From: RaraBird-AT-aol.com
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2007 10:16:58 EST
To: puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org
Subject: [Puptcrit] Puppetphobia/Pupaphobia admittance


Hello, my name is Laura Harper and I am a puppetphobe. And I am on this list 
and a puppet creator.   Confused?   Read on.

I just wanted people on this list to know that as a lover of puppets and 
being involved in their creation has not done anything to calm my puppetphobia.

Being an individual who is affected by this, the fear of masks, clowns and 
even Disney walkaround characters, I thought it might be interesting for you to 
hear from someone who is involved in puppetry and maskmaking who is on the 
"scaredy" side of the fence, yet overcomes this phobia because of their equal 
fascination with the art, and my intense need to be a part of it.

Why, you had asked previously in another letter, would someone who fears 
false faces want to be surrounded by them in a workshop for hours on end, day 
after day?   How is it I could walk down Main Street in Disneyland everyday at 
work and not run screaming from the park?   How can I love masks and puppets so 
much and be so terribly afraid of them?

I'll tell the you the honest and real truth:   It is because my imagination 
is so vivid and intense, and because I truly believe that everything has a soul 
that I project the life into these things with my imagination perception, and 
I truly believe they have life in them.

It isn't always fear, though, it is also a fascination and love that I 
project into them.   Even when I am walking backstage and see Goofy or Tigger or 
Pooh Bear fully costumed and masked walking toward me, I get excited and have to 
wave hello.   To me they are always real, and always filled with life, and I 
guess the child in me will always see them that way.

And that is why I both love and fear puppets and why I surround my life with 
them.
 
There is something to be said about walk-through haunted houses...I wouldn't 
be caught dead in anything like this....or if I were caught in one I WOULD be 
dead because I would surely have a heart attack after the first monster jumped 
out. I went to the first Universal Horror nights at the urging of a good 
buddy who begged for my companionship back in the 1980's.   What I didn't know is 
that they had real actors in monster makeup walking around and menacing people 
all over the park, not just in the haunted houses. After one hour of living 
in sheer, real horror at the prospect that these people might get near me, I 
begged him to take me home and have NEVER set foot in anything like that again.

Yet I have built Knott's Berry Farms Halloween events and made hundreds of 
monster masks for theaters, and countless puppets.

I just cannot seperate my imagination from it, and guess that is where 
really, truly good puppet and mask making comes from in my artists hands.   I am 
making something that I know is going to come to life, and I believe it down in 
the bottom of my soul. It is the love and belief in them that makes them, and 
my hands and my inagination are the tools I use to bring them to fruition.

I hope that this answers some questions for some of you.

Laura
One who really believes
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