UGB in the Press
The Unseen Ghost Bridage is a group of six actors traveling on the Mississippi River. They are making more than 100 stops along the river to perform for people.
The Unseen Ghost Brigade is performing Friday at 5:30 pm at 4255 Arsenal Street, just outside the St. Louis City Open Studio and Gallery Building.
Keep up with their travels at www.unseenghostbrigade.org.
Street theater floats down the Mississippi on a custom made raft
By Richard Chin Pioneer Press Updated: 07/19/2010 09:14:51 AM CDT
A troupe of floating players are they,
Not stars like L.B. Mayer's are they,
But just a crazy group,
That never ceases to troop,
Along the length of the Mississippi.
They opened in Minneapolis. They next played in Hastings. Then on to Red Wing.
And so went the first legs of the long voyage of a band of six 20-something actors, musicians, puppeteers and clowns based out of the Twin Cities who are drifting on a raft down the Mississippi, dispensing impromptu street theater along the way.
Last spring, the group spent a couple of months building their boat out of three aluminum pontoons and a Dumpster find of scrapped wood from a set of high school bleachers.
They scavenged oars, paddles and poles and a 1965 Evinrude 40-horsepower outboard engine to power the 24-foot vessel.
Then they loaded it with costumes, puppets, fire batons, stilts, wigs, red noses, a violin, a kazoo, an accordion, ukuleles, bicycles, fishing poles and a camp stove. They christened the vessel the Riff Raft.
And in late June, they set off.
Their mission is to stop in river towns large and small from here to New Orleans and perform in parks, on the street and in taverns.
They call themselves the Unseen Ghost Brigade because each of the six performers is portraying the ghost of a historical character who lived along the river, including Mark Twain, river bandit John Murrell and murdered prostitute Diamond Bessie.
Combining traditional music, storytelling, puppetry, circus arts, clowning and physical theater, the actors plan to weave stories of their characters' lives and deaths with stories about the waterway.
"The ghosts tell their stories, have conflict with each other, and comment on the present as well as reveal the past," according to the group's website, unseenghostbrigade.org.
"What we are focusing on a lot is the state of the river and how it's abused and controlled by the forces of industry," added Walken Schweigert, co-artistic director of the project.
Schweigert, a 22-year-old from St. Paul, said the idea for the project started a couple of years ago when he was considering joining a circus troupe touring on a boat along the western coast of Europe.
Schweigert's dad said why go all the way to Europe when the Mississippi was rolling along right here.
The budget for the three- to six-month trip is about $30,000; about half is devoted to making a documentary of the trip.
The money is being raised by donations and benefit shows and by passing the hat after performances. Help has also come in the form of contributions by local businesses or even strangers, including gear, hardware, food and lodging.
"A lot of people just believe in this kind of thing," said Chad Stender, the other co-artistic director of the project. "A lot of people say this is the kind of trip they would've liked to do when they were young."
There have been a few hitches in the first few weeks.
Schweigert suffered a mild concussion during a rehearsal mishap. A pontoon sprung a leak. They've been slammed by thunderstorms. The outboard conked out. The raft smacked into the wall of Lock and Dam No. 2 near Hastings, and they had to accept a tow from the lock operators.
Group members said a Coast Guard inspector declared their boat structurally sound. But "leak management is a continual preoccupation here on the Riff Raft," according to an e-mail from the group.
"The river is certainly disciplining us and whipping us into shape. Most of us being uncompromising romantics, we have been given a good strong dose of reality these past few days."
During their stop at Maiden Rock, Wis., the boat was hit by yet another storm that rolled across Lake Pepin.
"Get the valuables to the middle of the boat," shouted Stender as the performers tied down tarps shielding the raft's little cabin from the rain.
The actors, smeared with tar from fixing roof leaks earlier in the day, then jostled in the rocking boat trying to share hand mirrors to apply ghostly white makeup as they got into character.
"There are certain luxuries that other troupes have that we have not," Schweigert said. "Like mirrors."
"And makeup artists," said Aaron Barck, a Minneapolis actor who portrays a tramp.
The performers and one crewmember sleep on the little boat when they aren't camping on islands or in riverside parks or dozing in donated lodging.
"We've made ourselves very self-sufficient," Stender said. "We're committed to the boat, and we live there."
Before they headed out, the group participated in three mediation training sessions to help them deal with conflicts along the river.
The Unseen Ghost Brigade's performances, featuring "lots of noise and music," have been met with a combination of puzzlement and enthusiasm, Stender said.
"We tend to walk around town in character and play music for people," he said.
Their traveling show might sound like "The Royal Nonesuch" from "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
But group members, whose training includes study at Dell'Arte International School for Physical Theatre and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, said their work is influenced by everything from absurdism to commedia dell'arte to Buster Keaton.
Part of the group's goal is to bring theater to places that don't ordinarily have or expect it.
"We busked at a bar the other night. I highly doubt they've ever had people like us busk in that bar," said Rachel "Olli" Johnson, a 24-year-old theater artist from Minneapolis.
"There's a lot of people who are both totally confused, totally surprised and totally love it," said Augustin Ganley, a 23-year-old performer and filmmaker from Minneapolis.
Richard Chin can be reached at 651-228-5560.
DriftlessMusic.com: Meet the Unseen Ghost Brigade
August 13, 2010
Meet the Unseen Ghost Brigade: a theater ensemble dedicated to the proliferation of communal joy through the arts that is currently in the midst of an ambitious 2,000 mile performance-journey down the Mississippi River on a raft. Utilizing street theatre to infiltrate everyday life, each member of the group has assumed the persona of a character based on various archetypal, vagabond-like characters. The result is a spontaneously delightful public fusion of acting, comedy, puppetry, music, acrobatics, and other art forms that manages to infiltrate everyday life, connect people, and reclaim the river culture of yore.
Beginning in Minneapolis, where the group originates, they've spent the last week or so in La Crosse, WI. Running into motor problems, their stay in La Crosse was longer than expected. But whatever went awry has been remedied and the Brigade just posted an update yesterday stating they've reached Lansing, IA. Talking with co-artistic directors Walken Schweigert and Chad Stender via phone earlier this week, they're planning to stop for sure in Prairie du Chein, WI in the next couple days; hoping to perform around St. Feriole Island and / or the Main Entrance.
Unseen Ghost Brigade set to raft down the Mississippi
BY SHEILA REGAN, TC DAILY PLANET - April 1, 2010
This summer, a theatrical troupe of circus-performing ghosts, will be rafting down the Mississippi River. Well, okay, they aren't really ghosts...but Walken Schweigert, an artistic director of the Unseen Ghost Brigade, says the performers will be utilizing a technique called "transformational characterization," which means that even as the group of five performers and one cook anchor their raft at the various towns along the river, they'll maintain their ghost characters.
"It's not like we land and become the ghosts," says Schweigert. "We want the audience to believe the ghosts are traveling and doing the show." Of course, when the troupe reaches larger cities, they may be spending several days to regroup, and in that case they may have to lose their characters, but she said it is entirely possible that when they stop at some of the smaller towns, that they will spend the entire time setting up, performing, and taking down the show as their characters.
Augustin Ganley, playing the role of John Murrell, gets help from fellow members of the Unseen Ghost Brigade to get back on his stilts Sunday during their performance of "Renegade Phantasms or the Shadow Cast Along the Banks of the Mississippi" at Sobieski Park in Winona. The group of performers from Minneapolis is traveling to New Orleans by raft, stopping when they can to perform. Jake Rajewsky/Winona Daily News
Not stars like L.B. Mayer's are they,
But just a crazy group,
That never ceases to troop,
Along the length of the Mississippi.
"The ghosts tell their stories, have conflict with each other, and comment on the present as well as reveal the past," according to the group's website, unseenghostbrigade.org.
"What we are focusing on a lot is the state of the river and how it's abused and controlled by the forces of industry," added Walken Schweigert, co-artistic director of the project.
Group members said a Coast Guard inspector declared their boat structurally sound. But "leak management is a continual preoccupation here on the Riff Raft," according to an e-mail from the group.
"The river is certainly disciplining us and whipping us into shape. Most of us being uncompromising romantics, we have been given a good strong dose of reality these past few days."
During their stop at Maiden Rock, Wis., the boat was hit by yet another storm that rolled across Lake Pepin.