A Parka, a House, a Tree — and a World in Flux
What happens to a parka without a body? To a house that can’t stay put? To a tree who orbited the moon?
For her latest work-in-progress, Torry Bend is letting go of the single, sweeping narrative. Instead, she has built a trio of self-contained puppetry-based vignettes bound by the shared theme of exploring change not as loss but as something generative — even hopeful.
Set squarely in the Anthropocene (our current geological period, defined by the changes human activity imposes on Earth), “Tilt/Shift” has a notable lack of human characters. Instead, protagonists are played by familiar objects once embedded in human systems but now void of human ownership. But Bend isn’t interested in a post-apocalyptic spectacle. Rather, she clears away the human presence to look at what remains.
Designed to originally keep a trapper warm in the frigid North, a forgotten parka now questions what it means to exist without a human to protect. A house, built to remain fixed and grounded, confronts the reality that staying put will threaten its survival. And a tree, grown from a seed carried aboard Apollo 14 and later planted on Earth, quietly holds an extraordinary past that no passerby could assume.
For Bend, professor of the practice in Theater Studies, “Tilt/Shift” signals a recalibration — not only in form but also in function. She credits this mindset shift to her interdisciplinary collaborations with Bass Connections, the Ready, Set, Resilience curriculum and Arts+ Resilience Through Puppetry. Working within those partnerships has reshaped her understanding of impact and inspired her to reflect on the reach of the work and what it means to be culturally active within smaller, local communities.
“I want to start challenging the assumptions that ‘exceptional’ theater only happens in big cities and major arts institutions,” she shares. “I intentionally designed a production that can travel lightly — to schools, community centers or traditional stages — to offer a model defined by responsiveness, relationship and shared resilience, rather than geography or scale.”
Bend describes “Tilt/Shift” as deliberately intimate, employing tabletop and toy theater forms — including crankies and scrolling panoramas — to draw audiences into close proximity. The three shorter pieces are also designed for flexibility. They can stand alone in separate venues or come together as a single, evening-length performance. “There’s something appealing and doable about bringing one vignette into a space like a farmers market or library,” Bend notes, “while still having the option to gather all three into a fuller theatrical experience.”
Still a work in progress, she sees the piece not as a finished statement but as an ongoing exchange, with structured opportunities for audience feedback following each performance. In this current moment defined by climate anxiety and uncertainty, “Tilt/Shift” resists spectacle in favor of attentiveness. It reframes change not as disruption or loss but as a constant and creative force — if only we are willing to shift our perspective.
