Miscellanios Reviews
From Playworks Online
"Karl Baumann gently encourages you to come alive, get out of your self-conscious state and create art with your being. His bright eyes and shy smile make the space safe for expansion. His style of teaching is spontaneous, in the moment. In three quick hours, I moved from feeling lethargic and dull to vibrant. I was in my body, ALIVE, when I left his workshop!!"
- Martha Whitfield
"Like the best teachers, Karl goes beyond conveying what he already knows, embracing and helping to develop the creativity of each student in such a way that everyone in the class learns from him, from each other, and from the synergy of the group. Karl has a kind and adventurous spirit, and my daughter and I are truly delighted to have spent this time learning from him."
- Allison Tobin Clark (and Kelsey Tobin)
"If you saw Karl in Cirque du Soleil QUIDAM or as Puck in TC's MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM or experienced his workshop, you are lucky. He opens the most magical of doors, that secret door behind the door behind the door and allows us to peek into a time-space continuum where you can see imagination come alive where you can taste the colors of creativity; try on a different cloak of movement, swim through an atmosphere of fun, travel beyond the ordinary.
Thanks Karl and thanks PLAYWORKS for the opportunity to play in Karl Baumann's world!"
- Hardin, Massie, & Tucker Minor
"With a dream-like vision that can truly be heralded as such, Umberger has crafted A Midsummer Night's Dream that dances in your head, filling it with magic and yuks alike. The play takes on new brilliance thanks to lucious visual elements and Karl Baumann's stylishly impish Puck. As Baumann flits around on one arm and swings from a dangling center-stage rope, contorting himself into near-unfathomable positions, he unleashes amorous havoc in the Bard's comedic romp. It is among the most magical two hours you'll have short of a slumbering pre-REM state."
- Allison West, Charlotte Theatre Magazine
"Steve Umberger is experimenting with an intriguing new production concept in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He has radically reimagined Puck, brought thrillingly to life by Cirque du Soleil spellbinder Karl Baumann. Each of his entrances and exits is a fresh wonder of acrobatic surprise And Umberger has the young lovers in a fiercely funny slapstick mode during their many scrapes and quarrels."
- Perry Tannenbaum, Creative Loafing
