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.

Audience Reactions

Chelly Coyle:

One audience members thoughts on Midsummer 9/2/20

"Overall I thought the production was a tremendous amount of fun. I loved the setting. The Maple Grove was beautiful and really augmented the sense of "spirits". This seemed especially strong to me the deeper into the cemetery the play went. Cemeteries have always invoked strong feelings for me. They are both peaceful and otherworldly. Whenever I'm in one, I can't help but to start imagining the stories of the folks interned in them. Midsummer certainly easily falls into the category of a great--fun story.

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.

The puppet spirits, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed 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. 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.

There were two things that were minor negatives for me. The first was that the initial scenes were played too close to the public roadway and the traffic noise was annoying and interfered with hearing the actors. Secondly, the audience, including myself, were initially unsure about when to move. Although an explanation was given prior to the start of the play that we were to follow the actors, if you do this again I would suggest that this explanation be expanded upon to include clearer encouragement to stay close to the action."

Heidi O'Connell:

"It was so lovely to finally meet you last week at your performance. I hope the show went well for night 2 and that you've been getting lots of useful feedback. Lea and 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) I wondered several times if I could have followed a separate story line across the graveyard away from other audience members.

Lots of interesting stuff jumping out in the text about sleep and the idea of being watched at all times. The puppetry combined smoothly with the shapes of the monuments to that effect. The smaller fairy puppets were filled with individual personalities and joie de vivre!

Bold choice to move from the darkness into the light for the final long chunk of the text (rude mechs show). We didn't see the lovers wake, and I did suspect at first that we would be leaving them there in the cemetery, sleeping with all the others in deep slumber there in that particular space."

Megan Lee: (Actress Hermia)

"One of my managers came to see the show, and she summed it up nicely for me-- she said that seeing Midsummer in this new way really thrilled her with the creativity of the project. She also said that seeing a play that is so familiar and beloved in a place that primarily belongs to the dead was refreshing because then, Shakespeare had never seemed so alive for her."

Ian Buckley:

"What was interesting to me was how cinematic the performance was. I enjoyed seeing people in perspective, both up close and far away and would have loved to seen more of that. I have seen nine productions of Midsummer, and this one by far stood above the others."

Suzan Perry (Actress Egeus)

"What a wonderful experience. I had a great time with the production and with all the new people I got to meet. I think the only real down side was the late summer evening. By that I mean we were under a circumstance we could not control. The days were getting shorter and once the sun went down in trees the dark hit even faster. One thing I thought of was having all the audience carry flashlights or Puck with a really big light.

All in all I would do it again in a heartbeat!"

Bonnie Dixon: Friends of Maple Grove Cemetery

"…thank you for introducing us to theater in the cemetery. I think that it was a wonderful, energetic performance and given rehearsal time a very cool production. Bravo to you, your cast and your puppets. You certainly made good use of the cemetery landscape and the Celebration Room interior, as well as, its exterior. Big challenges I guess were audio and darkness, although the flashlight spotlights were good for the audience they were probably difficult for the actors. It was a real thumbs up for me. "

Carl: Friends of Maple Grove Historian:

"I wanted to let you know what a delightful evening we all had last night. I think the hardest audience to win over are the young. I can certainly tell you that when I took Derek, Jean and Little Philippe home they were all talking about what a wonderful evening they had. I think it is magnificent that they were introduced to Shakespeare in this brilliant way. Especially for nine year old Philippe, for this was his first exposure. Derek and Jean had read it recently in High School so were familiar with it. What a wonderful first impression.

As I mentioned to Elizabeth, 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."

Now that I put some of this down into one place I can see the sort of impact we had. It feels wonderful to have touched so many hearts in so many ways.

Developing the next Step

Reflecting on and working on my paper has been anything but pleasant. I keep getting distracted by that little monster known only as procrastination and probably fear. I have this horrible dread feeling that I am going to fail this somehow, even though I am confident that I have done all of the work that goes into the SIP part of this project. I'm just afraid of writing now, because I feel like I haven't gotten it correct once this year, and I'm not sure why. I've been able to reflect a lot and it troubles me that at points this year, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a creator, I wanted to be a designer and a performer and I wanted to learn so that I could bring it all back with me and start, really start the company that I had tried to begin the year before. And now I have two companies, and some of my confidence back again. Midsummer was draining, trying to wear too many hats. I should have not acted, as much as I loved it, I couldn't commit to it fully. In a smaller production, I think that would have been all right, but for the scale and the amount of elements configured to make Midsummer, it was all a bit too much.
The next step.
Emma and I are going to get together once this paper is done and turned in. We plan to start envision what is next for the company, such as a board of directors, so that the work load is evenly distributed across several other people. Then we hope to do staged readings of plays our friends have written.
I have a project I would like my puppet company to do, but I haven't had much time to put thought into it. It is going to be the story of my grandmother, I think, and that will help me come to terms with moving away from her, and leveling the amount of guilt I feel for having gone so far away.
Heavy post. Maybe next time it will be a bit better.
Going to keep pushing myself to post. I suck at it, but I am really trying to improve.

Another group doing a performance piece in a cemetery!

This is awesome. What an incredibly strange world!