Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 07:44:04 -0500
From: Hobey Ford <hobeyone-AT-gmail.com>
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] sharing info or trade secrets?


Dorlis Grubidge for those who might not know wrote Sue Hastings Bio,
Sue Hastings :Puppet Showwoman, which is where I got my Sue Hastings
anecdote.  It is an excellent read.  Stories do evolve in the telling
and as they are told and retold often they shift in facts to serve a
point.   Perhaps though my own retelling shifted the story from
Dorlis' version.   Both versions of this story  serve different points
of view.

In Dorlis' telling,  Sarg who struggled against the secrecy of his
predecessors to figure out marionette mechanisms with holds the goods
from Hastings who on finding his methods then becomes perhaps his
biggest rival.  Lesson: sometimes you need to guard your trade
secrets.

In Jon's version of the the story,  Sarg is forthright with trade
secrets and Hastings who is looking for some mysterious mechanism that
must make marionette magic possible is confronted with the fact that
it is the skill of the marionettist not the mechanism that creates the
magic or perhaps one could look at it another way which is that the
simple appearing mechanism belies its elegant complexity, yet only
reveals its secrets to skilled hands.  Jon's version also slights
Hastings in a way, which depending on the source might reveal
animosity of its source for it is my understanding that those who were
working in the field at the time resented her competition.  While
Hastings marionettes were fine, it is Sarg who we remember for his
artistry, which shows us that in the end technical secrets are not
where the magic lies, but that it is the artistry which counts and
that cannot be copied.

But now I am curious as to the real story.  What do you marionettists
make of this?
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