The Immortal Jellyfish Girl’s ecological tone
By Katlynn Leon ’25, A&E Contributor
This weekend kicked off Hamilton College’s 2024 Performing Arts Series. The Wellin and Hamilton College’s Theatre Department invited Wakka Wakka Productions to perform their award-winning puppet show,
The Immortal Jellyfish Girl. Along with two performances of the show, Wakka Wakka Productions hosted a puppetry workshop Thursday, Jan. 25 for Hamilton College students to learn more about the art of puppetry. The two performances that followed were well-attended by campus and community members alike. Though Friday’s show competed with Citrus Bowl, Saturday’s show was nearly sold out.
The Immortal Jellyfish Girl is a visually stunning show that combines puppetry, projection, and original music in a dystopian coming-of-age story. From the very start of the show, it is clear that this will be an incredibly unique journey. A man in a fox costume stumbles onto the stage and immediately breaks the fourth wall before barking at audience members. Once the audience is slightly uncomfortable, Fox assumes his role as narrator. The true main character of the show is Aurelia, the immortal jellyfish girl.
Aurelia is living on Earth in the 26thcentury after the planet has been irreparably wrecked by radiation and ecological disaster. Though Fox reminds us that she is above all else “100% puppet,” Aurelia is a Homo Animalis with traces of kangaroo, frog, naked mole rat and much more. What makes Aurelia even more special is that she can generate polyps that grow into various animals, which makes her a ray of hope in this post-apocalyptic wasteland. In this universe, the evolved Homo Animalis are at war with the machine-enhanced Homo Technalis.
Currently, the Homo Technalis are in control and have isolated the Homo Animalis from their kind. Despite this, Bug, a Homo Technalis, meets Aurelia and falls in love. Their kiss is passionate, especially for pup-
pets. Just as every pair of star-crossed lovers before them, Aurelia and Bug are convinced that they can truly change this world and end the war.
Just from this brief description, it is clear that The Immortal Jellyfish Girl is doing a lot. It is juggling various heavy themes from ecological disaster to the control individuals have over their fate to forbidden love. The question is, do they handle this well? At times, the show felt like it was all over the place. Fox called characters from a rubber chicken or lobster phone to attempt to manipulate the plot or get the answers he wanted. Yet, the answers he wanted did not necessarily resolve the confusing plot holes. The further into the two hours the story progressed, the harder it was to follow. Then it ended in an unsettling place. An ending that forces audiences to consider their autonomy and role in ecological harm.
From a purely visual perspective, this show was aesthetically intriguing and unlike anything I have ever seen before. In a truly magical experience, everything on stage comes to life with movement and projections. All the set pieces are attached to wheels that allow each piece to spin and convey travel through time or locations. These set pieces are then transformed with projections or grassy decor that were introduced and removed like a puppet itself. The puppets themselves also had incredible range. Some puppets were disembodied heads and others were human-sized animals or robots. Regardless of size, each puppet came to life with the way they walked and talked. Each of the puppeteers involved in this production were incredibly talented.
While the show was filled with funny moments and incredibly compelling visual storytelling, I was most impressed by the final scene. As Fox is telling the audience how this story was “supposed to end” a scenic representation of the immortal jellyfish falls from the
ceiling.
As the jellyfish pulse, the lighting shifts, and the audience is forced to confront the tragic ending of The Immortal Jellyfish
Girl. Even if this play was easy to lose track of, The Immortal Jellyfish Girl succeeded as a uniquely bold and visually stunning.
