"Tucker's Robot" - My kid's first show

Editorial
Midway through Yellow Submarine, where he loves the music and artwork enough that he’ll tentatively sit through most of the Blue Meanies sequences.) But aside from the brief encounter with the gorilla, the boy was too enthralled with the experience of live theater to notice the potential bring-downs. It’s a pretty simple story: Dweeby young Tucker finds a time-traveling robot named Ratchet in a garbage bin; the two of them have misadventures in the 1920s, prehistoric times and a robot-dominated future; and Tucker’s experiences give him the courage to confront and befriend the bullies who’ve been hassling him. There was a grin of amazement plastered across my son's face for most of the show. He laughed, even outright squealed, at the funny parts. He readily joined in with the audience participation bits – exchanging high fives with my wife and me to launch each foray into time travel – and eagerly headed down front to see one of the puppeteers demonstrate Ratchet after the show. Watching someone get that invested in a production was downright invigorating. It wasn’t that my son believed any of the performance was “real.” He has a pretty solid grasp on fact vs. fiction, and Tucker isn’t the type of show that aspires to any major illusions of reality. A puppet show isn’t as made-up as one of his cartoons, but it’s less so than, say, story time at the local library. There’s something about that intermediate step that seemed to connect with him on a whole new level. As it turns out, a puppet show is at exactly the right remove for his sensibilities. (And to digress for a moment, how amazing is it to live in a city where high-quality, free children’s puppet theater is a regularly available option? We’ve got it pretty good, folks.) It made me a little envious of the Open Eye performers, to be honest. It must be remarkably rewarding to make art that elicits such primal, unfiltered reactions from the audience. I’ve seen many people laugh at my work, and I’ve even seen a few people cry, but I’ve never written anything that sent someone physically scampering into his mother’s arms. A room full of little viewers spending most of the show on the literal edges of their seats is an exciting thing to see even as part of the crowd. It has to be awesomely validating from the stage. For my son’s part, he hasn’t stopped talking about Tucker's Robot since we left the theater on Saturday. He’s parsed every scene a dozen times over, frequently chiding me for not remembering details as sharply as he does. He’s started making plans for a sequel in which Tucker, Ratchet and the former bullies travel the country having modern-day adventures. When I told him I was writing this article, he suggested that I write him a book about Open Eye Figure Theatre. So yeah, I’d say the lively arts have a new fan. I don’t know that I could give a show higher praise than that.
Headshot of Ira Brooker
Ira Brooker
Ira Brooker is a writer and editor residing in Saint Paul's scenic Midway neighborhood. He holds down a corporate job by day and does freelance and creative work at night. He is a former editor of Minnesota Playlist and has been published in a number of venues both local and national, several of which you may have even heard of. He occasionally prattles on about pop culture at A Talent For Idleness and maintains an archive at irabrooker.com.