ABOUT

Carnival of the Animals: Broken Aquarium is a performance by Every house has a door and Essi Kausalainen and surveys an impossible ecosystem of endangered or extinct sea creatures. With handmade costumes by Finnish artist, Essi Kausalainen and live music by Tim Kinsella and Jenny Pulse, a transformation from human into hybrid entity takes place, with the intricacies of non-human life at its foundation.

In 2018, Every house has a door director Lin Hixson and dramaturg Matthew Goulish initiated The Carnival of the Animals, a multi-year collaboration with Helsinki-based artist Essi Kausalainen. The project set out to follow the 14-movement structure of Camille Saint-Saëns’s 1886 musical suite for children, devising a corresponding original performance work in response to each of the titles, following those imaginative classifications while focusing on endangered species and the concept of extinction. The first of this series of modular performances was in response to the seventh movement in the suite titled Aquarium. With a commission from the Croatian National Theatre Ivan Zajc Rijecka, it was intended to premiere in Croatia in September 2020 with an international group of performers and collaborators. The premiere was subsequently delayed and then canceled in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Eventually, work recommenced on what would become Broken Aquarium and was presented by the Chicago Parks District Night Out in the Parks at the Humboldt Park Boathouse on September 11, 2022.

Development of Broken Aquarium was made possible by support from The MacArthur Funds for Art and Culture and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts FCA Emergency Grants COVID-19 Fund, and the Croatian National Theatre Ivan Zajc Rijecka & Rijeka 2020 — European Capital of Culture.