Complicated Horse Emergency and Egg Baloney Pardon Me Calypso Germ Food Mumu

Drew Ziegler is a local Chicago weirdo who has been staging absurdist puppet shows and performances in basements and underground galleries for years. An expert garbage collector, Drew assembles his props, sets and puppets out of trash. Sometimes he aims for the delicate and beautiful- such as his meditative shadow puppet plays and mechanical puppet machines...and then turns 360 degrees to create crude and overwhelming messy masses of junk and shit. But Drew's Dada aesthetic is always apparent throughout every project as he creates post-apocalyptic nonsense worlds where trash rains down from the heavens to crush its malformed inhabitants that squirt viscous discharge at each other.

For the past couple years Drew has been traveling from Chicago to LA, Oakland and New Orleans collaborating with different people. Originally concieved in Oakland, Egg Baloney Pardon Me Calypso Germ Food Mumu is a performance of a supposed sitcom where the actors lip-sync their Dada-babble dialogue from a pre-recorded soundtrack. The characters are repulsive and idiotic, like an updated pop culture Ubu Roi. Everything is random: business men enter, a baby is birthed, food is dumped on a disembodied head in the middle of a table...yet it is all scripted within the soundtrack, working off of sound cues of car horns and goat bleating.

This is a video of Episode 2 of Egg Baloney Pardon Me Calypso Germ Food Mumu entitled "Roaches for Nerf Pubes in Soccer Mom Tom-Tom Bomb!". It was performed in Chicago at Reversible Eye Gallery. I was recruited last minute to play the baby, which required me to flail around a bit and hump a garbage bag for the duration of the show. Don't play the video if a grown man in a diaper humping a garbage bag upsets your co-workers. The entire performance can be viewed here.

Complicated Horse Emergency is Drew's collaboration with Randall Christopher Bailey where they expand on Egg Boloney... and transform an entire space into their absurdist fevered dreams of garbage that is accumulated into giant ornate piles. Characters appear and recite random nonsense monologues related to dog testicles and hot dogs. The action is more open ended and the audience usually tumbles into the set in drunken revelry.

Here is the Complicated Horse Emergency soundtrack.  Chicago analog synth and Der Plan enthusiast Beau Wanzer writes the boing-splat-fart jams while Drew and Randall lay down the dog testicle testimonials.

part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

Unfortunately, there isn't any great visual documentation of these events...only this youtube video.

Drew Ziegler is now in New Orleans working on his Scary Toesies puppet shows with longtime collaborator Jamie Kalel. They will be performing on Halloween and at the New Orleans' Fringe Festival in November.

Comments

[WmMBerger]

Oh man, Fatty, your posts are the best! Things are clearly happening in Chicago. I only hope you used protection.

[mb]

Don't forget to mention that Beau Wanzer made a majority of the music!

[ross]

anyone who is a Der Plan enthusiast is ok by me...

[ross]

anyone who is a Der Plan enthusiast is ok by me...

[ross]

anyone who is a Der Plan enthusiast is ok by me...

[boil]

Oh thanks a lot. I was just fired from my job at Bear Stearns for playing this at work. FU Fatty Jubbo.