The 63rd National Puppetry Festival of the
Puppeteers of America at the University of Connecticut on August 10-16, 2015
offered its participants the series of critical discussions, “Critical
Exchange.” I had the privilege to be a panelist for the discussion
on the state of puppetry for children called “Child’s Play.” Before we met, our moderator had sent us an
e-mail with a few questions and the suggestion that we exchange ideas to warm
up before the meeting. This inspired me to record some thoughts.
I would like to share them here. I made some cuts and edits to the letter I
sent to my co-panelist, and I asked two of my friends to give this text
editorial attention. I am grateful to
Margaret Moody and MaryBall Opie.
The discussion was introduced in the program
by this short paragraph:
“In the United States and many other
countries around the world, puppetry has
primarilly been seen as an art form addressing children. But how does it
address them? What possibilities exist for children’s puppetry that have yet to
me mined?”
And now the sketch of my thoughts.
LESSER FORM
I was motivated to
sign up for our discussion in large part by the
popular American view that puppet theatre for children
is a lesser art form.
Children are defenseless against bad art. They want to like what parents or
teachers want them to like, and when parents or teachers
take them to see a poorly made show they may enjoy and applaud
it despite its inferior quality.
Nonetheless, we have many examples of the most amazing
puppetry created for children, just as we have fine art, music,
literature, and theatre for children of the highest artistic
standards." There is not much sense in doing or aiming
toward something lesser when working for children. To approach the
work for children with agreement on producing shows of condescending mediocrity would be
self-destructive and degrading for an artist.
WHAT POSSIBILITIES EXIST FOR CHILDREN’S PUPPETRY THAT
HAVE YET TO BE MINED?
All possibilities, those well known and those yet to
be discovered need to be mined PRACTICAL POSSIBILITIES IN MY NATIVE POLAND
This is so different in U.S. than in my native Poland. In Poland, well-supported, mostly municipal, puppet theaters, most of them with their own buildings and ensembles of
20 to 70 highly skilled artists,
administrators, managers and technicians serve children in schools on
a daily basis and the general public on weekends. They have actor
puppeteers, director puppeteers, artists designing and artists building
puppets, and other separate categories of professionals such as carpenters, set
builders, seamstresses and specialist in papier-mâché, so I guess the
productions look a little more like those on Broadway. In
Poland, puppeteers are actors. When they get their jobs in the theatre they
are often set for life. There is not much reason there to ask questions
about practical possibilities. They are mostly there, in these well-supported
institutions. Artists can focus on
exploring artistic possibilities instead of trying to figure out where, with
whom, and in what kind of circumstances to do what they want to
do. Public recognition of the value
of puppetry for children is strong.
FIGURING
OUT
In the United
States, a puppeteer is a very different artist
than in my native Poland where I grew up, was
educated, and spent 20 years of my professional career. In the U.S.,
a puppeteer has to figure out how to be a puppeteer. Here we are often artists, designers,
builders, directors, performers, managers, administrators, marketing
specialists and technicians. We have to find or create our own place in
the universe. American reality is much more flexible, maybe
much more challenging, but also more open to our new ideas. A single prevailing national standard for
practicing puppetry does not exist. Each
of us has to carve his or her place in a fast-changing reality. We seek practical opportunities; in parallel we explore artistic
possibilities. The practical conditions
we confront often influence theatrical
language and artistic choices in our work.
Each of
our new projects and productions brings an opportunity for searching for our
place, and seeking new practical and artistic possibilities.
I could only speak about puppetry as a
theatrical form, but of course American puppeteers work also in settings other than theatre, among them in film and television.
COMMON POSSIBILITIES AND PRESENTING THEATRES
With Dream Tale Puppets, which I founded on Cape Cod
10 years ago, we, like many American puppeteers, perform for libraries, art
and cultural centers, schools, after school programs, fundraisers and
parties.
We are
fortunate in Massachusetts to have Puppet Showplace in Brookline. I am inspired
by my friend and performing partner Margaret Moody, and by Liz Joyce, founder
of Goat on the Boat Theater.
Margaret organizes a puppetry series each year and
invites others to perform. Goat on the Boat presents shows
all year long. Dream Tale
Puppets presents other performers on the Cape during summer. We call our summer series Cape Cod Puppet
Gam.
SCHOOLS AND
AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAMS
The most
natural audience of puppet theatre in Poland – schools - is
not one which works well in Massachusetts. Dream Tale
Puppets performs very little in schools.
I do workshops
and often work as a teacher using a variety of forms of
puppet theatre. Often I conduct after-school
or vacation projects. Dream Tale Puppets is listed on the
performers and teaching artists’ roster of Hartford Performs – an organization devoted
to bringing arts to Hartford Schools.
From contact with them, I've learned that schools are more
interested in artists working with children and supporting curriculum than
in supporting work of the artists for art's sake. They want artists to help teachers. They are less interested in teachers helping
artists who are seeking to achieve artistic goals.
On Cape
Cod, theatrical workshops as an
after-school activity organized by schools, cultural centers, and after school
programs exist side by side with community theatre productions which involve
children as actors and which are addressed to family audences. Community
theaters sometimes use puppets in productions. A similar project model staffed in part by
professionals and in part open to volunteers and
children is used by Peter
Schumann, Missoula Children’s Theatre, Sara Peattie and The
Puppeteers' Cooperative and, I believe, many other puppeteers.
OTHER PRACTICAL POSSIBILIITES
In performing in or for schools
puppet theatre meets with education. But in seeking practical possibilities we
could also explore areas where theatre meets other societal realities, where we
serve additional purposes and border with other areas of life.
Some puppeteers incorporate
puppetry in social therapy and work with disadvantaged communities, inner city
children and youth. I worked with inner city children and communities in Poland
THEATRE AND COMMUNITY AND
THEATRE AS A COMMUNITY
I view the theatre more as a
group and community of artists creating the culture and more particularly theatrical
culture than just shows. If such a group has its locale, a home base, this kind
of theatre would be operating as a culture center with many programs addressed
to various audiences and constituencies. Programs for children and families
could be developed simultaneously, in parallel or alternately to programs for
or with youth and more mature audiences and participants; also programs,
events, celebrations for bigger community where separation between children and
adults loses its meaning could be created.
Since a work of this nature would require support from many sources,
such a theatre would need to be developed with strong connections in the local
community and organizations with similar values and beliefs.
The puppet theatre center
supported by its local community could serve as a venue for developing its own
programs, and as a presenting organization, a hub for collaborations,
explorations, education, center of work with children, youth, adults, lovers of
the art and professionals. I believe that this way we could serve our
communities, help each other, and strengthen our puppetry community and its
place in the broader community and culture. We are saving the world with each
little step of goodness, and as artists we have powers and missions very different
from military units or a national education system. In developing Dream Tale
Puppets, we are working with the vision of theatre as a community and center of
creativity in mind.
DOES THE IDENTIFICATION AS
“CHILDREN’S FARE” NECESSARILY LIMIT OR DIRECT THE TYPES OF SHOWS THAT CAN BE
PRODUCED?
Every
choice we make directs our actions. Each
age of the children may be addressed with a very different style of the shows.
A few years ago, I saw the video recording of shows for very little babies up
to one year old. They were masterpieces. There was very little spoken language,
but amazing visual forms with a lot of dramaturgy in motion, action, shapes,
and colors. There was not a trace of condescending paternalism in actors’
actions; instead they employed rich and elegant aesthetic enjoyable for babies
and satisfying for adults.
For me, ideally a show
would be addressed to any age, which means it would have to be comprised of
many layers to be appealing to diverse spectators. When I work on a show,
thinking about the age of the children I am creating for is not the first thing
I do. I think more about how I shape the
process. Asking about “how” brings a style. Material used, field of
pre-production studies and research determine this also. If I use a fairy tale
or a text by a particular author who writes for children as a jumping board, as
inspiration, or material for adaptation, this points to possible directions the
work may take. I look for the interesting literary material, compelling fields
of research, and an enjoyable and inspiring company of artists of notable
talents, abilities and passion. The production process may lead toward the show
addressed toward a more or less age-specific audience.
Usually I don’t know in
advance what kind of show I will produce. I don’t limit myself. My work for
children is like a dialog with the child, also with my own inner child. Do we
limit ourselves when we speak with the child? Do we limit ourselves speaking
with anyone? We listen to the person we talk to and with, and we try to find,
or we are open for the words which will have substance for our listener. The
process of finding words is to some extent automatic, or perhaps it would
better to say spontaneous. We see or
imagine a person and the language emerges. We see how she reacts to our words,
we re-imagine who she is and the process, and the dialog continues. This occurs
through listening to our interlocutor and letting our voices emerge as we
create. I wouldn’t call it limiting. I could say that my listener in some way
directs my talk. The language emerges between us.
I shape the language of
theatrical expression to be interesting and to command attention. I don’t have
lessons to give. I share with my audience my own joy in digging into the
material, story, stirring sources of inspiration, asking questions and shaping
the pictures, actions, characters, rhythms, and language. I create the universe
which is often multi-layered, with a number of characters,
each with its own life, opinions and motives for actions. I create texture,
colors and architecture of the environment. Elements of the production have
their sources of inspiration, and they derive their forms from meetings,
conversations, reading, seeing, and listening. The show comes into being molded
from elements and universes, and is open to audience interpretation. Song,
picture, poem and puppet show could provide experience and opportunities to
associate, understand and feel, and to expand understanding and the ability to
associate and to feel.
Jack Zipes in “Fairy
Tales and Art of Subversion” writes about how fairy tales were and are still
used to educate, to socialize, and to program socially desirable children’s
behavior. I am far from considering myself an educator whose mission is to
teach children proper manners. I consider myself rather someone who brings to
children language, questions, rhythms, shapes, colors, elements of narration,
characters and their stories, as well as my own and my colleagues joy in
explorations and orchestration of theatrical universe.
I don’t care if my
audience is not able to read, see, and decipher all I put into the show. The
show is rich because only this kind of work could provide an opportunity to
share the passion and curiosity that I have. I am saying rich, but this does
not mean complicated or overloaded.
Intensive research could lead to elegant, but simple effects. A lot of
stuff is thrown away just as a writer throws away words, pages, paragraphs, or
chapters of an earlier draft that are not needed. Also, the richness of theatrical language
could be understood by an analogy to poetry. Poetry and children’s rhymes are
also good examples of this understanding. Many children’s rhymes deal with the
richness of language beyond its semantic level of literal meaning. Rhymes speak
through their sonorous, musical, rhythmic, melodic, and associative levels of
expression, all of which address the senses and mind.
WHAT KINDS OF EXCHANGES
MIGHT EXIST OR BE CREATED BETWEEN CHILDREN’S SHOWS AND THOSE FOR MORE MATURE
AUDIENCES, AND HOW MIGHT CROSS-FERTILIZATIONS BETWEEN THEM WORK TO ENRICH THE
ART AT BOTH ENDS OR BRING THEM TOGETHER?
To bring puppetry for
children and adults together we have to have time and space for togetherness,
even if this would be metaphorical togetherness.
We may need space of
shared aesthetic and methodological explorations, shared communal space where
children and more mature audiences meet. This concept of shared communal space
is pretty easy to grasp. Considering
that children when not in school are usually with parents or guardians, this
sharing is unavoidable. I think we can’t
ignore that parents and grandparents are part of the audience. They should
enjoy the show as well.
In my native Poland
When you work on how,
on the language, methodology, aesthetics, your discoveries in this field for
children could inspire and inform work for mature audiences. Similarly
techniques used in puppet theatre for mature audiences could be used in
creating performances for children.
We work in visual
arts. The broad scope of this art is
universally appealing to adults and to children. The puppeteer as an actor
could be compared to a dancer. Watching a dance, watching a circus act brings
satisfaction to a child as much as to an adult. It is the beauty of the form
and extraordinary skill of the performer which attract.
Most traditional and
many contemporary puppet theaters are not interested in making the relationship
between puppeteer and puppet a part of the theatrical expression. Whether an
artist decides to take this aspect of puppetry into consideration or not, this
relationship exists and could be and very often is of significance as a part of
the expression. When we acknowledge this relationship as having expressive
potential, we are acknowledging also that the puppeteer is an actor, and his
body is also a vehicle of expression. This approach broadens the scope of
creative explorations which could be interesting for the adult spectator and
matches the natural tendency for children's affirmation of any language as long
as it is possible to decipher or project meaning into it. An aesthetically and semantically complex
theatrical act could satisfy sophisticated adult spectators as much as a child
for whom the theatrical act could represent the world analogous to that of
make-believe play.
Dream Tale Puppets
addresses its programs to children, but we believe in developing multiple
dimensions in our work. We do workshops, and we are building relationships with
other organizations. We explore where and how we could better serve the
community by practicing our art.
