We decided early on in our process that we wanted to be open to and explore as many different performance disciplines as possible. Having been influenced by Filter and a lot of innovative productions that some of us saw in Edinburgh last year, we really loved the idea of creating a mash up of performance styles, rather than strictly sticking to one. In doing so, we hope to provide the audience with a kaleidoscopical way to watch and experience such normal stories. Part of this was to capture the vast scope of feelings and experiences attached to love, but we also did want to celebrate different ways of performing, different ways of telling stories.
One of the performance styles we considered and admired when seeing other shows was puppetry, particularly in more adult orientated shows where it can be quite beautiful and haunting. As such, we have incorporated it in two very different ways, into two of our scenes. The Fantasist (shown in the video above) used puppetry to explore bi-polar disorder, using very different styles of puppets (as you can see) to give life to the different aspects of the disorder. While our puppetry is not being used to create a character for something inhuman, one of their puppets in particular is of a similar style to two puppets we are using in one of our final scenes.
Without giving away too much about the narrative of the scene, we are using specially adjusted jackets to symbolise two characters. We are doing it in a way that is very similar to the way they create the large man (shown dancing with the woman in the video) in The Fantasist. However, our puppets will simply be jackets (no head/ hat etc), as we found that there is something more beautiful about the fact that the jackets could be anyone. Their story very personal (being somewhat based on a true story) but also universal, and the depersonalised jacket-puppets certainly seem to add to that.
What is helpful and interesting about watching this video, as one of the puppeteers, is seeing how detailed and life like the large man’s movements are, despite the fact that he is an unrealistic looking man. Tom has been working with Abbi and I to block the scene but, having now brought the puppet home to play with and get used to myself, I can see that the real work is in the detail. It is in creating a character for these puppets in the little ways that they move, and in making them breathe. An example being in how I have made it so that my puppet’s hand shakes: a small signification of his age and health.
A few helpful pointers or quotes I have found on puppetry from an article by Cariad Astles:
1: “The puppeteers [] need to be
able to focus energy and attention clearly in the direction required” (Astles 2010) – This is something we have discussed in rehearsals; our focus and eye line needs to be on our puppet, so that the audiences attention is focused where ours is – on the puppets. We discovered that if we look at each other, or look ahead to where the puppet is headed, or out into the audience, we could move the focus to ourselves, meaning that the magic of the puppets and their characters would be lost.
2: “The intention here is not for the puppeteer to pretend not to breath; but to make the audience believe that as s/he breathes, so does the puppet or object” (Astles 2010) – Both Tom, Martyn (who came in to help one rehearsal) and myself have had some puppetry experience before and have learnt, through this, that the key is not to deliberately make the puppet breath, but to allow the puppet to move with our own breaths, meaning it looks natural and also retains that key relationship between the puppeteer and the puppet.
One 3rd interesting quote I have found is this: “Stephen Mottram (2007), likens the puppet to a musical instrument: in order to play it, you need to practise exercises daily in order to train your fingers and your body” (Astles 2010) – This isn’t something we have discussed (as clearly we don’t have the time that trained puppeteers would do to build this up), but I am discovering (now that I have the puppet at home with me) that playing with it and getting used to the feel of it as much as possible, even watching carefully in the mirror, is incredibly important and will make a huge difference to how effective it looks on the night.
References:
Astles, C (2010) ‘Puppetry training for contemporary live
theatre’, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 1(1), March: pp. 22-35
RTENewsNow (2013), The Fantasist – a play about bipolar – RTÉ’s Morning Edition, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHH5wB3PBhk [Accessed 5 May 2014]