Update

It has been a while since I last wrote anything, and much has happened since my last post.
First, I received my MA from Central, which means this blog no longer has to pander to the academic world. Secondly, I have been living and working between New York and Philadelphia as a puppeteer for almost five months, getting consistent work when I've been looking for it, and have had some great successes working for great companies like No Tea Theater and the Jim Henson Company.
Third, my life has changed dramatically in so many ways and at the moment I'm feeling free, confused, lost, and happy with a chance of depression. It's been a bit of a whirlwind. People come and go in our lives and sometimes we get so wrapped up in pleasing everyone else, that we forget about the person who should come first once in a while...the self.
So I've been wading my way through emotional turmoil, self doubt and the lack of love for any or all art, but that is all starting to change. Currently, I'm working on two paintings, one puppet, and two masks all to sell with percentages going to St. Judes Children Hospital. It's made me realize how happy a paintbrush and a canvas make me, and how I have been needing it in my life for the last year.
There is no doubt in my mind that graduate school changed my whole life in a few good ways, and in some major negative ways. I'm not the same person who set out across the pond to change the world, in fact, I'm more timid and self-deprecating than before, but every day it gets a little easier to get through the day. Each day I am also thankful for the friends I have made who have stuck by me through it all, and sad for the friends I have lost.
Sigh. One day. I'm going to get to the finish line one of these days.
More to come soon. Pictures and a reflection of my puppetry up to this point. How can I improve and what is going well.
Thanks for reading. :)

Midsummer: A Thesis Paper

…" The fact that Shakespeare's characters are greater than life in conception offers a form of exaggeration which only puppets can grasp. The poetry flows unfettered, and the imagination of the audiences is given free rein. We can claim, too, that we are in the true puppet tradition, for Samuel Johnson records having witness a puppet Macbeth, and adds that he preferred it to the productions of the human theatre." (Bussell, 1952: 32)

A Midsummer Night's Dream was the thesis project of myself and Emma Schimminger, co-founders of the company that was formed during their third term at the Central School of Speech and Drama. It was also this company's first production. The event occurred in the fourth term of the program on the Advanced Theatre Practice course with the physical manifestation occurring on September 1st and 2^nd at 7:00pm at Maple Grove Cemetery in Queens, New York. The production was a cut version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, using the cemetery as a promenade style performance site, integrating puppets, both full bodied and rod puppets, as the fairy characters. The first point of discussion will explore how the concept of the production came into volition, the second point will explore how the audience interacted with the puppets in the production, and the third and final point will unpick and explore puppetry based on site, what worked and what did not.

THE ORIGIN OF PUPPETS or THE PRODUCTION

The origin to this project spawned after an eye opening experience in the second term of this course. The second term was about forming a company and finding a process with which to create work, however, due to personal problems within the group, a lack of shared vision, and an overall disagreement of work style, the production was a failure. The second term the company I was part of worked without a narrative or text in mind making for disorientation without a direction. Tired, confused and completely disillusioned by theatre, I sought to make the process of generating new work and finding my own methodology not such a harrowing experience. (Dapo 2010) By using a text that seemed to fit the site perfectly, we could find discover freedom in our own process because we would have a pre-established "format" to work from.

"I don't think there is a subject that puppetry cant tackle within the realms of good taste, this is the advantage of good puppetry, that they can do things and speak of things that we humans cannot, or you could say its easier to hear such things from a puppet.

One thing that does piss me off is when puppetry is forced into a performance unnecessarily, there is a bit of a puppetry revival going on, don't get me wrong, it's great that people see the form as accessible, there shouldn't be any snobbery with puppetry. But I think some people want to put it in their performances without thinking about why it's there, how it enforces or speaks about the theme. (Wren 2010)

This idea of puppets being forced into a production was exactly what we wanted to avoid. The decision was made not to go puppet crazy and have the entire show done with puppets, but rather to be very specific. Having only the fairies as puppets, and live actors as the lovers and mechanicals, the text found a balance within the context of the cemetery. After all, the cemetery is for the living, not only the dead.

The script was reduced to 80 minutes and still involved all three plot lines: the mechanicals, the fairies, and the lovers. The fairies would be called spirits, and would resemble elements of the cemetery, both physical and metaphysical in nature, but would not necessarily be built with materials from the cemetery. This played nicely into our other concepts as the spirits are the forces of nature that cause the mass amounts of chaos that propels the other characters through their own plots. (Dapo 2010)

Midsummer is the celebration of living, love, lust, and magic. These are the aspects we chose to work with, what is fueling this process and our imagining of the play. The cemetery is place of remembrance, of memories of love for those who have moved on and also a place for the living. It's the physical space where the dead control the living, an element we make use of as the fairies are spirits and manipulate the lovers and the mechanicals in the play. (Dapo, journal) "The puppet is free from human limitations: it can throw itself to the ground in a way which no human actor or dancer could do. It can speak the unspeakable and deal with taboos, deal with our dark sides: it can portray an emotion which cannot be expressed in any other way." (Currell, 1976: 24) The puppets were able to freely move about in the cemetery, to exceed the limitations that might be otherwise set on by using human actors. They could walk across graves, they could have conversations with the dead, and the very presence of the puppet brought out the line between the world of living and the dead. If more time had been given to the rehearsal process (due to extenuating circumstances, we had ten days to physically mount the production) the puppets would have been more involved.

INTERACTING WITH THE LIVING or THE AUDIENCE

The first of September was an invited dress and the second was an invited performance. We could not make it wide open to the public because of the restrictions placed upon us by Maple Grove. We were not allowed to publicize the event, and we were limited in audience size and performance days, as our initial intention was to perform for five days, with a larger audience. However, the restrictions worked beautifully as there were about ten audience members the first night, and twenty two the second night.

Figure 1: A Map of Maple Grove with the Highlighted Path that the Audience Followed

The audience was lead on a promenade performance through the entirety of Maple Grove Cemetery, following the action and also being lead by Puck or Moth. The final scene of the play within the play was done at The Center, an open auditorium room at the exit of Maple Grove audience was never left alone, as an actor or puppeteer was always near or with them. The intention was to create an atmosphere where the audience would be engulfed in the performance, would be swept on a journey that would take them from moment to moment.

" … I had such a wonderful evening in your world. It was a refreshing and thought provoking take on Midsummer. The full use of the space, especially the impeccably timed entrances from across the cemetery, continually made the experience expand beyond individual scenes. Lots of gorgeous moments, notably with Oberon/Titania in the distance. (Their translucence as the night got darker was truly ghostly) " (O'Connell 2010)

We weren't sure how we were going to make them part of the performance, and we began throwing around the idea of masking the audience similar to Punch Drunk, but closer to Black Mountain College's production Danse Macabre:"The audience, including townspeople, were cloaked in dark hoods and capes before entering to dramatize the solitude and anonymity of the individual in the face of death" (Harris, 45) This became counterintuitive to what we were trying to achieve with the audience, by isolation and hooded imagery, we were ourselves dancing to close to obsession/over dramatization of death. The performance was to prove that theatre in the cemetery did not have to dwell or focus on death, or be so blatantly abstract that it didn't relate to the site at all. The cohesion of the audience was dependent upon the puppets to keep them together and to guide them, which seemed to enchant the audience.

"Having characters interact with audience members prior to the actual start of the show was a nice stage setter. Puck was particularly strong as the actor had great physicality and a sense of how to use his body in conjunction with the costume/gargoyle mask---a neat imagery connection to the cemetery.

Walking from scene to scene was exciting because as I got more involved I allowed myself to get closer to the actors which really gave me the feeling of being part of the action. It was as if I was a silent part of the scene and at times not really even silent as the spirit puppets, Puck and other characters actually touched or otherwise involved audience members. I also like the fact that the audience's numbers were limited as it also facilitated that up close and involved feeling." Coyle

There were some problems the audience encountered that were unexpected:

" Big challenges I guess were audio and darkness, although the flashlight spotlights were good for the audience they were probably difficult for the actors. " (Dixon 2010)

The closeness to the roadway meant that road noise was very prominent for the first three scenes of the performance, on the first night, an ice cream trucked parked outside for 30 minutes. Darkness was an element we had to combat and was so prominent the first night that actors missed their cue and we cut off three scenes. The second night we encouraged the audience to bring flashlights or lanterns, so they lit the scenes for themselves. It didn't help the actors, but it defiantly helped the audience combat fear of the dark and safety when the sun began to set. The overall consensus was that the performance was very positive and well constructed.

THE FUTURE and THE CEMETERY PUPPET

"Over the ages, similar aesthetics have shaped puppetry, in disparate cultures whose other forms of expression shared little ground. And around the world, puppets have used similar mechanisms and performed the same astonishing range of social roles.—including slapstick entertainer, political dissident, and emissary to the spirit world. (Blumenthal, 7)

In order to understand where I am going as a practitioner, it is relevant to understand the puppets of Midsummer and the process I went through to create each of them. The puppets were crafted based on the architecture, and the emotional reactions of the actors to the cemetery space as a performance site. There were two types of puppets: Rod puppets and masked/full bodied puppets. Each puppet type had its strengths and weaknesses.

The four fairies were designed to look like angels and figures that are found on headstones. We thought it would be best to simulate stone, instead of using actual stone for the puppets. Although interested in playing with weights, my investigations into using stone proved fruitless:

"I can't manipulate tools well enough to achieve the aesthetic of carved stone. With more time and skill maybe I could have pulled this off, but not where I am now. And it is too heavy to deal with" (Dapo 2010)

In order to make them appear to be stone, I used floral foam and sprayed a stone textured spray paint directly onto the foam. What this did was give texture, but also caused corrosion of the foam, so that it had pits and divots, like a weather-worn stone angel would have. "The puppet spirits… were awesome, beautifully designed and wonderfully executed by the actors using them. Their color and textures seemed to reflect the stone and statuary found in cemeteries."( Coyle, 2010). They were beautiful but could not withstand outdoor use. The rods broke and the delicate details kept snapping off due to transport.

"As well as being influenced by site I think puppets are always influenced by what you need them to do, their character, the style of the play as a whole and how many manipulators you have... My stylistic preference is to try and use materials which look like they could have come from the world they inhabit- so for a graveyard, natural materials which could look like bark or grass or stone. But again it depends what effect you are trying to create- ethereal ghosts etc would suit other materials." (Bird, 2010)

If I had had regular access to the site of which they were going to be performed, I would have loved to have made them a greater part of the living environment, but crafting the puppets to match the specific site. I wanted the puppets to be more active when they weren't directly involved, I.e a sort of docking station for them, a fabricated headstone that they would fit into in between lovers and mechanical scenes or even attachments so that they could be part of larger stone monuments. Two of them should have been table top puppets so they could have stood on their own and been seen at a distance, leaning against a headstone, or standing next to a mausoleum. Size was also an issue, as I would have preferred them to be at least three or four foot tall with ivy and moss entwined through them.

Their faces turned out beautifully and I would not have changed how they came to be. We asked our cast in New York to visit the cemetery and write their initial reactions and chose to carve the faces of the puppets based on the reactions they posted and came out with four extremely expressive faces with a myriad of emotions. (Dapo, journal)

"Puppets must be exaggerated, fantastic, mask-like creatures with a life of their own" (Bussell, 24) Titania, Oberon, Puck and Bottom were all mask based. The masks were lightweight and made out of plaster cast and foam, but were difficult to manipulate, as they could off balance easily. Designs were based on Count Johannes, one of the cemetery residents, and Dame Judy Dench as homage to both.

Figure 4: Titania. Plaster and fabric
Figure 5: Oberon and Demetrius

Designed to reflect death and life respectively, I was disappointed with how fragile and small they seemed to come across. "I found the "head" masks of Oberon and Titania to be less effective because they seemed to limit the movement of the actors too much making them come across as stiff—more so with Oberon than Titania." Coyle, 2010

The biggest challenge was Puck. He began as a four foot tall table top puppet. He could stand independently and was manipulated by two actors. His feet were heavy enough so that if his hips were in motion, he virtually walked by himself. Sadly, the puppet broke in transit between Colorado and New York and was unfixable in a week. All of my design, relating him to Native American mythology was lost. Needing a quick solution, I designed a quick mask based on gargoyles, which are found on and near churches around the world. I think that the process of design for Puck was too rushed in the end, and I wasn't content with the choice one hundred percent, because it was not a direct reaction to Maple Grove.

IN THE END…

I needed this production to be a success for a multitude of reasons. I needed validation as a theatre practitioner and artist, I needed to share what my imagination had dreamt up, and toward the end I needed a year long struggle to find a working partner and method to end. Emma and I set out to accomplish everything we had envisioned with Midsummer and are looking forward to expanding our company to include more individuals in a production capacity.

What is the next step? Emma and I have hopes to bring the production back to London, and my personal ambition with the puppets is to let them be created by the site by making use of the materials I gather at the site. Randy Ginsburg's project of Puppets in Beirut is a great inspiration to me, as I love how he used what was found at the different performance areas as parts of the puppet. I think I can allow myself to be more abstract in my concepts in future designs.

I set out on the venture knowing that it was highly ambitious and risky. The lack of rehearsal time, losing our original venue two weeks before the performance, and working on a project from a different country was strenuous. I feel strongly about the puppets I crafted and truly feel they are an expression of what I was personally going through as well as what the site warranted. I created puppets that were a gateway from the world of the living, into the world of the dead, and proved that the cemetery is a performance space that can be extremely effective when treated with the proper care and respect. Carl Ballanes summed it up beautifully:

".…as cemetery historian, it seems I have more friends who are dead than alive and some of them have been gone over a hundred years. Have to admit after working there for about twenty years I have never had a spiritual encounter or have seen any type of apparition but I had this incredible feeling that you did not have an audience of 25 or so but an audience of 80,000 who are cared for at Maple Grove. They in their way embraced you and your work and there was a wonderful spell cast over the evening and I could feel the appreciation of thousands who were remembered and entertained last night. "

...and it begins again

Currently working with No Tea Productions on a show called the "Kentucky Goblin Seige" in which I get to be the body and the voice for Goblin 2. I want to blog about this experience, but at the moment I am just upset.
So I'll be brief. I got an audition with this company, and it was really great. I'm working with puppets that were made by the same puppeteer who made Yoda (I know! Right?!) It's interesting working with another company that is young, as I am learning from the experience what they have done, and what I can be doing. It's a well formed group of individuals, who write shows, perform them, and use only really the member of the company. As one of the younger members of the company, and the newest member by far, I am sometimes overwhelmed by the existing social structure.
I am also currently working at puppeteer Kevin Augustine of the Lone Wolf Tribe's on his current project Hobo Grunt Cycle. I can not express how thrilling it is to work with him, and learn from him about carving foam. It's something I feel was lacking from my time spent at central, however, I am making up for what I feel are my inadequacies. Emma and I are getting together soon to discuss the next step in our process. I'd like to go into R&D, one traditional play, and one preexisting new work, or new developed work. So up to four performances. I need to reevaluate what I want to get out of this company. I want to make my work, and allow others te opportunity to create work. I also would like to see my friends succeed in their goals, and if I can be a means by which that can happen, I would be thrilled. However, the current issue is money. Going to graduate school as left me broke so I need to build up some sort of income first.
That's all for tonight. Sorry it's been so long since I updated. I'll have more tomorrow, tonight however, frustration takes over and makes my mind blurry.
Goodnight world
Love
Liz

Email Interview with Ed Wren of the River People.

Questions:

1)     
How long have you been involved with puppets and puppet theatre?

Since the very beginning of the company, Clare had worked with puppetry in college and when we met in my first year (her third)   I had a script that I wanted to perform about child abuse that had occurred in my family. We decided very early on that a puppet would be perfect to play the abused child as the use of a puppet helped to underpin our theme, the abused child never spoke, and was treated like a doll. We fell in love with the form then and resolved to use it in all our performances. It allows us to create a sense of magic on stage.

 
 

2)     
What do you feel the roll of the puppet is?  How can it be different from "conventional" use of the puppet?

We believe that puppetry is theatre at it's purest, the suspension of disbelief is implicit when a puppet is on stage, the actors and all the audience are in a silent agreement that for the duration of the show we will pretend that this thing is real. I think the puppet has a very important role to play in theatre, its advantages, compared to an actor, is that it doesn't need to act. All to often an actor is trying to re-create emotion, and the audience needs to believe them, if this first step fails then the audience is 'turned off' to the play instantly. However, if the puppet is manipulated well, the audience are free to project their emotion onto the blank canvas, thus they have suddenly invested in the performance and it becomes a more enriching experience. People have come up to us after shows and asked how we got the puppets eyes to move and show emotion (which of course we didn't, the eyes are fixed) I think this speaks to the capability of the individual to project feelings onto inanimate things.

This advantage is used best when the puppet is communicating an idea or theme. There is a distance between the puppeteer and puppet, in that space there is room for the audience to consider what is being said, I think puppetry is similar to Brecht's Guestic acting in this sense.

Im not really sure what the "conventional" use of the puppet is.

 
 

3)     
Have you ever done site specific performance?   What are your thoughts on site influencing the construction and manipulation of the puppet?  (Specifically a cemetery the site)

We have, a little, the setting can of course enhance and add to the puppetry. Especially if the puppet is related to its environment, I would say it allows the audience to invest in the world the puppet comes from. However I don't feel that there are any glaring advantages, in fact some would argue that puppetry needs to stand out against a very plain background to allow complete focus. I think the efficacy of puppetry comes down to the operation, and good operation can be done anywhere, with any sort of puppet.

 
 

 
 

4)     
What is too taboo for puppet theatre?

I don't think there is a subject that puppetry cant tackle within the realms of good taste, this is the advantage of good puppetry, that they can do things and speak of things that we humans cannot, or you could say its easier to hear such things from a puppet. I think this is down to the distance I mentioned earlier.

One thing that does piss me off is when puppetry is forced into a performance unnecessarily, there is a bit of a puppetry revival going on, don't get me wrong, its great that people see the form as accessible, there shouldn't be any snobbery with puppetry. But I think some people want to put it in their performances without thinking about why its there, how it enforces or speaks about the theme. And even worse when they are operated badly, nothing gets my goat more

London Showcase: Reflection/Documentation

Why this project?

 

Emma:

I have always been fascinated by ritual and the theatricality surround ritual practices. This stems from being introduced to a religion at a later age, and looking at the rites and rituals of the religion from a secular side rather than a religious side. Once I was introduced to theatre, I started to notice similarities and that indeed peaked my interest in both.

 

Ritual is not only the actions performed but also specific locations for those actions. A cemetery is a place where a huge amount of ritual practices take place. I was intrigued to ask a question which involves theatre performance in a location used for such immensely important rituals, like a cemetery.

 

I have also done some research into what audiences consider taboo in modern theatre, and I believe that performing a piece of theatre in a cemetery could be considered a taboo for many people. I want to see whether a piece that is respectful of the space is something that might change people's minds about this.

 

Liz:

Cemetery has been an exciting prospect to me as a performance space for the past six months. I have been privileged to work with very inspiring artists, friends and practitioners during that time, which inspired me to go to new heights and levels I never imagined I could find myself.

 

I was walking through Kensel Rise, in the middle of term 2, with Kerol, Julia, Maghsood, and Randy, and I was carrying my little Complete Works of William Shakespeare. At some point the place struck me, and I began to frantically search for the "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" speech from the Scottish play. As I read it out, I realized that there is a place for text in the cemetery and the next moment I was flipping through again, with the mental image already in my head of the Helena/Demetrius fight scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream racing around in my head. I could see them running between the stones, falling to the ground, and a passionate plea of love, surrounded by a place of death. I was enraptured by this image.

 

Midsummer is the celebration of living, love, lust, and magic. These are the aspects we chose to work with, what is fueling this process and our imagining of the play. The cemetery is place of remembrance, of memories of love for those who have moved on and also a place for the living. It's the physical space where the dead control the living, an element we make use of as the fairies are spirits and manipulate the lovers and the mechanicals in the play.

 

 

Rehearsal process

 

The rehearsal process has been something in which I have never played this part before. I have stage managed many productions, so I know what I rehearsal room atmosphere can be like, but this is different. I am wearing so many different hats, and trying to learn how Liz has been working with the actors. Her methods are different from any director I've worked with before, and she is getting some impressive results with the way she works with her performers. There is a comfortable and loose feeling in the room, but this does not mean that there is not a lot of hard work going on.

 

 

 

The Cast

 

Our cast is a wonderfully talented group of people. They are all professionals, most of them working and honing their craft in NYC, a majority of them have worked with us in some context in the past. With doing our final showing in a place where we currently are not living, we needed to work out how to "rehearse" with our actors without actually being in the same room with them. This is why we created our blog. It allows us to have an open forum of discussions about all things relating to our performance of Midsummer, but also allows us to give the actors assignments, or tasks, to work on, so that by the time we arrive to start working with them in person, we will all be on the same page.

 

Documentation:

 

Evidencing is one of the most important aspects of our process, due to the unique nature of this project. We have over 100 hours of audio recordings, six days of rehearsal footage, not to mention a countless number of pictures. Documenting is important for us as a new company in order to be able to reflect upon the way we work, make improvements to our process and also serves as a stepping stone to move us from one stage to the next.

 

In this slideshow, we offer a small sample of our documentation. Also you will find books that have been inspiring, as well as a director's notebook, with definitions, objects, and other such notes.

 

Working Methodolgy:

    

Since there are only two of us, no one person is in charge, every idea has been open for debate and also for careful consideration. Nothing has been done without the consent of both sides. It's a collaborative process that draws upon the strengths of the individual for the benefit of the group. But it doesn't stop there, because as we made our way through this process, we began to share knowledge to one another, and began to teach each other skills that previously we had learned or had not encountered.

    

How do we work? We began rather simply. We would find a way to meet up, then just began preliminary discussions on what we wanted the work to say, and how we wanted to approach the work. We progressed from there by making a calendar and a list of events to accomplish by June 21 (and also by Sept 5)

London Cast:

 

The goal of this process was to rehearse these scenes in a neutral space, then take the scenes into a charge space (the cemetery) and see what being in the different spaces did to the work.

We worked with four extremely generous and talented actors: Alister Austin, Lisa Castle, Steve Wickenden, and Elizabeth Wilks.

The scenes occur both on film (filmed at the site) and live at 7:10, 7:25, 7:40, and 7:55. Please feel free to ask them any questions about the process that you may have.

 

Who Are We:

[2:36:35 PM] Emma: Emma's previous experience is based in production management and theatrical design, if you want to check out her work, www.emmaschimminger.com . She has many years of experience in lighting design, stage management, and really all around technical theatre practice. Elizabeth comes from the polar opposite end of the spectrum (to some degree) in both work and thinking. Liz is studying puppetry and has a background in acting/directing and scenic painting. Let us explain how this relationship works: Liz wants to use giraffes (for example) in a production…Emma suggests that instead of stealing giraffes from a zoo, they use something constructed to represent a giraffe. In other words, Emma keeps Liz on track, and Liz keeps Emma on her toes.

 

This project sprang from both of their research this year. Liz was looking at site specific performance, mostly in sacred places, while Emma was researching taboos in theatre. The culmination of the research is this project and discovering new ways to create a performance based community.

 

 

 

 

 

Final Thoughts on Midsummer (Visual)

London Rehearsal




The above images are pictures from the rehearsal process, images that were inspiring to me, and also images from the process. (Images that are not photographs are from google searches)
These are a few of my final thoughts on the process that was midsummer.

Research Pictures from Dashers Dashing Dashfully (Aka the invisible dasher)

A LOT of pictures are about to go up: All of them are from my personal collections from 2009-2010.
Abney Park, Islington, London
These are all pictures from my time spent in the third term with Kerol, Bernardo, Catherine, and Maghsood.