CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Shafts of sunlight pour through the skylights of the Stock Pavilion on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus, illuminating swirls of dust stirred up as several people on a dirt floor uncoil ropes, pulling them taut and twirling them in circles like lassos.
It looks like the setting for a rodeo, but this is a nautical environment. Two people stretch a length of rope to measure an unseen object, and then one calls out, “sperm whale, 60 feet.” Several others around the arena echo the phrase. Measurements for other species of whale soon follow – beluga, fin, orca, blue, bottlenose dolphin and humpback.
I’m watching a rehearsal for “CETACEAN (The Whale),” the latest multimedia performance in “The Unreliable Bestiary,” by artists Deke Weaver and Jennifer Allen. Weaver, a U. of I. art professor, is engaged in a lifelong project to present a performance for every letter of the alphabet, each representing an endangered animal or habitat.
The “CETACEAN” performances are Sept. 28 to Oct. 2 at 7:30 p.m. in the Stock Pavilion, 1402 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Urbana. Admission is free and seating is first come, first served. The Stock Pavilion will represent both the deck of a ship and an underwater atmosphere.
“The Unreliable Bestiary’s” previous works – “MONKEY,” “ELEPHANT,” “WOLF,” “BEAR” and “TIGER” – dealt with climate change and failing ecosystems. But the tone of “CETACEAN” feels more urgent, say co-director and writer Weaver and co-director and choreographer Allen.
“CETACEAN” tells a collage of stories about eco-anxiety and resilience in adjusting to changing conditions. The stories include scenes of a National Outdoor Leadership School kayak trip; depositions made by people who thought they saw a sea monster in the waters off Gloucester, Mass., in 1817; and readings from “Moby-Dick.” The multimedia performance includes dance, video projection, sound design and art installation, and the performers are faculty members and students from art, theatre and dance.
For Weaver, a key image from his research for “CETACEAN” was that of a beached whale whose carcass had become a toxic site because of the manmade pollutants concentrated in its blubber.
“You can’t talk about oceans without talking about plastics and about toxins in the environment,” Allen says.
Weaver also was drawn to the idea of a whale fall – the process by which the body of a whale takes weeks to reach the sea floor after it dies in the water. The carcass becomes home to other organisms and sequesters a significant amount of carbon, making an even greater impact in storing carbon dioxide than forests, he tells me.
One of the challenges for Weaver in creating “The Unreliable Bestiary” is to connect audiences to creatures that are not found in Central Illinois. While writing “CETACEAN,” he sought to create a community around building a whale through workshops with high school art classes. Students wrote down their hopes and fears, burned the papers listing their fears and made origami stars from the papers with their hopes. They filled plastic bottles with the ashes and origami stars.
“The performance will take place under a sea of hope and fear made by more than 1,200 bottles suspended from the ceiling of the Stock Pavilion,” Weaver says. Another 1,000 bottles on the floor will take the shape of a beached whale.
Allen describes the bottom of the sea as a mystery that couldn’t be accessed for much of history: “It was dark. There were monsters,” she said. “Once we were able to go down to the bottom with cameras, what we saw was our garbage. By the end of the show, the floor will be filled with the various kinds of plastic that accumulate.”
“CETACEAN” also includes whale puppets – a 13-foot-long adult blue whale, a baby blue whale and three orcas – made by Charles Pascale, a graduate student in theatre who works in the prop shop at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
When I visit the shop, I watch as Pascale uses a band saw to cut the many cardboard pieces with slots that will fit together and form the bodies of the whales. He tells me that one of the challenges of creating the puppets was finding the appropriate materials. They needed to be environmentally conscious – made from either recycled or recyclable materials.
The puppets also had to be light enough for the puppeteers to manipulate and flexible enough to move in the undulating way of a swimming whale.
“When you’re making puppets or puppeteering, you’re putting life into them and they become an extension of your body almost. The show is trying to give that sense: This is an extension of your world,” Pascale says.
Weaver tells me that sharing a live experience, particularly after the pandemic kept people apart, is a valuable part of the performance.
“We’re needing to adapt to changing conditions, and we’re going to have to adapt pretty quickly. It can feel overwhelming and like we have no power,” he says. “The more personal these stories are, the more the possibility of being able to connect with all kinds of people.”