A childhood love of Disney cartoons and growing up amid the marvelous fantasies of Venice’s annual carnival led to 57-year-old Italian comedian Ennio Marchetto’s unique career.
He went from entertaining family and friends with imitations of Marilyn Monroe in paper dresses to producing carnival costumes and masks.
Working in his father’s repair shop, Marchetto knew there had to be more for him than fixing expresso machines, and he began working on a comedy routine that combined mime, lip-synching and dance.
Photo courtesy of Ennio Marchetto
From local appearances around Venice, he developed a cabaret show featuring well-known Italian personalities and others, and then began to land spots on Italian television.
A few years later he began working with Dutch fashion and costume designer Sosthen Heenkam — who developed the origami technique that makes the rapid costume and hairpiece changes possible — and who helped Marchetto create enough characters that he could lip-sync through a full-length show.
The paper and cardboard costumes are cartoonish in their color palette and simplicity, but each centers on an iconic feature of the person or persons he is imitating.
Photo courtesy of Ennio Marchetto
His first appearance at the Edinburgh Festival helped put him on the international circuit, and for years he has made regular appearances in the UK and Germany, while traveling to scores of other countries.
His list of characters now numbers more than 300, ranging from movie stars and singers of all types to world leaders, famous paintings and painters.
Where else but in Marchetto’s The Living Paper Cartoon could one hope to see Mona Lisa, Disney’s Snow White, Beyonce, Queen Elizabeth, Edward Scissorhands or Elvis all in one show — or Doris Day morph into Dolly Parton astride a donkey or Liza Minelli turning into the Statue of Liberty as she belts out New York, New York? Then there is his cosmic shift from a white evening gown-clad Celine Dion into the Titanic.
Photo courtesy of Ennio Marchetto
Morph should be the technical term for his quick-change artistry, because with a fold of a piece of paper here, a pull-out there, a flip of a frock from front to back and turning around his headpiece, Marchetto shifts effortlessly from one character to another, rarely leaving the stage during his show.
He has finally brought The Living Paper Cartoon to Taiwan, where he will be appearing at the Cloud Gate Theater in New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水) for three shows, starting tonight.
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