How Do I Puppet?

It's difficult to trust yourself when making your own piece of theatre.

I'm currently at a crossroads involving my work with puppetry/masks and my final project, a second stage puppet production called Waking up! I can choose to do things the conventional way, copying others I've worked under (isn't that what art is anyway?) and making choices that I know to be effective. That would make good theatre. Or I can take risks, unsure of what will land with the child audience. Lean into my weird ideas and see what comes of it. That's the task I've given myself inside of my final graduate project. The freedom to create a puppet show for elementary students; vast space to make choices with. It's daunting.

I'm not afraid to take risks, but it's hard when others are watching.

Wouldn't it be easier if I was just doing something silly for myself and my friends? Not selling tickets, or inviting school students to matinees, and just make something that I feel speaks to young people. The trick is manifesting that energy inside the frame of logistics you've been given. Puppetry is already an ancient form that uses the wild combination of knowing how something works while simultaneously believing in the "magic" that animates the object. Shouldn't a theatre practitioner also operate with both of those ideas in place, giving them the freedom to openly create despite people watching. Believing in the magic.

Puppetry also on the other hand involves getting messy with random objects that you have no idea how they might go together. It seemingly takes skill and/or none at all to make a puppet. Another paradox. I've seen some of the best puppets made by young people who would consider themselves to have no skill or talent. But one key thing they had was not being afraid to get a little weird with whatever they were making. Whether it was a homemade giant scorpion costume while your peers are dressing as princesses, or a mouthless mask who haunts others like a horror character, or a talking rain boot dressed as Abraham Lincoln, all of these ideas that I've seen come to fruition by young people involve bravery. Courage to manipulate an odd, recycled, or different object into becoming something alive. 

As I begin building puppets for my final project, I hope that I can keep that courage as well. I think it's a vibe that make children's theatre more engaging. That there is hope in what you are saying to the child audience, even if it's presented with challenges. Even scary things can have hope. So even if I want to have a parade of random eyeballs doing comical things in their eyeball world, injecting a bit of belief into these weird character's lives might do them some good. Maybe I want a giant parachute brain that spits stuff out at the audience. Alone, it's offbeat. But with puppeteers behind the movement who believe in what they are communicating to the audience, it becomes an interesting piece of theatre. 

Over the next few weeks there will be loads of tape, cardboard, newspaper, pvc pipe, and other materials combined to create masks and other large style puppets. In February, a team of actors with myself and a group of stage managers will devise the hour-long piece of theatre for young people. The children in the audience will also be given post show activities to investigate whether the use of puppets helped talk about difficult topics such as mental health. The goal is to gather drawings and audio recordings of the child audience and use it as data for a future article. 

I wish to have hope in my process because without it, I think, makes bringing something to life difficult. You can have a puppet that has problems to deal with in a story and through trial and tribulation they find reason to exist in their world. But as a puppeteer, you have to give that inanimate object a reason to be alive in the human world. You have to transfer your own bravery into that piece of cardboard and give it reason to dance. Children are excellent at it.

So my answer is to puppet like a child. With courage.

-Cameron Prevatte
Third Year MFA Student

Waking Up! will be presented March 17th and 18th at 7pm, and March 19th at 2pm in Sponberg Theatre in the Judy Sturgis Hill building. School Matinees at 10am on March 21 and 22.