Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 12:25:48 -0400
From: Geoffrey Navias <geoff-AT-openhandtheater.org>
To: puptcrit puptcrit <puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org>
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] puptcrit Digest, Vol 55, Issue 15,


>> I think of the shadow plays in South India where they go on even though there
>> might not be an audience...the community all feels it's important that it
>> happen, kind of like a cleansing/healing ritual. A connection to "truth"?

>> 
>> How did we in the west end up losing this connection and considering
>> performers so suspect?
 
>> 
>> Rolande

Roland & Hobey,

Great musings.  

I suspect it has to do with the very nature of how a culture perceives
death.  

My experiences in Bali and working with the Onondaga Indian Nation...two
cultures which have active, intact puppet/masks culture/traditions, and,
compared to my upbringing, very different perceptions of death, pushed my
thinking on this.  

Puppeteers take an inanimate object and for a time instill it with a life
force... action, personality, and a story. Bringing something to life is
such a fundamental mystery which reverberates and can be perceived as
opening the the door between that which is not alive and that which is...
Our western pop culture has a deep and dark love/hate relationship to the
"supernatural" as can be seen any night flipping through the TV.  (Vampires,
Science Fiction, Medicine, Creation, (the voice over for) Desperate
Housewives, & Religion are all nightly grist for the mill)

On one hand Puppetry/Masks pull from our early human rituals/original
moments/ and wrestling to manifest the sacred.  I sense, though I can not
define, a distinction made between when a community is involved and
empowered in this process verses when it is centered through an individual.
The community ritual/theater experience is what I think we can see being
tapped into with Hobey's example of the Lion King.

On the other hand, those individuals who bring the inanimate to life are
suspect and often feared (especially since they hide their dark powers
behind the guise of sweet children's play.)

A couple years ago I found it fascinating that these two distinct views of
"puppetry" where being so creatively & classically presented at the same
moment in American popular culture enacted by the Lion King and Being John
Malkovich.

Geoffrey




On 5/16/09 9:03 AM, "Hobey Ford" <hobeyone-AT-gmail.com> wrote:

> I too loved your thoughts on how East and West relate to shadow
> puppetry.  In the East  it seems that puppetry borders on sacred and
> in the West it's "whos that man behind the curtain" an illusion to be
> mistrusted, a cliche, the sterotype of "evil Puppeteer or puppet", or
> endless comparisons to politicians. (not to paint too dark a picture)
> So too with the concept of magic, circus and the itinerant entertainer
> as someone questionable.  I suppose when puppets were carried out of
> Asia into the west, that the "context" did't make the trip or if it
> did it was not understood.  Puppets arrived as a parlor trick or
> novelty.  So too with the Shaman's use of puppetry as a sacred
> illusion to open up the psyche of the patient to create "belief" in
> the cure.  I think that many in the west have recaptured that aspect
> of puppetry as a window into the great mystery.  Every night on
> Broadway an audience watching the opening of Lion King tears up to the
>  pantheon of animistic beings,  They are moved to tears inexplicably,
> reconnected to the spirit world they have been cut off from.
> 
> 
> On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 7:43 AM,  <puppetpro-AT-aol.com> wrote:
>> Thank you for this, Kathy. It makes so much sense.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I think of the shadow plays in South India where they go on even though there
>> might not be an audience...the community all feels it's important that it
>> happen, kind of like a cleansing/healing ritual. A connection to "truth"?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> How did we in the west end up losing this connection and considering
>> performers so suspect?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Rolande
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Kathy Foley <kfoley-AT-ucsc.edu>
>> To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
>> Sent: Fri, 15 May 2009 3:44 pm
>> Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] puptcrit Digest, Vol 55, Issue 15
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Re: Plato
>> 
>> The allegory of the cave is related to Pythagian ideas which
>> themselves are related to a wider scope of thinking which may
>> originate in Asia and find articulation in Hinduism and Buddhism. In
>> these forms there is mistrust of what is perceived by the
>> "unenlightened" person and a feeling that the true thinker has to get
>> outside of the seeming forms toward an essence of things. =A0The
>> metaphor interestingly served in the west which has grown into a more
>> materialist base to denigrate performance (as we see in the Republic
>> and to an extent in this tale of the cave). In India and areas of Asia
>> affected by Buddhism however it has served to make performance more
>> important. =A0For in Asia the idea of puppet play is used to move viewer
>> from audience member to performer. The performer (who realizes that
>> all the things we make and do in this wor
>> ld are ultimately illusions/
>> shadows is an image of the enlightened one0 and is smashing through
>> illusion =A0the puppetmaster is now enlightened/divine (or should be!).
>> In much of early buddhism we find the cave life and shadow puppetry
>> may be intelinked. A similar metaphor goes with Sufi performance. Why
>> does the west turn it into a thumbs down on performance/puppetry that
>> the show is an illusion? Perhaps that the borders between humanity and
>> divinity are closed. =A0Plato's person can only go out and "see" the sun/
>> lamp, he can't become as Asian traditions theorize become the sun
>> (usually right eye) and moon (left eye) and all the other visual/
>> metaphoric imagery of transformation from a nobody into understanding
>> of potential divinity. This explains why puppetry in Asia and
>> performance in general gets more respect in some strands of religion
>> and culture and why Western artists are always having a hard time
>> sneaking into the Republic.
>> 
>> best,
>> 
>> KF
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