File puptcrit/puptcrit.0611, message 13


Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:46:54 -0600 (CST)
From: Charles Taylor <cecetaylor-AT-verizon.net>
To: puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] The Two Types of Puppeteers


Bruce, I agreee so much with what you said. I knew both your father and Harry 
Burnett. I sat next to Harry during that performance in Oakland. And I 
remember it so well, The performance of The Figuren Triangle. It must have 
been the late 1960=92s, possibly 1969.  

Harry hated the show. But then he hated almost every puppet show except his 
own.  But I noticed that many top professionals expressed similiar attitudes 
in those days. They seemed to have extremly healthy egos. Every one else was 
inferior to each puppeteers own criteria. Funny after all these decades most 
have mellowed quite a bit and appreciate their contemporaries more. Now it=92s 
the =93young upstarts=94 that may go unappreciated. Well, the world turns and 
change is inevitable.  

Wise are those who can be tolerant, perhaps understanding of the new ideas and 
explorations.  Your father, Ralph Chese was one of those that was able to 
explore new concepts. He was open, creative and a true artist.

You know, there was a lot of puppetry centered around Olvera Street in the 
early thirties and forties. Out of Olvera Street came: The Yale Puppeteers, 
Harry Burnett, Forman Brown, Richard Brandon,  Bob Bromley, Virginia Curtis, 
Frank Paris, Wayne Barlow, Ralph Chese, Walton and O=92Rourke, and many others 
later.  Rene performed at La Goldindrina, the restaurant on Olvera Street that 
survived over fifty or sixty years under the same manager. 

Bob Baker was a child in the early thirties and has an amusing connection with 
the Yale Puppeteers leaving Olvera Street when Bob Bromley took over.  Bob 
Bromley wanted to measure the theater to be prepared to move in when the Yale 
Puppeteers went to their Broadway theater in New York. As the Yale Puppeteers 
slept in their quarters above the theater, Bob Bromley boosted Bob Baker  ( 
eight years old at the time ) through a high window. That way young Bob Baker 
could open the door so Bob Bromley and others could measure the theater.

 Bob Bromley and then  Ralph Chese ran  the Los Angeles WPA Puppet Theater 
during the early thirties. Bob Baker was nine then when hired by Bob Bromley. 
Most of the memorablia from that theater is stored in Washington D.C. Library 
of Congress. 

Puppeteers have an invisible thread that connects us to one another. If we 
knew enough of the development of the puppet theater and puppeteers, we could 
make a time line to show the progression from the turn of the twentieth 
century to the twenty first. My what a story that is!

The long running feuds between certain puppeteers in Los Angeles would lend 
extremely interesting reading and understandings of their attitudes towards 
each other, their approach to puppetry and the development of puppet theater 
in it=92s varied and unique forms of presentation. 

Charles Taylor


>From: Bruce Chesse <bchesse-AT-imagina.com>
>Date: 2006/11/01 Wed PM 01:53:10 CST
>To: puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org
>Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] The Two Types of Puppeteers

>My how this topic has expanded and flown in every 
>which direction  including Harry Partch no less. 
>I saw a performance on his instruments by a 
>colleague of his years ago at UC Santa Cruz with 
>Lou Harrison, the Carter Family and others. It 
>was quite remarkable. Lou was a renowned composer 
>who in 1928 used to visit my father's marionette 
>theaters and went on to compose puppet operas and 
>as we all know was influenced in his music by all 
>phases of Javanese and Balinese art and music. To 
>be a good puppeteer you must be all things, a 
>visual and a performing artist and that is what's 
>important. As for actors or puppeteers their are 
>both bad and good ones depending on their level 
>of experience. However, we are forgetting that 
>the audience too is a much a part of a 
>performance as you the puppeteer. It involves a 
>suspension of belief and your performance must be 
>such that you carry your audience with you.
>
>I am reminded of a marionette performance I saw 
>in Oakland, CA in the 60'  of  The Figuren 
>Triangle.
>This was a troupe from one of the Benelux 
>countries. They did a dark marionette program of 
>stories influenced in style and decor by the 
>stories of Hyronimous Bosh and the art of the 
>Brougels. I was sitting next to my father and 
>Harry Burnett of Turnabout Theater Fame in LA (he 
>and my father were contemporaries, both pioneers 
>in puppet production).
>
>This was and still is one of the greatest 
>marionette shows I have ever seen. My father was 
>blown away and for him it fulfilled his notion of 
>what puppetry should be all about whereas Harry 
>couldn't contain himself. He was so disturbed and 
>uncomfortable that he got up and left the room 
>after the show
>condemning it in every way. He declared to all 
>that this was not puppetry and it was an insult 
>to the craft.
>
>What am I trying to say?  Art is in the eye of 
>the beholder. Both my father and Harry were 
>considered great puppeteers, meaning men who 
>created their shows from the ground up, 
>conceiving building  and performing but they were 
>as different as night and day. The technology of 
>the day was very simplistic.
>Harry's puppets were not great art but the total 
>shows they produced were clever and unique and 
>had content and entertained.
>
>My father was a minimalist when it came to 
>manipulation. The artful figure combined with the 
>live dialogue, settings and carefully chosen 
>music created an illusion that transported you 
>into an Elizabethan or 17th century French world 
>of language. He was told by colleagues in his 
>time that doing Shakespeare and Molliére with 
>puppets should be left to actors as it was not a 
>vehicle for puppetry.
>
>The puppeteers were his sisters and artists 
>living in an around North Beach in San Francisco. 
>It was also a place where you could pool your 
>resources and feed each other. It was the 
>greatest artistic social experiment that ever 
>took place in this country. During the WPA period 
>you were not supposed to hire professionals. 
>Your project  trained people and gave them work. 
>If you look up many of the actors who got their 
>start in the WPA many were puppeteers first and 
>became well know actors afterwards.
>
>Finally each of these puppeteers brought to the 
>craft something of excellence unique and separate 
>in their own way. What made them equals was their 
>passion for what they were trying to do. If you 
>want to carry on this conversation  distinguish 
>between the creator and the puppeteer or actor 
>who is carrying out the ideas of the creator. 
>Basil Twist  (from San Francisco originally) is a 
>creator who has the vision. The people who carry 
>out his ideas are trained and at times it is the 
>puppet itself that does the training. It can only 
>move the way it is constructed to move. The skill 
>is to be found in listening to its dictates.  The 
>puppet teaches me what it wants me to do. A 
>puppeteer, of note, once took a puppet of mine 
>and had it do and speak in ways that it was not 
>meant to do. It was one of the most horrifying 
>moment for me. I never let him touch a puppet of 
>mine again.
>
>Bruce Chessé
>
>
>>  >Dancers often make great puppeteers.
>>>- Andrew
>>
>>I totally agree. I've met quite a few. The most impressive I've seen at
>>puppet movements almost all had dancing backgrounds. They sure know their
>>bodies and how to transfer energies.
>>
>>I wonder if Basil Twist has a dancing background as well?
>>When I saw him live last spring with his Stickman, I was hynotised by the
>>magic his puppet made! In his case, there was no competition for the
>>public's attention. Both puppet and puppeteers were of the same act, a
>>seamless union such as I've never seen before or since. More than dance
>>partners, they almost seemd like a single being inhabiting two bodies at
>>once, if that makes sense.
>>I'll always remember the scene near the end where Stickman takes flight
>>slowly, the leg of the puppeteer becoming the means to elevation.
>>
>>
>>
>>Mathieu René Créaturiste
>>Marionnettes, Masques, Etcetera...
>>Puppets, Masks, Etcetera...
>>SITE officiel:  www.magma.ca/~uubald/
>>www.creaturiste.blogspot.com
>>www.maskmaking.blogspot.com
>>creaturiste-AT-magma.ca
>>(514) 274-8027
>>
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