Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:18:02 -0500
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Workshops: helping too much?


Listening to NPR this morning about people watching music videos on
cell phones and how they have to make edits faster and faster.  Also
noting Chris' adjoining thread in "difficult workshops" about ADD and
overstimulated children and young adults in our workshops and shows.
As special effects and hyper kinetic stimulous multitasking and
electronics are changing the brains of our audiences, it has been very
interesting to see how these audiences are taking in our artform.
Chris talked about the child who couldn't sit still but when he put on
a mask was transformed.  I think there is a void in their experience
which our artform fills in a whole new way.  It  is similar with good
storytelling.  Audiences experience less and less of this sort of
stuff. We are now left in a new position. We provide the experience of
a puppet show with just human beings up there telling a story with
simple lowtech puppets and if we do well it is mesmerizing to them in
a whole new way.  Its a nutritional deficit we are filling in their
brains.  Vitamin I
(imagination)  I worried that puppetry would become obsolete in our
high tech culture but I think the opposite has happened.  I think it
is more valuable than ever.


On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 9:53 PM, Elizabeth Freeman
<LindenTree85-AT-comcast.net> wrote:
> As a kid who "didn't art well, " I'm not sure why I signed up for an
> art class in HS...
>
> but I was always greatful for the art teacher to come lend a small
> dash here or there that turned my project into somethng at least
> presentable,
>
> letting me relax and enjoy the class and not flee in horror.      No
> matter how much you try to tell a kid, his work is great ,  when they
> all get displayed on the wall,
>
> most know who are the class artists and who should explore other
> hobbies.
>
>
> As a special ed teacher, I have loved doing puppets with kids because
> they don't have to look exactly like the picture and often shouldn't.
>
> One boy at a library workshop I was running never made his shadow
> puppet that day.  "I stayed back," he told me.
>
> I told him to come early the next day and I'd help him make his
> puppet.  "I can't read, " he added.
>
> "No problem,"  I told him, "you can be in charge of the scenery."
> The expression on his face, let me know I had just given him another
> anxiety attack.
>
> But he showed up, we made the puppet.  I showed him the scenery.   He
> ended up doing both jobs!
>
> Liz F
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