THE SOUPTALKS BEGAN AS A NOTEBOOK SKETCH IN 1985 inspired by Gary Snyder's collection of poems, Turtle Island. The idea of turtle island is from very early creation stories that describes all of civilization as resting on the back of a turtle. I was especially intrigued by the gap of civilization between North America and Europe in the 17th Century, which resulted in my construction of an elaborate theater proscenium to rest on the back of a life-size turtle puppet.

VOICE OF THE TURTLEDOVE IS A CREATION STORY, tracing our civilization from the mating turtles who give it birth, up to the time when NAPOLEON, at age 16, loses his virginity to a Parisian prostitute. It's a story told by the OLD BLIND STORYTELLER, who is assassinated before our eyes in the year 2042. That future age is represented by patrols of armed FOOT SOLDIERS who are in charge of metaphor security and by the garish orange FLIGHT RECORDER BOX salvaged from the Turtledove - a gleaming white supersonic jet plane lost at the bottom of the Beaufort Sea, whose passengers were members of the last symphony orchestra left on the planet.

VOICE OF THE HOLLOW MAN opens with the question, "“Have you been watching the wars on TV?" The STORYTELLER'S ASSASSIN poses this question as she begins to stage Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia - complete with the snow that accompanies his tragic retreat - all on the SOUPTALKS TABLETOP. Included in the text are substantial passages from Tolstoy's War and Peace, Larry Heinemann's Paco's Story, and Napoleon's letters home to his wife Marie-Louise. I also added audio interviews with my mother concerning her experiences at home (with me) during World War II as one of the many LADIES-IN-WAITING, throughout history, who are represented in the show by soul-singing marionettes who do a few classic gospel tunes with the NEWSCASTER PUPPET.

VOICE OF THE MACHINE TRANSFORMS THE SNOWS OF THE RUSSIAN WINTER into the frozen Arctic landscape in order to tell the story of Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to find the Northwest Passage in 1845 -- the age of photography. Franklin's crew of 105 souls abandoned the frozen Erebus and Terror and disappeared, marching into the Arctic mists, toward civilization. Only the indigenous Inuit people saw what happened, and their gift of oral history tells the story; if only we will accept it, just as we imagine they will know the story of the Turtledove and the last symphony orchestra lost in the Arctic Ocean! "Rather than being the pilot, perhaps God is more like an airplane's black box," speculates the ASSASSIN, "constantly recording the latest 30 minutes of our civilization -- what will the future hear?"