Date: Sun, 06 Jan 2008 05:53:44 -0800 To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org From: Steve Axtell <steve-AT-axtell.com> Subject: [Puptcrit] Paul Mesner Article http://www.kansascity.com/238/story/429318.html He was young. He was a gypsy. He was fearless. He was one man in a Datsun pickup with a box of puppets and a portable stage, driving icy Minnesota highways. His name was Paul Mesner, and he prided himself on never missing a performance. =93My winter driving skills got really good,=94 Kansas City=92s best-known puppeteer said recently. Mesner did the Minnesota tour every year in the late 1970s. Now the man who never went to college considers it his education. =93This fellow saw me perform at a regional puppet festival, and he had done this school assembly circuit tour for many years,=94 Mesner said. =93And he offered me this 14-week job of doing 12 to 14 shows a week in 10 to 12 different schools a week from January through May in Minnesota. So I did that for four years, and I think of that as my school-of-hard-knocks college.=94 It was just Mesner and the puppets as he made his way from town to town, school to school. Often he would meet school custodians at 7 a.m. to unlock the building so he could set up his stage. One year the thermometer was stuck at 22 below for three weeks. But Mesner, who had been doing puppet theater in Omaha, was living an adventure. =93This was $350 a week, and I had to pay for all my meals and lodging and gas, but I thought it was great money.=94 He found hotels for $6 or $8 a night. They were =93like out of some movie =AD flower-print wallpaper they put up in the =9240s, creaky bed, bath down the hall. =85 I scrimped and saved and I came away from there saving money.=94 Each year the pay went up by $100. The first three years, he performed =93Tom Sawyer=94 and other shows written by his employer using marionettes. By the fourth year he persuaded his boss to let him do his own material, and he headed out with the hand-and-rod puppets he prefers to this day. =93I never missed a date. I was there for every single date and every single show.=94 That changed in the spring of 1980, midway through the tour in his fourth year. He was called home to Lincoln, Neb., because one of his cousins, believed to be drunk and high on peyote, murdered another of his cousins, a caretaker at a Quaker meeting house. Mesner had been close to the victim, Janet Mesner. The killer, Randoph Reeves, was sentenced to death, but the family rallied to have the sentence commuted, in part to honor the memory of Janet, who vehemently opposed the death penalty. =93That was before grief counselors,=94 Mesner said. =93I went back on the road and was just miserable. I was having nightmares every night. At 3 o=92clock I=92d think I heard someone outside the hotel door. I was a mess. So I just canceled the tour. =93I really came out of that with a sense that life is so fragile and that you=92ve got to work your hardest and do your very best,=94 he said. =93It sounds corny, but you=92ve got to follow your dream. I worked very hard from that moment on, and I just kept thinking of Janet and what would she think.=94 Higher profile Things have changed a lot since then. Mesner turned 50 last year, and December marked his 20th anniversary as a puppeteer in Kansas City. His first show was =93The Twelve Days of Christmas=94 at Quality Hill Playhouse. In an era when we=92ve seen puppetry mainstreamed in two Broadway shows, =93The Lion King=94 and =93Avenue Q,=94 Mesner keeps his performances relatively simple. He has built Paul Mesner Puppets into a nonprofit arts organization with a budget of $416,000 and four full-time staffers, including Mesner and his executive director, Diane Barker. This season includes four shows at Unity Temple on the Plaza, =93Hansel and Gretel=94 at the Folly and the annual =93Page to Stage=94 production at his studio based on writings by students. Steve Axtell Axtell Expressions, Inc. **************************************** http://www.axtell.com The original content of this email or attachments is =A9 Axtell Expressions, Inc. _______________________________________________ List address: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org Admin interface: http://lists.puptcrit.org/mailman/listinfo/puptcrit Archives: http://www.driftline.org
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