Fussy Cloud Puppet Slam: IT’S ALIIIVE!

If you asked me what kind of spooky performance style I prefer, I’ll always gravitate toward something handcrafted, tactile and willing to take chances on both a design and emotional level. That’s why Fussy Cloud Puppet Slam, the longest-running puppet slam in Seattle, is the hot ticket for the month as they get weird for their latest edition.

“The vibe is truly a spectrum of pure chaos; every show has a different theme, with puppetry acts curated around it,” said Cass Bray and Zane Exactly, the duo behind the award-winning Shadow Girls Cult and the current curators of the slam. “Every theme is an opportunity for puppetry artists from around the country to create new and compelling stories told through the broad medium of puppetry. Audiences get to see beautiful, tragic and hilarious stories told in 10 minutes or less (in the slam world, we call that ‘too short to suck’), using unconventional materials and storytelling mediums.”

For their latest, titled “IT’S ALIIIVE!” and hosted by Tootsie Spangles, “audiences can expect a bit of horror, a lot of camp and a variety of puppet mediums including shadow puppetry, hand puppets, mask work, large-scale object manipulation and more!”

This edition will feature a mix of local and out-of-town artists, such as Atlanta’s Puppet Pants and both Robin Amico and Happy Accident out of Portland. “When we performed with [Happy Accident] earlier this year,” Exactly said, “I watched their show five out of six nights before our show, and I am just so enamored with the weird and surreal work they do.”

Bray, meanwhile, is especially looking forward to Alice Malice’s new work, which is “a freaky lesbian narrative shadow puppet piece about the emotional and sexual turmoil of Mormon wives. It will be dark, irreverent for sure and will include mask work and even a dash of striptease.”

Get ready for a raucous roulette wheel of puppet antics that you’re not likely to forget anytime soon.