Bottom Feeders - The Battle of the Cataplasm, Episode 1

Flavio Merlo and Ben Rosenthal are the recipients of the Kadist – Kunsthalle Zürich Production Award, offered for the third time to young Swiss artists by the Kadist Art Foundation and Kunsthalle Zürich. Merlo and Rosenthal utilized this grant to conceive and realize Bottom Feeders – The Battle of the Cataplasm, a puppet play staging a crime plot for ten puppets and three stages.

Paul and Ted, two idiots, encounter a dying puppet. A murder, a second, a third. A letter under suspicion. Because comprehending signs may be a deadly virtue. While “bottom feeders“ (a residue-eating fish, or, more colloquially, a creep) eke out a rather miserable living on the expense of others, the cataplasm (a balmy wet pack) entails the capacity to cure. Performed by two actors Bottom Feeders – The Battle of the Cataplasm involves existential contradictions, communicative confusions, and corporeal thresholds.