Date: Sat, 27 May 2006 11:52:17 -0700
To: puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH


Here's another point of view

Having worked professionally as a puppeteer and 
an actor from the age of 13, I received a BA in 
Anthropology(i963), and a Master's degree in 
Creative Arts in 1969.  I was late in coming to 
puppetry in terms of building and producing 
shows. Like many theater people, puppetry was 
secondary to my thoughts. In 69' I began teaching 
theater and acting at Laney College. It was a 
time of great change. My masters did not prepare 
me to teach Drama to students who had no interest 
in Shakespeare, Ibsen or Chekhov. So I went at 
night to study with Del Close at "The Committee" 
and teach their brand of improvisational theater 
to my students during the day. After a year I 
lost my job at Laney because I felt, contrary to 
my department heads opinion, that the object of 
teaching theater was not to train actors for a 
profession in which 80% of the people in it were 
unemployed. But rather, to put people in touch 
with their own creativity and to give them skills 
and the insight to make their own decisions. I 
tried to introduce a puppetry program to further 
that goal as well. The faculty at Laney turned 
down my class proposal when one professor 
compared a class in puppetry to offering a class 
in "fly tying". My response was to stage a 
demonstration  with puppets carrying signs which 
stated "puppets are people too". We then came to 
a parting of the ways and I found myself with 
another job  working in the Vagabond Puppet 
Program for the Oakland Recreation Program. I was 
following Lettie Schubert and a long line of 
traditionalists like Tony Urbano, Frank Oz, Jerry 
Juel and others.

That first year the program was run by a graduate 
of the Bread an Puppet Theater and avant guard 
playwright who's métier was agit prop theater. 
Since this was the time of the student political 
upheavals and the rise of the Black Panthers and 
Huey Newton who were doing out reach programs 
through out Oakland and East Oakland his ideas 
fit in with the programs in the inner city. I 
took over the next year and was the first person 
to train black puppeteers and continue to focus 
on creating original shows that dealt with 
survival and issues that those in East Oakland 
could relate to. I ran the program for three or 
four years. When the P of A Festival  was held at 
Mills College I was not invited to perform with 
my Vagabond Troupe but Lettie, Frank and few 
others ventured into town to see what we were 
doing. They were not happy and looked upon my 
efforts as loose, raucous and too political which 
was a correct assessment. It was appropriate to 
the time and fairy tales were not. It was only a 
hop skip and jump to my involvement in Puppetry 
in Education. The discovery I made then was that 
puppetry is the finite tool with which to present 
ideas, illustrating concepts while at the same 
time doing it in such a way as to entertain as 
well as enlighten others. Over the years I have 
experienced the best of both possible worlds. In 
the course of that time my puppets have addressed 
and illustrated environmental issues such as 
trash and recycling as part of the cities 1 
Percent for the Arts program ($20,000), parental 
sex abuse (had 9 to 10 disclosures at each 
performance), sex education with Planned 
Parenthood (every seen puppets do a gynecological 
exam with good taste and tongue and cheek humor), 
issues illustrating good hygiene, reading 
programs and a three year program on Nutrition 
for the Mt Diablo Unified School District that 
significantly reduced waste in school cafeterias 
by 60 %. The list goes on which brings me to my 
main thesis puppets, better than any other art 
form can focus minutely on issues with warmth and 
humor enlightening others and in some instance 
bringing about change. We know that the 
commercial interests in this country take great 
note of that and use it to great effect and bring 
income to those working in that marketplace. 
Global warming can be addressed in that way as 
well to great effect(good reason to see the 
movie). I have worked in both marketplaces as 
well. Addressing such timely issues is a way of 
contributing something positive to this world of 
consumers and in one sense giving back to the 
environment in exchange for what we take out.

Bruce K Chessé

>Hi folks-
>thanks everyone for rallying around this topic; it's been amazing to see the
>responses. Just a thought, taking from John Bell and malgosia's responses in
>particular ...
>
>A.O. Scott says in the NYTimes review of this film:
>"I can't think of another movie in which the display of a graph elicited
>gasps of horror, but when the red lines showing the increasing rates of
>carbon-dioxide emissions and the corresponding rise in temperatures come on
>screen, the effect is jolting and chilling. Photographs of receding ice
>fields and glaciers - consequences of climate change that have already taken
>place - are as disturbing as speculative maps of submerged coastlines. The
>news of increased hurricane activity and warming oceans is all the more
>alarming for being delivered in Mr. Gore's matter-of-fact, scholarly tone."
>
>If we can argue that animated graphs and visual aids of this kind can be a
>form of puppetry, witness the effectiveness right HERE in changing minds by
>simply presenting information dynamically.
>
>At one point in his slideshow, Gore points out the startling population
>growth curve on a huge graph which he literally SCALES in a cherry-picker to
>indicate the enormity of the trend.
>
>useful ideas for puppeteers, I hope ... and grist for the mill.
>
>cherry-picker, anyone?
>
>-Emmy
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