From: "Alan Cook" <alangregorycook-AT-msn.com>
To: puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org
Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:44:02 GMT
Subject: [Puptcrit] Toy Theatre use of 3-D puppets


Thank you Vit, for pointing out that not all toy theatre puppets are flat cardboard figures.

Small dimensional marionettes have been used not only in Czech toy theatres, but in Germany, Italy and Mexico. All were small scale.

Silent Screen movie star, Ramon Navarro, as a kid in Mexico (long before Hollywood beckoned him north) played with small clay puppets. I'm not sure if they were the simple ones with just a wire to the top of the head, or the fancier clay figures worked  from a wood cross control which were inspired by the famed Rosete Aranda troupe menioned in Paul McPharlin's important tome, PUPPET THEATRE IN AMERICA. Navarro's stage was adapted from a cardboard shoebox, the kind kids could make by themselves.

The current exhibit at the Conservatory of Puppetry Arts in Pasadena, California includes examples from Mexico which you could still find in the 1960s and Italy (1930s), along with a few toy theatre stages of cardboard.

Pablo Cueto, third generation puppeteer in Mexico, is scheduled to perform at the St Paul 2007 Puppet Rampage Festival with toy theatre. Hopefully he can tell us if one can still find toy clay puppets.

I met his Grandmother, Lola Cueto, the distinguished puppet designer for Teatro Nahual, in 1948 at the Oklahoma City Festival, where I first met George Latshaw.

We did not get to see the scheduled hand puppet performance by Teatro Nahual in 1948, because the puppets were held back at the border, but theatre director Roberto Lago and Lola Cueto were allowed to show up. Meeting them was a treat, but sometimes our Customs personnel are idiots, and they did not even have the excuse of "terrorists" in 1948.

Visas for puppets have often been a  problem. In 1980 in Washington., DC, there were problems to be faced but we had amazing help from a retired State Department official that year; we did not have that kind of valuable help in 1981 at Cal Poly (a Korean troupe did not make it), and a year or 2 ago, UCLA missed out having a Thai puppet show.

We don't hear enough complaints when some customs guy screws up our opportunities for international cultural exchange.

ALAN COOK


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