Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:51:10 -0800
From: "NancyTOJT" <nancy-AT-tojt.org>
To: <puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org>
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Puppetry Cliches


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


Just last weekend, after the look of amazement that we do this for a living registered, a woman said, "That's great! Puppetry is a dying art."

*sigh*

Nancy


-----Original Message-----
From: puptcrit-bounces-AT-puptcrit.org on behalf of Bell, John
Sent: Sat 11/21/2009 8:06 AM
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Puppetry Cliches

1. "You're a puppeteer?  What do you think of Julie Taymor?"  (or "what do you think of 'Being John Malkovich,' 'Team America: World Police', or another puppet film/event of the moment).


2. A cliche headline for newspaper articles about puppet theater: "No Strings Attached".  I've seen this headline in articles going back in time to the 1950s (in connection with Frank Ballard), but noticed it repeatedly in articles about Bread and Puppet over the past decades.  Others must have run into this.  One imagines that each time a headline writer comes up with the pun, she or he believes s/he has invented something entirely witty and innovative.  This cliche is odd as well because culturally it assumes the dominance of string marionettes as the norm, when in fact that has not been the case since the 1960s at least.

3. In newspaper articles, such as the recent New York Times review of the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater's "Twelfth Night" (http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/theater/reviews/20night.html?scp=2&sq=marionette&st=cse):
"Orsino emerges from a giant silver ice bucket. Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek straddle huge liquor bottles. Olivia makes an entrance in a loving cup big enough to hold her and a friend. Luckily, all the characters are played by eight-inch-tall marionettes; otherwise the set design budget would have been a monster."
--In other words, the writer's point of view is something like "you're not going to believe this, but, amazingly enough, these folks are doing A SHAKESPEARE PLAY with PUPPETS!!  Wow!  Look out!  Has this ever been done before?"   If this cliched approach was applied to opera, you would constantly get reviews amazedly documenting "a SHAKESPEARE play where the actors--hold onto your hats!--SING!! instead of merely talking!!"; or an animated film where, "AMAZINGLY ENOUGH, a human character is represented by--DIGITAL INFORMATION!, not flesh-and-blood actors!!  Whoa!!  Has this ever been done before?"   The very idea of puppetry is still seen as something unknown, amazing, un-analyzed, and undocumented (--which, in the long run might not be so bad a situation).
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