By Alicia Stemper / Vitamin O
“I follow my visions more than I ever have before,” reports artist and recently retired UNC professor Francesca Talenti. Wants Upon a Time is proof. When asked about her favorite character in Orange County, Talenti did not hesitate. “The ogre in the play.” Patrick Dougherty’s stick sculpture on Hillsborough’s Riverwalk is the setting for the highly collaborative play performed twice each month during Hillsborough’s Last Friday Art Walk series. “It’s a castle in the woods – it’s got to be a fairy tale.” The play features ukulele music written by Jack Herrick (Red Clay Ramblers), lyrics by author Michael Malone, and a potential surprise if a train roars by. It is “child-friendly fun” inspired by commedia dell’arte, a specific style of improvisational comedy. “Because it [the play’s setting] is a sculpture, the audience has to move” says Talenti. The work features four scenes around the five sided structure. Talenti notes, “There is no technology other than an eight foot ladder” making Wants Upon a Time the opposite of The Uncanny Valley, an earlier play Talenti wrote and directed while still at UNC. Uncanny is a play about technology in which one of the key actors is a RoboThespian, a robot from the computer science department. “A robot cannot improvise.”
