Photo Flash: First Look at Cave Dogs' SURE-MINDED UNCERTAINTIES, Coming to New Orleans Fringe

The 2012 New Orleans Fringe Festival presents Cave Dogs performance of Sure-minded Uncertainties. The five-day festival runs from November 14th-18th. Get a first look at the production in the photos below!

The New Orleans Fringe presents original, unusual and innovative theater of all types from New Orleans and all over the country. Cave Dogs performances are at the Old Firehouse on Mandeville, which has a rich history with the performing arts.

Cave Dogs performances consist of innovative, large-scale shadow projections cast onto a screen from sculptures, props, costumes, and the human body. Dynamic cast shadows move in concert with projected video imagery, spoken narrative, and an original soundtrack to create multiple, richly layered imagery. Cave Dogs tells life stories by creating visual tableaus, and creates effects that conjure both the dreamlike quality of early experimental film and the humor of contemporary animation – all of which charm, challenge, and captivate a diverse audience of adults and children alike.

Cave Dogs’ current production, Sure-minded Uncertainties, explores science, technology and nature through the alternative lenses of micro and macro perspectives, situations and experiences. A range of fantastical characters and modern day archetypes, including a scientist, a naturalist, an ancient wise woman, a tailor and a chrysalis, navigate a series of transformations throughout four scenes. The performance presents vibrant storytelling; merging ancient traditions, shadow puppet theatre and contemporary art forms - including film, video, sound, and computer-generated animation.

The text, visual imagery, and sounds weave together to create a rich multi-media artifact that documents, preserves, and celebrates important cultural voices and stories. The exploration of this landscape is part documentary and, in the tradition of Cave Dogs, part fictionalized realism developed through extensive research, live recordings, and written preservation of oral traditions.

Cave Dogs members are Suzanne Stokes, James Fossett, Ted Conway, Douglas Keller, Adam Mastropaolo and Maria Jansdotter-Farr. Dean Jones created the soundtrack.

Cave Dogs performances include Sure-minded Uncertainties (2010), Archaeology of a Storm. (2008), Ferrous City (2002), How to Build a Raft (1998), Emily's Circus (1994), Sustenance (1993), Fall of Perception (1992), and Shadows of Doubt and Other Precarious Truths (1991).

New York performances include Power House Theater at Vassar College, The Woodstock Fringe Festival, P.S. 122 (NYC), Henry Street Settlement (NYC), HERE (NYC), The Woodstock Comeau Property, The Widow Jane Mine and the Julien J. Studley Theatre and McKenna Theatre at SUNY New Paltz. Other performances included extended runs at Mobius (Boston), as well as engagements at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), The Massachusetts College of Art, The Cambridge Multicultural Art Center and Boston College and The Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, NM. International performances include, The Malmo (Sweden) Cultural Festival, The Grand Ol & Mat (Malmo, Sweden), Friskolen 70 (Copenhagan, Denmark).