It’s a perfect summer evening, the kind which Chicagoans suffer through bitter freezing winter nights for, one which justifies a year-long residence here. The humidity makes it hot, but the lake effect breeze from Lake Michigan keeps it comfortable. While a cloud or two might darken the sky, it’s the absence of any planes jetting to and from the airports makes it picturesquely serene. Walking down the street, I approach an entrance to The 606, a portion of the long-defunct Bloomingdale train line tracks that runs east/west across the city which been transformed into an elevated park trail. (Yes, picturing The High Line in NYC is a fair approximation, but The 606 is narrower with a welcome lack of buildings preventing it from being overshadowed.)
When entering The 606, I take the path to reach the Exelon Observatory yet with no clearly marked signs, there’s little direction on where to go. Fortunately, asking for directions won’t be required because it’s impossible to miss the woman sticking out from the over twenty-foot-tall black hoop skirt atop an artificially-made hilltop on the trail. When approaching, I spot other out-of-place elements such as people with a metal bar strapped to their backs that arches over their heads and holds an electrically lit chandler and, wait, is that a Minotaur using a cane?
Without a doubt I’ve found the site for Cabinet of Curiosity’s latest event, Reflections on Fire: Extinguishing Old Ideas. Under the direction of Frank Maugeri and Tanji Harper, Reflections on Fire is a collaboration between fifty artists with specialties ranging from dance to engineering and everything in between using puppetry, costumes, and truly unique home-made theatrical devices to create self-described “ritual.” In making my way to the end of the line forming for the ritual, I take note that the observatory has its own pathway meticulously gardened with flowers and flora that spirals around to the peak. Seeing people dressed in black suits wearing massive, feathered crow masks, the visual tableau evokes the sensation of being part of a Greek fable. The audience transformed into mere mortals preparing for a journey up Mount Olympus.
I watch Maugeri make his way down the spiral path and whisper to a woman sitting at a tiny wooden desk with a rotary phone and closed suitcase. With an acknowledging nod, she beckons the first person in line forward. As each audience member interacts with the woman, general passersby slow their pace to point and look, bikers skid to a halt to pull out their phones and snap a shot. One person goes to sit on top of a nearby covered garbage can to watch from afar. The extraordinariness of Reflections on Fire has caught them off guard and they can’t help but stop and gaze with wonderment. I feel like the luckiest of peasants to be invited up to the land of the Gods.
Reaching the front of the line, I sit as the woman asks my name which she provides to whoever is on the other end of the phone. With a slight nod, she puts her hand on the receiver and asks if I’m ready. With my confirmation she provides a rolled-up piece of paper from the suitcase, motioning me to head up to the peak. I unroll the paper to find it’s the program providing all the necessary information but I quickly forget about it as I encounter several people on the path reciting fables detailing struggle and loses. The performers reciting these fables do so on a loop, never breaking. When I’m close enough to listen, I figure out where I came in, where the fable ends, and where it begins. This fractured storytelling forces me to piece together what they’re saying to draw my own conclusions, perfectly setting the expectation that I’m to mine these things out myself. With each step forward, there is a growing expectation of what’s to come around the bend.
In reaching the observatory’s peak, I’m directed to sit down with someone wearing a shirt that says “YOU ARE NOT WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE” with a manual typewriter in front of them. They pointedly ask me what I wish to be rid of and I easily respond with the critical and mean way that I evaluate my worth. They type in my response swiftly and pull out the paper, folding it up as they stand and turn around, the back of their shirt reading “I AM NOT WHO YOU THINK I AM.” They move to a tall, lean chimney of stacked together bricks where a fire burns. They drop my response into the fire, quickly burning it up with everyone else’s burdens. They return, giving me a finger-size capped bottle holding a sheet of paper inside that reads “Flourish” and “Grow.”
It’s in this moment I have the only worthwhile religious experience in my life thanks to Reflections on Fire. I was raised in Catholicism in the Midwest but quickly threw in the towel for the typical reasons, and then dabbled in Buddhism while at college like a hipster thanks to the ideas of looking inward for answers. A main reason I dropped out of both was due to the removed, impersonal, and aged ceremonies they use to explore one’s faith. Yet with Reflections on Fire, the choices were my own to make, allowing me to spend as little or as much time engaged in these open-ended rituals where the deep emotions to be explored were my own.
After receiving my bottle, I’m encouraged to stay at the top of the observatory as long as I want, which I quickly did by grabbing a spot to sit. For the next forty minutes, I simply sat there thinking about what I had experienced while observing dance performances, being serenaded by the woman in the tall of the black hoop dress, and engaged in miming with one of the crows. I was constantly in awe of each element as it unfolded around me, letting this summer pagan experience celebrate oneself rather than a church; reminding how little someone is in regards to the powers of faith and those who wield it.
Yet for a deeply thought out and carefully planned experience, Reflections on Fire had no formalized dismount prepared to bring the ritual to a close. As it neared the top of the hour, Maugeri announces they were going to take a break to reset for the next show and asked if we kindly leave so the next group of audience members can ascend the observatory. For an experience that was deeply immersive, his announcement felt like someone turning on the house lights up to full seconds after the last line of a play was spoken without a curtain fall, leaving no time for the audience to come down from the ending. While it was clear that he was serving the role of stage manager for Reflections on Fire all dressed in black, I feel there must have been a stronger way to transition us out of the ritual.
When making my way down from the observatory’s peak, the show’s over announcement was the farthest thing from my mind, returning inward to all the engaging interactions I had in this ritual. In the span of an hour, Reflections on Fire: Extinguishing Old Ideas did exactly what its title states; I shed my old baggage of self-worth into the fire, allowing misused space within myself to open up thanks to Cabinet of Curiosity’s deeply rewarding ritual. In creating a deeply spiritual space where the more the audience puts more of themselves in, the more rewarding and personal the experience Cabinet of Curiosity provides in return.
Reflections on Fire: Extinguishing Old Ideas will return for a one night only performance on December 15.
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