The “Monster” is a giant puppet that envelops nearly the whole stage with its spindly arms and massive papier-m?ch? head made out of old issues of The Spectator.
Ki Gottberg and Carol Wolfe Clay pose next to the existential, chain-smoking Frenchmen puppets . “little world” was produced in reverse, meaning Clay’s sets were constructed first, and Gottberg’s story was written around it.
In 2006, Vava Cole noticed swelling in her legs. The 12-year-old developed a strange cough and her gait became abnormal. After six months of appointments, the doctors discovered the cause just in time to save her young life. Only 48 hours from death, the doctors found that an inoperable tumor the size of a phone book had enveloped her heart and collapsed one of her lungs. Although she looked as vibrant as any happy little girl, her body was fighting Hodgkin's lymphoma, cancer of the lymph tissue.
During Cole's nine-month treatment in the cancer ward at the Seattle Children's Hospital, Ki Gottberg, Cole's mother, rarely left her side. Next door, Carol Wolfe Clay moved into her son's hospital room in the rehabilitation ward. For two months, she slept next to him while he recovered from his own tragic accident.
On January 26, 2007, recent Seattle U alum, then a high schooler, Mackenzie Clay went to his last wrestling practice of his senior year. While wrestling with a partner, two heavy weights fell on Clay, crushing his C45 vertebrae. Once his high school's star athlete, the accident paralyzed him from the biceps down.
In response to their children's trauma, Seattle University theatre professors Ki Gottberg and Carol Wolfe Clay found themselves healing in starkly different ways. While Gottberg threw herself into her work, salvaging stage worlds in a way she could not salvage her own, Clay withdrew and could not muster up the energy to design more "big worlds" for stage sets. Instead, she began to imagine a small, fantastical world of kooky characters.
"I really didn't want to do anything except for go home and be in a hole by myself," said Wolfe Clay. "Eventually I started drawing all these little characters and decided what I wanted to do was make a little world, instead of the big world I usually make."
And she did.
Wolfe Clay began designing an imaginary world that slowly lifted her out of depression. She doodled images of dancing teapots and rooms draped with boat sails as she sought refuge from grief. Gottberg then filled Wolfe Clay's world with the story of her own grieving process and breathed life into the puppets. From their pain, the grieving mothers gave birth to the Lee Center's newest play "little world."
Described as "Pee-wee's Playhouse for adults" by its co-creators, "little world" is the story of a woman struggling with grief. The woman constructs an ideal internal world to help her cope with sadness while her friends construct an ideal external world. Her three close friends, who support the lead as if they are her backbone, build the woman a special room she can heal in.
"When you're going through something like this you kind of try to hide it because if you tell people very much they look at you—they avoid you basically," Wolfe Clay said.
Gottberg ran with the idea.
"One of the things I thought would be interesting to explore [in ‘little world'] is what would it be like to be with people who were really trying to stick it out with you while you were struggling," said Gottberg.
The special room the friends construct for the main character is a lively replication of a typical living room that happens to be filled with puppets. Among antique furniture, novelty lamps and bizarre collectibles, the puppets are hidden throughout the set.
Settled on the mantelpiece at the center sit the "Three Smoking Frenchmen." Not unlike the hecklers in the Muppets, the three existentialists chain smoke as they observe and comment on the action unfolding before them.
Although the "Frenchmen" won the unanimous vote for favorite puppets, the rest of the cast is nothing short of eccentric. Four professional actors take on the human roles and operate more than 10 puppets. Some of the most memorable of these include the "Sad Boy," a thin marionette wearing pajamas and bunny slippers, the shimmying fringed "Lizard" and the
Kaillee Coleman, a junior interdisciplinary arts major, assumed a lead role in the two-year construction of the "Suffering Monster." Coleman crafted the Monster's four-by-five foot head out of pool noodles and chicken wire, and then covered the structure in papier-m?ch? made out of old issues of The Spectator.
Alongside a "tight-knit" student crew that worked all summer long to lift the production onto its feet, Coleman feels that "little world" conveys an emotional state that many people can relate to.
"I had an easy time connecting with what was going on in the show," said Coleman. "A lot is about how people deal with events out of their control."
For Cole and Clay, these uncontrollable events do not stop life from going on. Today, 16-year-old Vava Cole is in remission and well on her way to recovery. She is a junior at Garfield High School and aspires to be a photographer. Despite his uprooting accident, Clay graduated high school at the top of his class. He recently earned a chemistry degree from Seattle U and is applying to graduate schools for a doctorate in chemical engineering. He plays quad rugby with the Seattle Slam. Neither one has seen or read the production yet.
"[Vava] just wants it all to be behind her. ‘I'm just a normal kid, mom.' That's what she keeps telling me," Gottberg said.
"I think for both our kids, I know for Mac, it was time to live his life," Wolfe Clay agreed.
Today, Wolfe Clay and Gottberg have been friends for more than 20 years. They frequently finish each other's sentences, joke and brag about each other's children. The special bond formed through shared work and pain is palpable between the two.
"We walk around campus and people get us mixed up all the time," Wolfe Clay said. "When [Mackenzie's accident] happened, not long after, I told Ki, ‘Oh you're so competitive.'"
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