From: "The Mask (& Puppet) Studio" <dhell-AT-ozemail.com.au>
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 23:18:42 +1000
Subject: PUPT: Re:  Writing for puppets





>Something that's been tickling my mind for a bit...what 
>are the  differences between writing for puppets and 
>writing for humans? Can puppets do everything humans 
>can do or are there special considrations to take into 
>account when writing for them?   

I hate to say this but do puppets have scriptwriters? After 
doing Punch and Judy for a few years I find it hard to get 
my head (and hand)  around a text. With scenario in mind I 
do what I can and what seems like a good idea at the 
time.  It's always  improvised.

The contradiction is that I do write and have written   plays 
for humans & masks  but I have pc'ed nothing for puppets. 
I treat them differently. 

As I have been engineering a career change  and 
developing a new venture in wayang golek style rod 
puppetry, the issue has come to a head -- mine.  Because 
of illness I cannot commit text to memory (and numbers 
and names!) so I am concerned how I will fair away from 
P&J.  The  wayang golek puppeteer -- dalang -- bends the 
dialogue and often improvises around a scenario that runs 
all night  -- but I'm keen to explore many story and 
character lines that will keep changing.

As an experiment  my first golek exercise was adapting 
Lewis Carroll's poem "The Walrus and The Carpenter".

Lesson 1: puppet pace and poem pace are different. 'Tis a 
practical problem for a singular operation.

Lesson 2: Gamelan music would make great fills. 

I did the poem with the text tacked to the inside of the 
booth setup. But how am I going to do a much longer 
"script"? Reading and operating is not good theatre. 

The problem is that if I use a voice over prerecording I lose 
all my improvisational options such that text will dominate 
and I'd become a mechanical arm of the script. 

However, if I wasn;t a single operator -- a script would 
enable my collegues and I to work together: so we'd each 
know what to say when and what to do how. So ina sense 
I'd be writing not for the puppet but the puppeteer.

I also write for masks. I do lots of that. In that regard I am 
strongly influenced by Samuel Beckett. Beckett, you'll note 
is talky-- indeed some of his characters don't even move!

However, a non moving talking puppet doesn't make much 
sense to me -- at least by itself. . Animators think they 
resolve this problem by utilizing eye blinks. But with 
puppets you don't have much going for you if there's a 
freeze on. 

So puppets have gotta move. While i'm working at the 
simple end of the puppetry scale --a long way from Ben 
Hur -- I also believe that I can invest a puppet or mask with 
more self eveident features than I can a mere human. I 
don't have to be real and people know it's not realism up 
there  -- so the puppet or mask can "be" the idea I want to 
express. I don't need dialogue or text to do that. So it's 
more concise and the storyline can proceed 
unencumbered by details and naturalistic features we have 
come to expect from humanoid drama, film and TV.

In golek, klitik,& kulit forms of indonesian puppetry, shapes 
are given existence as required -- so the link with human 
forms of scripting are transcended and thepuppet show 
steps into occasional abstractions.  Can you do this with 
humans? -- No. There are too many realist expectations. 

Unfortunately, it is my observation that a lot of TV puppetry 
is talky as though someone decided we need to say this 
so instead of a human doing it (in news reading style) the 
puppets are utilized because they are higher up the visual 
ladder and cuter. So they get the text and all that's required 
of them is that their mouth moves in sync and the left arm 
waves about at the end of each paragraph.

Is that writing for puppets? I think not.

Dave Riley



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