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Italo wants to make some money. He’s got ideas, a pocketful of tutti-frutti and a street organ he bought on ebay. What he doesn’t have is a cooperative monkey. Will she play? Will she dance? Will this monkey ever get funky?

nakupelle’s new show is part slapstick, part Italian Commedia, classic European Street Theatre and a bit of the Animal Channel.

nakupelle (a Finnish word meaning “naked fool”) is a Finnish / American duo based in Europe. Joe & Minna Dieffenbacher formed the company in 1992 to create original work based on popular theatre forms – circus, slapstick, mime, mask and puppetry. Our desire is to create theatre that is universal, comic and poetic. To create worlds where even the most serious audience loosens up, laughing like children or staring in wonder.

Background: Monkey Bizness was originally part of a larger production called Circsophrenic. It was too ambitious for just two actors so we extracted Italo and his monkey and this show was born. Inspiration came from two masks in our collection: a half mask Chimp, and a commedia dell'arte mask based on the character of Brighella, a greedy thief who is sometimes a house servant. The idea of making him a street organ grinder seemed natural and though he started out as a simpleton who just wanted to play his beloved organ while his monkey danced, eventually the mask's true character surfaced and he became a greedy capitalist who just wanted to make some "money-money-money." For the monkey characterization and movement we spent nights watching the show, "Monkey Business" on the Animal Channel. Various websites provided ideas for the look of the organ while the music is a mix of street organ tunes, scratch beats devised by the Dutch artist Kyspki and music by Dr. Funkstein.