Fox vs Kingdom is a new theater production, an ancient beast epic, based on the darkly funny escapades of Reynard the Fox. As told by a trio of French troubadours using puppetry, dance and live music, animal appetites dominate in this retelling of a medieval blockbuster.
Veering from sweet folk song to operatic satire to salacious tango, we flip through the playbook of puppetry: shadows, crankies, rod puppets, hand puppets, masks. By turns raucous entertainment, gorgeous shadow play, masked dance, this original performance, produced by Studio Reynard, will be launching in October.
It goes something like this: Reynard dupes everyone, devours a few, sweet talks his way out of trouble, and side-steps a sure death by hanging. In the process, he blithely exposes hypocrisy, corruption, greed, lechery, and gluttony, including his own.
The story of Reynard was wildly popular eight centuries ago: the witty outlaw who triumphs over entrenched power through sheer rhetoric had resonance in a violent feudal society with nascent rule of law. We believe it has resonance today: Reynard is a trickster, who muddies the waters between right and wrong, between what we say we want and what we actually do.
We are animals after all.
A show of this scale is a labor of many. In addition to the four artists below, we work with a fantastic production manager and technical director, plus we rely on an army of wildly talented volunteers both for the development of the work and for the shows.
Fox vs Kingdom is our biggest, most ambitious production to date, and has been in progress for over four years!
Our premier performances will be presented Halloween weekend at the Byrdcliffe Theater in Woodstock, NY. If you want to see the final steps of the work in progress, follow us on Instagram! @studioreynard
Developed as part of the Puppet Lab at St. Ann’s Warehouse (NYC), a part of Fox vs Kingdom was seen at the Labapalooza! festival of new puppetry. We also hosted a series of salons called Café Isegrim: we showed scenes in progress while sharing a feast with our community of fans.
We are so grateful to our supporters who have followed this project along its journey, from our local funders and The Jim Henson Foundation, to the essential time provided by residencies at Mount Tremper Arts, and Drop, Forge & Tool.
Plans for the show’s future include touring nationally and even further afield! We are so grateful to you for reading till the end. If you’d like to stay in touch with us, join our mailing list at studio-reynard.com!
Studio Reynard is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Studio Reynard must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.