File puptcrit/puptcrit.1004, message 28


From: DRAMA711-AT-aol.com
Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 11:28:40 EDT
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] whose work got you going?


In the summer of 1973 I was traveling around the country looking for an  
alternative life style. I'd taught school for two years and worked as a  
carpenter, was 25 and ready for inspiration. I landed on the Berkeley campus and  
happened upon what I think was called the San Francisco Street Puppet 
Theatre  busking on Sproul Plaza.  They were doing "The Point" a sort of  famous 
"childrens" story that had all these philosophical double meanings. It  was 
wonderful. I looked to my left and saw a beautiful coed just beaming with  
enjoyment and could see that people were putting money in the hat... hmmm... 
I  can impress girls and make money !  (something I've yet to do, but 
there's  still hope). I came back to DC and started a puppet band and show and a  
street theatre ( knowing there was nothing like that in DC and figuring that 
 even if it was bad nobody'd have anything to compare it to and wouldn't 
know it  was bad) and the rest is history. It was my first live show ... and I 
still  wonder if there's any remnants of that company still existing or 
even if I got  the name right.  Any body know?
 
Of course the 1980 festival was the seminal experience for all of us,  
lifting the lid off the narrow boxes of our imaginations. I am forever grateful  
to nancy staub who was the overall organizer and director.  I was broke,  
everybody in my company was broke and there's no way we could have paid for 
the  tickets. I called and volunteered my company and she made us house 
managers for  the three georgetown theatres and comped the festival. I remember 
very fondly  someone coming into her office in a tizzy that the DC police 
were all upset at  bread and puppet theatre for not having a parade permit and 
they were  marching!... and she brushed it off with a laugh and said 
something like "  this is GREAT!.. this is just what peter wants!"  Thank you  
Nancy!
 
michael cotter
blue sky puppet theatre
_www.blueskypuppets.com_ (http://www.blueskypuppets.com) 
    
 
 
In a message dated 4/3/2010 9:35:15 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
eye-AT-independenteye.org writes:

I kinda  wish I knew.  Of course I was in the Howdy 
Doody/Kukla-Ollie/Time for  Beany/Bil Baird TV generation, but none of 
those things stuck with me as  related to the overwhelming drive 
toward theatre when i discovered, at age  15, that it existed.  My 
impression is that the first piece of  puppetry that really captured 
me was my own, in the fall of 1969, a weird  satire called The People 
vs the People.

That may be totally daft,  as our first trip to Europe, on the back of 
a motor scooter for three  months, was in that previous summer, and we 
saw lots of theatre, so may  have seen puppets.  But my interest had 
gone back way before then,  driven by photos.  Every puppet photo had 
as strong an attraction to  me as some experimental-theatre naked lady 
- well, nearly so.  i  could see the amazing possibilities.  Once I 
actually began to see  puppet productions, it was a long time before 
the actuality matched those  imagined moments; for that matter, it was 
a *very* long time before my own  productions remotely matched the 
ones I could imagine.

I guess the  enormous range of Peter Schumann's dramaturgy and 
stagecraft have had the  strongest impact  But also remembering the 
experience of the  Charleville-Mezieres festival in 1972.  The only 
thing that really  stands out in memory was Richard Bradshaw's 
shadows.  But just seeing  the huge variety, puppets as rife as 
cockroaches, was enormously  inspiring.  A madness I felt kinship with.

But to answer the  question, what got me going?  Lotsa pictures of  puppets.

Cheers-
Conrad
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