are heard or not.”
“Human” is accompanied by an exhibition in the Dean Dubose Smith Special Exhibition Gallery created by the Brooklyn-based visual artist. The work will be on display from Jan. 19 to April 28.
Credit: Courtesy of Nehprii Amenii
Credit: Courtesy of Nehprii Amenii
For Amenii, who spent her teens in Stone Mountain and Decatur before moving to Minneapolis during her senior year of high school, bringing “Human” to Atlanta is the perfect homecoming. The military brat spent a year fully developing the show’s script and musical numbers after collecting feedback from families and audience members following its premiere at Wortham Center for the Performing Arts in Asheville in 2022.
“The story, characters and multimedia aspects are much more fleshed out,” Amenii said. “The performers down here in ATL are definitely bringing another level of dynamism and power to it. All of my roots are red earth. May the audience be pleased, but I just want to do an excellent job.”
“Human” was created in 2019 after a collaborator asked the fine artist what she cared about. Amenii was concerned with kids becoming too attached to social media instead of physically interacting with people.
The coronavirus pandemic encouraged her to get to work.
“When I was growing up in Georgia, it was all playing outdoors, digging in the dirt and climbing trees,” Amenii said. “As they’re touching gadgets and flat screens more, how do they learn the difference of what it feels like to interact with a human and be human?”
Credit: Stephan Pruitt
Credit: Stephan Pruitt
Amenii’s focus earned her grants from Puppet Showplace in 2020 and the Jim Henson Foundation the following year.
Henson is one of Amenii’s inspirations for incorporating a mystical philosophy into her art. “I could watch ‘Dark Crystal’ every single day,” she said. “I didn’t even know what I was looking at, but that’s what formed the little spirit in my mind. His daughters, family and legacy still moves me forward.” In fact, Henson’s daughter Cheryl Henson will participate in the official opening program on Jan. 18.
“I didn’t get to meet him physically, but every single day I’m working with him,” she adds of Jim Henson. “It’s very special and I never dismiss spirit at work.”
Amenii, the artistic director of her production company Khunum Productions, developed an interest in puppetry after she saw a preview of “The Lion King‘’ on the Tony Awards in 1998. A friend convinced Amenii, then studying ceramics at University of Minnesota, to contact Minneapolis’ In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre to learn the basics of puppetry and performance.
In 2006, Amenii went to New York for the summer to conduct personal development camps for kids with Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. One of the directors convinced her to create something for the stage.
Amenii asked all 100 students for help. That moment launched a professional career in puppetry that has gone on to include notable works such as “Food for the Gods.”
“They all started telling me what they could do, and that began me staging my own work, taking concepts and turning them into physical objects that could be performed,” Amenii said.
She was invited back the following summer and moved to New York from Minneapolis.
An alumna of Sarah Lawrence College’s puppetry program, Amenii became a mentee under multidisciplinary artist Dan Hurlin, who helped her learn to turn puppetry into live productions.
Credit: Stephan Pruitt
Credit: Stephan Pruitt
In 2013, Amenii got into teaching young immigrants how to speak English using puppets. “It was using art, but I always approach puppetry as creative engineering,” she said. “It became a healing artform for them to tell their story without words.” Following the pandemic, she switched from students to mentoring other educators.
Six years later, Amenii joined an exhibit for Black puppeteers at University of Connecticut’s Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry. It was the two-time National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient’s first time meeting other Black puppeteers and marrying her interest in the African Diaspora to her work.
“It became so clear that the way we approach this artform as Black people calls all the way back to something very old in our DNA that has been attempted to be erased and forgotten of how much of it is a spiritual practice to us,” said Amenii, a 2015 U.S. delegate for the International Playwrights Conference.
Amenii anticipates seeing the reactions to “Human” from Black families and kids in Atlanta. She hopes the show will encourage audiences to think puppetry can leave them uplifted and transformed.
“I don’t get the chance to take a break, stop and look at what I’ve done,” she said. “Maybe one day, I’ll be able to, but along the way, it feels like I can keep going. It’s my microphone for making the world a better place.”
THEATER PREVIEW
“Human,” a Puppetry NOW presentation at the Center for Puppetry Arts.
Special opening on Jan. 18: reception and exhibit opening (6 p.m.), performance (7 p.m.) and Q&A with special guests Cheryl Henson, Camille Russell Love and Christopher A. Daniel (8 p.m.). $30, free for members.
Show runs Jan. 17-28. Regular tickets: $27 adults; $22 children 2-12. 1404 Spring St. NW. puppet.org/programs, 404-873-3391
