Dinky Episode 5: Puppetry

Photo by Sally Horowitz

STEPHEN FALA: I’m Stephen Fala, and you’re listening to Pipe and Drape, the only podcast that spotlights the creative minds behind the theatre for young audiences industry.

[The Dinky Pipe and Drape theme plays.] 

In this dinky “dinky” episode I’m going to briefly talk about the presence  of puppetry in theatre for young audiences. Thank you for listening today. 

Puppetry is the first form of theatre children encounter. Children in a “pre-theatre” age (toddler) are unknowingly using puppetry to create basic narratives. The manipulation of dolls or personification of other objects like rocks and sticks is rudimentary puppetry. Children use objects in play to mimic the behavior they see in humans and other animals. The Henson Foundation defines puppetry as “an object that is given the appearance of life through direct or indirect manipulation by the human hand,” and this is exactly what children are doing when they make-believe with small objects when they themselves are just learning to walk, talk, and use indoor plumbing. 

I loved dolls as a kid. I had the Barbie Dream House, Barbie, Princess Jasmine, Midge (from the 1960s), a sock puppet doll I made and named Happy, and two Madame Alexander dolls. Before I could even hold long-term memories, I was creating narratives with costume changes and scenery via dolls, fabric scraps, and things I found in my backyard. At school I found myself creating puppets and characters out of erasers and scraps of paper in my desk. I’d get lost in my imagination. I graduated from a dollhouse and daydreaming to a proper puppet theatre my parents made for me out of a box and custom sewn drapes and an old curtain rod, and ten years later I was sharing puppet-based stories on stage for money.

Once children learn to endow character properties into inanimate objects ranging from doll and hand puppets to twisty sticks they find on the ground, they are usually exposed to professional theatre which often makes use of puppetry. When this happens young children see adults doing they exact thing they do on the playroom floor to create a narrative. The presence of early childhood doll play establishes the suspense of disbelief that is necessary for the enjoyment of theatre, and by seeing adults create scenarios on the stage, they’re play is reflected back on them as an art form involving people of all ages. So puppetry is a gateway into theatre as a form of entertainment, and it has been for many, many years.

The rise theatre for young audiences as we know it today began in the mid twentieth century with plays written specifically for children, but entertainment for the whole family has included some form of puppetry for thousands of years all over the globe. From the shadow puppetry (Wayang kulit) a thousand years ago in Indonesia to the blushing, maniacal marionette-turned-hand-puppet jester Mr. Punch of the European Renaissance, the spectacle that is object movement storytelling has captivated family audiences for a long, long time. 

But why? Let’s look at the centuries-old phenomenon that is Punch and Judy. These two characters and their friends the Devil, the baby, the police officer, and an ambiguous reptile have been performing vignettes of a slapstick nature since at least the 1600s. This was not unlike the popular Italian theatre style commedia dell’arte which also featured physical comedy, a set of stock characters and relationships, music, and almost no scenery. Both the Mr. Punch phenomenon and commedia appealed to audiences of a wide age range on streets and at fairs. The subject matter of Punch and his friends appealed to adults (marital issues, challenging authority, the unbearable weight of existence), but the spectacle that was the absurdity and physicality of the characters captivated the younger audience. While the kids may not have picked up on the nuance of the spoken language in the storytelling, they could generate a narrative simply through the tone, blocking, and build of the characters in the scenes. Though the dialogue between these characters has changed to fit the social norms and colloquialisms over the last three hundred and fifty years, the essence of these characters and the heart of their story has remained the same—immortalized, like the theatre of Ancient Greece. 

Just one more quick theatre-ed side note here: There are a number of studies on the use of puppetry in the classroom for educational purposes: teachers and librarians incorporating puppetry into their lesson plans, and very recently a study on the positive effects puppetry has had in the classroom for children with autism. Follow the links in the show notes to read more about these theatre education-related studies.

The time-tested spectacle of object manipulation combined with a child’s suspense of disbelief acquired through puppet/doll play can be used as a tool to share stories in a variety of styles and budgetary constraints. Since young children are still in this phase of creating worlds of make-believe on their own and they are learning about the spectacle of life all around them, they are more likely to accept the conventions of whatever story and storytelling method is being presented to them on stage. Because of this, the puppeteering of an object, like a snake stuffed animal or a piece of cloth that alludes to a snake, does not seem weird or confusing, it just is.

The stories that captivate young audiences often include animals, magic, and/or a large number of characters. Most theatre for young audiences productions do not have a mega budget to pay dozens of actors, animal wranglers, and special effects teams so it is no wonder that this part of industry takes full advantage of the acceptance of puppetry as a storytelling medium. 

Puppetry is a problem solving device when it comes to special effects, especially in the low-budget/traveling nature of theatre for young audiences. There is no way a company can set up a flying rig in a different school cafeteria every day, but if Peter Pan and Wendy were puppets, the company can save time, money, and lives. If an adult is seeing an expensive production of Peter Pan at a big regional theatre somewhere, they want kids on wires. Kids have less life experience and therefore don’t expect that much, they will be just as fascinated by good puppetry just feet away from them. 

When it comes to animals on stage, this puppet solution is not unique to theatre for young audiences. Animal puppets have made their way across mainstream theatre that is geared towards adults. For example: large horse puppets roam the stage in the theatrical adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse. No budget or amount of training is going to convince a horse to do that mammoth of a show with all the blocking and lines the character Joey has eight times a week. It just had to be puppets. King King was a bigass marionette on Broadway that one time. I’m not saying that an animal of Kong’s size exists but I’m not not saying that either because I haven’t been to all the tropical islands yet. Not to say I haven’t been to a tropical island or two, and I have puppetry to thank for that. 

My career in theatre for young audiences took me all over the place while providing me with a puppetry training ground which would consequently get me more work. I entered the industry with just a couple puppetry credits from my teen years, but I had expressed interest in it while auditioning and interviewing with theatre for young companies. That’s a huge part of casting in the theatre for young audiences world. Companies are looking for employees who want to grow their skillset, stretch their existing abilities, and want adventure. Those are all things I’ve wanted since my Barbie days. As my resume expanded, so did my puppetry experience. I’ve puppeteered for young audiences all over North America and the Caribbean.

Through puppetry I’ve seen and manipulated versions of trees, sea creatures, snowmen, dogs, and a bed of ice—sometimes in a small school gym, sometimes while living my Beyonce fantasy in an area. The art form has shaped who I am as a performer. It has challenged me to channel my instincts as an actor into the movement vocabulary of each puppet I’ve used. In turn, the way each puppet operates informs the way I create a character. Can it turn quickly? Do its eyes move? What is its relationship with gravity? How does it breathe? I find these answers through rehearsal—play. Every time I have the opportunity to share a story through puppetry, that little piece of me that once played with Barbies and scraps of paper on my desk comes back. And that’s when my work feels most like play and my purest creative instincts are revived.

[Pipe and Drape theme plays.]

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"Study Finds Children with Autism Respond Well to Puppets" By Mike Cummings:

https://news.yale.edu/2021/08/05/study-finds-children-autism-respond-well-puppets

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Host: Stephen Fala

Artwork: Stephen Gordon