Photo by Richard Termine.

On My Work

By Rolande Duprey

I find it difficult to speak or write of my life and work. Rhetoric does not have the plasticity of sculpture or painting or even dance; words themselves are an experience separate from the experiences they may describe or represent. Nevertheless, in the vast array of semiotica, words seem to be the coinage.

Among other things (woman, citizen, animal lover), I consider myself a theatre artist. I’ve been able to make a living at this art by doing various tasks most people tend to specialize in: performing, designing, directing, and teaching. The interconnectedness of the arts is something I take for granted.

Among this diversity, I am the common denominator. Thus, a certain point of view extends across extreme elements, both in collaborations and in solo pieces. You will see evidence of this in my portfolio, which includes designed sets, costumes, masks, as well as photos from various performances.

It’s easier to say I’m a puppeteer. This work has a popular frame of reference supported by the media. However unique (and somewhat non-populist) my individual work may be, the label sticks. Sometimes it’s been advantageous. Adults are consistently surprised when they come from one of my “puppet shows” having enjoyed themselves. Maybe I've broken down a few prejudices.

My puppet theatre offerings always entail a certain depth that is easily supported through design and performance techniques. For example, in performing the Russian folk tale of The Snowmaiden, I have in mind the awakening of the "inner child”. The two-dimensionality of the everyday characters in the play is juxtaposed with the three dimensionality of the Snowmaiden (whose character, being supernatural, is from another dimension). The choice to have her communicate in song while the others merely follow a narrative supports this other-worldliness of her character. Her death (disappearance) and subsequent re-appearance is thus experienced as two-fold: in a surreal sense (“above reality”) as well as in the practical and “down to earth” storyline.

Most people watching the show enjoy it, without regard to the layers of meaning. That's as it should be.

Though I’ve had the experience of working in film and video, my first love is live theatre. True dialogue with an audience, either intimate or larger gatherings, is an ephemeral experience. But, it may have extended life within the psychological reality of the individual audience member. The very uniqueness of the live theatre experience sets it apart in memory. After my performance of "Autumn In New York," one woman came back stage, effusively declaring how moving the piece was, and how much work it must have been to paint all those pieces of wood to look like buildings! They are not painted at all - but in her mind and memory she had filled in the details that I had purposely left out.

One reason why I love to perform "Wonderful Walkabouts" is this sense of playing with the audience's perception. Of course they can all see me, so there is no "magic". I am not a ventriloquist. And yet, it is interactive puppet theatre at its purest - the puppet, the puppeteer and the audience (which may be one person or a dozen or a hundred). The performance is not geared to asking for money, as buskers do. Indeed, at a recent event, people asked what I was promoting...I was startled. What should I say? Hope? Playfulness?.

Sponsors pay for my time. I am free to roam. I rely on the audience of the moment, the knowledge of the character I perform, and those other, unseen forces of circumstance and serendipity to create little, wise and winsome spectacles. Children always understand. Adults, sometimes seeing through the eyes of their children, may perceive a hidden meaning. Most just smile.

We may extend this experience into moments of that other life -- the one off-stage*. Thus, each unique moment is a call to perform for our inner children or our conscience or whatever or whomever is there with us, watching, listening, aware or not. There is a deeper self, a self that is carefully covered by layers of consciousness quilting. In this deep self I am alone in darkness, seeing objects of color pass by, lit from some strange external source I am not aware of..

Quilting layers of consciousness,

my needle doesn’t pass through -

it just sinks and sinks,

and then, I lose it, and must find another.

There is no end to it, and though I

want to believe there is a beginning,

it has none.

As well as descending into depths unknown,

the layers go higher than I can see.

I am inside, between, under some, over others,

Trying to find threads of meaning.

So, perhaps my calling is some kind of poetic paradigm. Like a poem the performance engages the audience and then disappears into memory, inhabiting the mind like a sacred space.

These musings in words must end. Actions, begin! "So, good night unto you all".

* Or, keeping with the Shakespeare quotations, perhaps "the world is a stage" -- and then theatre is the reality?.

***

Fly fishing and Other Metaphors

By Rolande Duprey

Madeleine Lyons, the first director of Marionette et Therapie for UNIMA, told me the story of how she became involved in puppetry. She had survived a terrible car accident, which caused total blindness in one eye. As an artist, this was extremely serious. She needed to improve the eyesight in her one good eye, but how? With her peripheral vision compromised, she kept bumping into the side of doorways as she walked through.

In the hospital, she had the occasion to build a rod puppet, which she operated by placing it in front of her, a bit above her head. She discovered that by focusing on the puppet, her vision steadily improved. She didn’t bump into doorways when she was manipulating the puppet. For her, this was empirical evidence of the therapeutic nature of puppetry. She went on to establish a workshop in Paris for disabled people.

I play with my cat as always. I dangle a string in front of her, and now, because she’s used to me, she waits until I do something more exciting with it before she pounces. She has become an extremely discerning audience for my single string marionette. So, I move it quickly, and then stop suddenly. This gets her attention. I move it again, in stops and starts, simulating a living stringy creature. She pounces, I pull it away, and she chases it. I’ve got her full attention now. I allow her to trap it, to bite at it, and she allows it to escapes. This game goes on and on until one or both of us decide we’ve had enough.

Like Madeleine with her rod puppet, I am increasing my cat’s visual acuity as I play with her. She has become a very good hunter.

Fly fisherman Lefty Creigh has created a special lure called “Lefty’s Deceiver” which expertly mimics the look and movement of a fly in order to catch a fish. However, as any good fly fisherman knows, it’s not only the quality of the lure. One must also perform a series of movements with the line in order to animate the lure. Fly fishermen are very good at manipulating their one-string puppets.

The three anecdotes above are essential three aspects of the same process: animating objects in order to mimic life. In the instance of Madeleine Lyons, the process was from a single/soloist point of view, without an audience; moving the puppet was an aid to improving her own physicality.

For me, playing with the cat has always been a metaphor for performing in front of an audience. Movement and gesture is crucial to understanding character, and, along with design, adds to the overall impact of the play. In the sample of my cat and I, it’s a one-on-one play, and isn’t there always just one audience member that you play for?

For the fly fisherman, the entire process of design, construction and performance for the purpose of audience entrapment is a definitely linear storyline. In each instance, movement is primary to suspending the perceiver’s disbelief.

Certainly if you are playing (as Madeleine was) by yourself, you are exercising your own imagery: using movement as inspiration for a story, a character, or to confront an abstract pattern which only you perceive. Playing with puppets alone is a psychophysical exercise, in which you dedicate yourself to their reality, which by its nature reflects an internal, subjective reality.

If you are playing for someone’s amusement and distraction (as I do for my cat and others), then the exercise increases in its dedication to reality. While playing alone I may be happy just watching the string twist and move, but the critical eye of my cat doesn’t always approve or accept it as life-like. To get and keep her attention, I must respond to her specific judgments and requirements. Cats’ eyes, like our own, are much more attuned to movement than to color or shape.

Fish, on the other hand, are sensitized to color as well as movement. Some fish see colors that are not discernible to humans. Some fish can see both color and movement with extreme detail. Presumably those fish that are willing to jump out of the water to catch a fly are very discerning.

Perception is the key that keeps us dancing, projecting ourselves into inanimate objects in order to heal or play or eat.

Fishermen do not fish for the fishes’ amusement. Nor do they fish out of some (arguably) therapeutic need. The point of fishing is to catch a fish. But, once caught, what do they do? Throw them back? Eat them? Use them for bait?

Please forgive this metaphor as it flops about, gasping for air.

My question really is, why do we do what we do? Is it for work, to make a living? Is it for play, an entertaining distraction? Is it an internal need, to please or heal ourselves? And, once this question is answered, then another is certain to follow:

How can we do it better?

One answer is:

Know your audience!

Knowing that my audience is a cat is fundamentally different from knowing it is a fish. Knowing that I am improving my (in) sight is different from trying to improve another's.

True knowledge depends upon truth.

Try understanding the truth of the fish and the fly, as well as the fisherman.

***

Naked Hand Puppets and Other Unadorned Animations

By Rolande Duprey (reprinted from Nutmeg Puppet News)

Whether it’s from the comfort of your home, or at a library, eventually we all may find ourselves drifting into the wide world of surfing the Internet. It’s the new human migratory instinct. Call it a kind of digital migration. And people are producing all kinds of material. Thousands of videos are uploaded. YouTube alone boasts more than twenty-four hours of videos every minute!
With this explosion of video, there’s a lot material for puppeteers to watch, too. Some are classics. Some are brand new. Some are commercially oriented, and others are very artistic. We have lots of choice.
I confess that I participate in the mass migration to YouTube. I’ve made videos for friends, and some to document my work, and still others just for fun. I don’t consider myself a professional videographer, but there it is, video, out on the web, by little ol’ me.
Each time I post a video, I check if there’s anything else like it out there. Sometimes other people have done similar things, but usually I feel mine deserves to be there, too.
Recently I posted a hand mime piece to e.e. cummings’ poem, “i like my body when it is with your body.” I filmed it in one shot, no edits! Me, the camera, and my hands. A live performance. It was one of those moments of invention and/or madness that make people jump in the ocean when it’s below freezing outside. Discovering there was nothing else like it on YouTube, I uploaded the thing.
Every time anyone uploads original video, they have an opportunity to describe it, putting in search terms that will help others find their video. It’s kind of a librarian thing. If someone is looking for “hand mime”, for example, they may want to see my video in order to get some ideas for their own creation.
“Hand Mime” is one of my search terms. Then, in case someone was really serious, I put in “Hand Pantomime”, too. And “Puppets”. Always “Puppets”. But then, I thought, ‘what is hand mime except naked hand puppets?’, and I put down “Naked Hand Puppets”. Then I wondered if anyone else had used that descriptor for their hand mimes.
Search YouTube for “Naked Hand Puppets” and you will find several videos of naked sock puppets – that is, hands that would be sock puppets if there were socks on them. So, instead of sock puppets, we see hands forming a sock puppet mouth and lip-synching, with the lever of the thumb acting like a lower jaw. I am proud to say my naked hand puppets are not like that.
The most famous hand mime of all was probably Burr Tillstrom’s “Berlin Wall”, performed on television way back in 1964, and more famously for puppeteers, at the 1980 UNIMA congress in Washington, D.C. Tillstrom called it a “hand ballet”. A little over ten years later, UConn student Tim Lagasse and friends created “A Show of Hands” and brought it to the National Puppetry Festival. It won an UNIMA award. It also featured a recreation of Tillstrom’s “Berlin Wall”.
There have been many puppeteers who have used gloved hands to portray some sort of story. Yves Joly comes to mind. And Obraztsov. Senor Wences painted a face on his hand and dressed it up. There are also people using their hands for "hand dances" -- making wonderful percussive noises like tap dancing, or "finger break-dancing", creating great shapes with their hands. There’s a hand soccer player, and a hand skateboarder. If you search for “hand mime”, however, you will come up with lots of folk who do black light lit hand mime to songs, using many hands. Many church groups are represented. Some folk do not not call what they do “puppets”, so you will not find them if you search for them under that. You’ll need other search terms. Be creative. Think DIGIT-ally, and dancerly. Or you could use need an annotated video bibliography, like the one I have prepared. If any of you reading this want a copy, please email me at info (at) purplerock (dot) org.