- October 19, 2022
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The foundation for The Ringling Museum, filled with Renaissance art and a jewelbox theater plucked from an Italian palace in Asolo, was built by a man who accumulated his wealth by bringing clowns, acrobats and “trained” wild animals to the masses.
When John Ringling died in 1936, he left his art treasures and his Ca' d’Zan mansion to the state of Florida. His will specified that visitors could come for free one day a week. (It’s Monday, if you don’t know.)
As The Ringling prepares to host its first SunHAT Eco Performance Fest (try saying that three times fast), somewhere John Ringling is smiling.
Why? Because the festival continues Ringling’s legacy of mixing high and low entertainment that he championed with ringmasters in tuxes, aerialists in sequins and elephants dancing a ballet choreographed by George Balanchine.
Despite his appetite for cultured collectibles and living well, Ringling was a man of the people. He understood how to bring everybody together in the same tent with a bawdy, brash and beautiful show. His estate plan recognized that even though everyone wants to see art, not everyone can afford it.
With that in mind, Elizabeth Doud, The Ringling’s Currie-Kohlmann Curator of Performance, has persuaded the bigwigs at the museum to foot the bill for a pay-what-you-wish festival. Here’s the fine print: There’s a 99-cent processing fee when you buy tickets online and donations are encouraged.
So what is a SunHAT Eco Performance Fest anyway? In marketing materials, Doud calls SunHAT (for The Ringling’s Historic Asolo Theater) “SPF for the times ahead.” More on that later.
Think of the monthly Ringling Underground on Friday nights during season ($15; free for students with ID). Cross it with a fringe festival. Add Miracle-Gro (Yeah, that’s not kosher in environmental circles) and watch it pop up, literally overnight. Kind of like mushrooms.
Speaking of champignons and their cousins, choreographer John Heginbotham will host a Mushroom Dinner during the festival that will be presided over by chef Leonardo Pileggi. That event costs real money ($75), but it will give diners a taste of plant-based cuisine, by way of Sarasota’s Petrichor Mushrooms urban farm, and includes a talkback with Heginbotham.
The real mushroom extravaganza is a performance by Heginbotham’s dance troupe called “You Look Like a Fun Guy.” Like a fungi —get it? You don’t have to like mushrooms to enjoy the show celebrating the miraculous powers of you-know-what. If you haven’t already, sign up for this show now because it’s on the radar of dance aficionados.
“Fun Guy” traces its origins to avant-garde composer John Cage’s encyclopedic knowledge of the fast-growing fungi, which helped him win an Italian game show. He used his prize money to help support the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
Before starting his own eponymous company, Heginbotham spent 14 years as a dancer with Mark Morris Dance Company. The Juilliard grad won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 2018. Since then, Heginbotham has made a name for himself with bold, energetic and humorous works.
It’s hard to take a lighthearted approach to a serious topic like climate change in a community that has suffered three hurricanes this season, two of which wrecked people’s homes and businesses. When Doud was planning her eco fest a year, she didn’t know it was going hit so close to home.
But comedy and tragedy often exist side by side. Anyone who has spent time with first responders, cops reporters and forensic pathologists know they have their own twisted sense of humor. Turns out laughing in the face of death is an effective coping mechanism. It’s also said to help ward off the Devil if he comes calling.
Nevertheless, it takes a special kind of artist to make disaster or war the subject of laughter. But “gallows humor” was a success on TV’s “Hogan’s Heroes” and on the big screen with “Life is Beautiful,” Italian comedian Roberto Benigni’s Oscar-winning “comedy/drama” about the Holocaust.
Musicians have also tried their hand at making light of disaster. When Prince released “Party Like It’s 1999” in 1982, everyone knew it was about the end of the world (“Life is just a party and parties weren’t meant to last”). But the year in the song seemed far away at the time.
When the Millennium finally arrived and a widely predicted computer armageddon didn’t happen, we all breathed a sigh of relief. Y2K was dismissed as another media ploy to grab eyeballs.
But it doesn’t look like we’re going to escape the ravages of climate change so easily. That ole’ Seminole magic that kept Sarasota safe for a century didn’t protect us this time.
How do you get people weary from cleaning up and facing financial losses to laugh about a rapidly warming climate that has the potential to cook us like lobsters?
How do you teach them about less intrusive ways of living — plant-based diets, biking and walking instead of driving, etc. — and protecting themselves from harmful solar rays with a hat, or in this case a SunHAT?
When Doud joined The Ringling in 2019, she set about rebranding the Historic Asolo Theater as the HAT. The venue’s logo now features a pink flamingo wearing with an elegant top hat. That quirky, fun approach informs her programming as well.
Doud knows something about “eco performance fests” as a genre. Before joining The Ringling, she had an eco-performance laboratory called The Mermaid Tear Factory that toured in Brazil, Cuba, and South Florida during 2015-2018.
What’s her recipe? Scour the globe as well as your own backyard for talented artists who tackle uncomfortable topics in a fresh, fun way.
As an example, look no further than SunHat Eco Fest performers Compagnie Zolobe. The three clowns generate a bucketful of laughs in their slapstick efforts to drink a cup of water. Their show is called “Sakasaka,” which means water in Malagasy, the language spoken in their homeland of Madagascar. In case you haven’t heard, H2O is in short supply in some places around the globe.
“With The Ringling’s circus heritage, clowns are a perfect fit for us,” Doud says. When performers use their bodies to convey a message, there’s no language barrier for the audience, she notes.
Another strategy: If you’re trying to reach people who might not normally go to The Ringling, present artists who speak their language and exude a hip vibe. Veganism and hip-hop aren’t things you’d normally put in the same basket. But DJ Kavem does.
Kavem is the star of the SunHAT EcoFest Party on Thursday, Nov. 14. He coined the term “eco-hip-hop” back in 2007 and has been using rap to spread his gospel of climate change, food justice and plant-based foods ever since.
Heginbotham Dance, Compagnie Zolobe and DJ Kavem are just three acts in a fun-filled festival that will feature a keynote address by fringe fest “goddess” Moira Finucane. There’s also more serious fare, like a talk by herbalist Bob Linde on the edible and medicinal landscape.
Despite the panoply of performers, not everyone’s going to get the joke. When the French-Canadian revue LaFamille Goldencrust came for The HAT’s 2023-24 season, some spectators were baffled by the snowbirds' campy (no pun intended) circus acts in front of their trailer.
Maybe the reaction would have been different if the show was free. By making The Ringling’s eco fest pay-what-you-wish, Doud hopes to learn more about what makes Sarasota audiences tick — and laugh.
Humor is tricky. People are easily offended, and these are not the best of times. But they are not the worst of times, either. We can still laugh, dance and sing as we learn to protect our precious natural resources.
