Autumn Ness is ready to clown around with sound. After 23 years as a company member at Children’s Theatre Company, she’s taking a break from spouting speeches on stage and interpreting words written by others.
In fact, for her latest creation, “Babble Lab,” she’s eschewing words altogether — or at least those of any language you’ve heard before. For this 45-minute show designed for the youngest demographic of theatergoers, playwright and performer Ness is having fun as a lab-coat-clad scientist who explores sounds and then oversees a series of experiments in which letters run amok.
And fun it is, if you have a preschooler ready for their first show (or second or third). With the help of imaginative costuming and set design, “Babble Lab” is a brisk, bright bit of clowning that has a lot in common with the mostly wordless but certainly not soundless comedy of Jacques Tati and Rowan Atkinson’s “Mr. Bean.”
So it might surprise you to learn that “Babble Lab” had serious beginnings, as Ness came up with some of its earliest staging ideas while attending the hearing and perception tests that helped determine diagnoses for her two neurodivergent sons. It also leans for inspiration upon the Dada art movement that addressed the chaotic atmosphere of World War I Europe by creating new words and wild modes of performance with uniquely distinctive costuming.
Ness dons her own versions of the latter, courtesy of designer Annie Cady. Most memorable is the attire in which we first find her, an outfit of packing foam and headphones that broadcast outward instead of in. She opens the show by wandering the atrium outside CTC’s Cargill Stage where children and their grownups are gathered, pointing a vuvuzela-style noise maker (a plastic horn) at various walls and sending forth the sounds she detects from beyond, like traffic and toilets.
Then, like a pied piper, Ness’ scientist leads the mostly preschool-aged audience (clad in socks provided by staff in lab coats) into the theater, which feels very much like a play space for this play.
In many ways, “Babble Lab” seems a spoof of the kid-friendly “Mr. Wizard” TV science programs of yore, as our host and protagonist makes sounds with various objects — balloons, paper, keys, chattering plastic teeth — then tosses them into a canister in which they’re cooked into letters.
Some of the concoctions end up inside Ness, but she spews them out onto a screen, interacting with the projections of Jorge Cousineau in a kind of live action and cartoon combo. At one point, we’re even brought into close contact with her tonsils via a projected film.
It’s a show that’s all about imagination and, above all, clowning. And Ness proves quite skilled at it, director Sarah Agnew succeeding as a midwife for the zaniness in this comical creation, which takes place within a surrealist laboratory designed by Open Eye Theatre founder Michael Sommers.
While there are gags that will work for the accompanying adults, this is a show clearly designed for the youngest. But Ness’ earnest, often exasperated scientist has some serious clowning chops to show off. And that can be delightful for any age.
Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.
‘Babble Lab’
- When: Through April 14
- Where: Children’s Theatre Company, 2400 Third Ave. S., Minneapolis
- Tickets: $17-$26, available at 612-874-0400 or childrenstheatre.org
- Capsule: Designed for the youngest among us, it’s a fine fit for any kid who enjoys good clowning.
