Don’t you ever get sick of the same old bar/band/alcohol-drenched tango? Don’t you wish for something new, something off the beaten path? Don’t you occasionally yearn for, say, a trapeze artist, a creepy comic puppet show and a theremin, all under one roof?
Well, boy, you sure are in luck! The Tingle Tangle Menagerie is right up your weird little alley.
Put together by a group of performance artists from Chicago, The Tingle Tangle Menagerie is a combination of cabaret, vaudeville, carnival and performance art, set against a background of exotic music. The group formed in the Windy City two years ago, spearheaded by the beautifully svelte and agile trapeze artist Miss Raven.
The troupe is old friends of Faith Gazic and Gretchen Gonzales, the two sirens that comprise Terror at the Opera; the duo had already performed with the troupe in Chicago, and recently the Terror ladies convinced the Menagerie to bring their show to Detroit.
Gonzales describes her first show with the troupe: “It was lots of bizarre things happening around you. It was fun, and different than most evenings out. So we said, let’s try to do this in Detroit … since we’ve got a lot of weird people around here who are fitting.”
Local contributions include Detroit’s walking, talking library of vintage film reels, Tim Caldwell, who will be projecting old circus and freak show shorts, as well as members of Time Stereo and the Piranhas.
In addition to a theremin player and a performance artist who will perform from the confines of a coin-operated box, there will be a puppet show of strange creatures, called The Scary Toesies.
Puppeteer Jayme Calal describes his puppet shows as “morbid, but funny, with a nonsensical element.”
“The last show we did was about a man whose body parts kept being taken from him,” says Calal. “He kept losing parts until he was reduced to an eyeball.”
Sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than an evening bellied up to a smoky bar, doesn’t it?
See the Tingle Tangle Menagerie at the Detroit Art Space (101 E. Baltimore, Detroit) on Friday, July 16, at 9 p.m.; call 313-664-0445 for more information.
Sarah Klein is a Metro Times staff writer. E-mail [email protected]
