AMERICAN STINK BUG by Jean Minuchin
A play in progress

​The “American Stink Bug” is a multidisciplinary, audience interactive play and political satire. This highly visual play, includes clown, storytelling, video, and puppetry. The protagonist, a mere insect has been sent to determine humanities fate and takes on various human personas during the task. Puppetry appears throughout in a spider marionette, a masked cockroach, a shadow puppet show, an animation of politicians on warheads. In this playful disturbing romp, the theme progresses from cultural divides in America to the sinister disconnection with the planet itself. The arc of the show touches on consequences of war, climate change and the fragility of Earth in a vast universe. How can these topics be humorous? Only the clown can coax the audience to this precarious edge, of hiding from and seeking truth.