Kid Koala’s ‘Nufonia Must Fall’ meshes music, film with puppetry

The dimly lit stage hosted a bustling 13-man team composed of cameramen switching angles, musicians harmonizing and puppeteers directing miniature characters.

When the audience’s gaze shifts upward, the hectic scene completely transforms fluidly to black and white film.

The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA will present “Nufonia Must Fall” in Royce Hall on Friday. Based on the graphic novel by turntablist Eric San, widely known as Kid Koala, the performance chronicles a tone-deaf robot in his attempts to woo his human love interest, while grappling with his more technologically-sophisticated robot foe.

The performance is directed by K.K. Barrett, who has worked on production design for films such as “Her” and “Where the Wild Things Are,” and features an original music score performed live by Kid Koala and the Afiara Quartet.

“Nufonia Must Fall” originated from a bad case of writer’s block while San was working on his first novel in early 2000. Discouraged, he turned from writing to drawing, his default art form. In 2003, San completed a gray scale robot tale, told almost entirely through graphic illustration.

“Instead of 100 pages it was 350-plus pages, and instead of 10,000 words it was about zero words,” San said.

A longtime fan of Barrett’s cinematic work, San decided to mail him a copy of the novel, hoping to spur a collaboration. While in Los Angeles, the two discussed ideas and ultimately decided to pursue the more daring of the performance angles they drew up, San said.

The final product was a trio of artistic elements with a twist – music, puppetry and film melded into one, but created on a 30-foot projector screen in real time in front of an audience. The performance has since been touring cities in the U.S. and internationally for nearly two and a half years.

Bringing a film-like quality to San’s wordless tale and condensing the story would prove to be quite the task. Barrett ultimately took the quietest direction of all – a silent film, to prompt the audience’s engagement with the characters and their lives.

“It’s easy to be entertaining with a splash, but this is quieter and has a bit more depth to it than just your normal, in-your-face performance,” he said.

The construction of 20 miniature sets, just two feet in width to house eight inch puppets or smaller, proved critical for rendering San’s original graphics.

“When we scaled it down, what we gained was incorporating a lot of scenes from the book – beautiful helicopter shots flying over the city, or train shots – things you could probably never do, even on a pristine stage,” San said.

The musical performance traces the emotional changes and romantic relationship of the characters, as well as their moment-to-moment interactions, San said.

“Every night has room for improvisation. It’s not locked, we don’t have a metronome in our ears,” San said.

Barrett emphasized improvisation for the performance’s live cinematography and puppetry. The performance is constantly changing and scenes are often cut or tweaked live, which keeps the performers on their toes, Barrett said.

While the performance itself may be complex, the simplicity of the story captivated Meryl Friedman, the director of education and special initiatives for CAP.

“That notion of the innocence of a doodle and where a doodle can take your imagination and your creativity is what makes it so approachable,” she said.

In the past, CAP has shown a number of puppetry, music and film pieces. “Nufonia Must Fall” is one of the first times all of the elements come together, Friedman said.

San said he aimed to portray a world in which characters’ thoughts and fears hinder their ability to simply enjoy life. After all, “Nufonia” is a play on words – “no fun” spelled backwards, with an added city-like suffix, San said.

“In a more philosophical sense, it’s this idea of a state of mind,” San said. “Nufonia can be in your own head.”