Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 11:07:23 -0700
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
From: The Independent Eye <eye-AT-independenteye.org>
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Dancers & Actors vs Puppeteers


Friends-

	Some thoughts on this thread, as all of our puppet work has 
been with "actors" rather than "puppeteers," and our own puppet work 
has been self-taught over the years - "self-taught" of course 
including a vast amount of watching pros do it.  That's been not by 
choice but by necessity: there are a billion actors looking for gigs, 
not so many puppeteers, and of the latter, even fewer who're 
interested in "experimental" adult work.

	The difficulties with actors have been mentioned, but I'd 
dispute the idea that the actor is "more concerned with his ego" or 
such like.  The problem is that if an actor is well trained, he 
rightly refers to his body as "my instrument," and all energy, action 
& emotion is channeled through that, whether in a realistic "method" 
approach or a broader physically-based approach, e.g. LeCoq training. 
Channeling that same action impulse through an object outside 
yourself is an entirely new experience, forcing you to objectify your 
performance rather than embody it.  And it's complicated by the fact 
- in our work, at least - that the actor is also speaking the lines 
and using his own live hand as the puppet's hand (the other being 
inside the head).  Well, the voice is a physical function, after all, 
so it's a real balancing act, half-embodying, half-objectifying.

	It's very difficult for the actor to watch his own puppet, 
not the character his puppet is playing opposite; to keep utterly 
relaxed when his puppet is in high tension; to get rid of his own 
head-nodding, grimacing, shoulder-hunching, rocking, spinal movement, 
and put it all into the puppet; and to see with the puppet's eyes, 
not his own.  It can be done, and we've devised some rehearsal 
methods that help, but they still struggle with it - hell, I still 
struggle with it.

	On the other hand, an actor may bring stuff to it that a 
puppeteer doesn't.  As someone mentioned, an instinctive sense of the 
whole stage (in larger stages).  More experience with heavily 
text-based work (which ours is).  Better vocal training.  More 
actor-type questions about circumstance, motivation, inner action, 
back-story - questions that for an actor are the starting-point of 
creativity.

	And certainly many puppeteers bring exactly the same virtues 
to the playboard.  Would that they'd come to our next audition.

	Should say, too, that lots of problems with 
actors-as-puppeteers are in fact specific problems in the specific 
actor's own acting: tension; generalized emotion without specificity; 
speaking his own lines with inflection & rhythm independent of his 
partner's; distrusting simplicity; stressing a character's uniformity 
over his incongruities; sloppiness with text; vague gesture; etc. 
etc.  In our shadow work, I've always been astonished how hugely 
shadow can amplify the slightest mistaken wiggle or glitch; 
similarly, puppetry can amplify tenfold all of an actor's 
deficiencies.  I would say ditto for the deficiencies of puppeteers.

	Side note:  "dancers" come in many brands.  The most common 
problem many tend to have, whether in puppetry or other physical 
theatre, is being trapped in a more "dancerly" movement aesthetic, a 
range of style that excludes a lot.  That's of course a broad 
generalization.  I look for actors with a range of physical training 
who at least have a strong awareness of the expressive potential of 
the body, and who can maneuver around without klutziness.

	I do believe that the more we can learn from other 
disciplines - which necessarily means working with people from other 
disciplines - the better we become as storytellers.

Peace & joy-
Conrad B.
www.independenteye.org

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