Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 12:17:32 -0500
From: Carolyn Roark <ladycroark-AT-mail.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: PUPT: The role of the puppet


In a sense, it sounds like it goes back to the age-old question, "Is 
the message more important than the medium?" Tsuro Ando has an 
excellent point that the story would exist whether the puppets were 
there to interpret it or not, and is available to a variety of 
telling styles,  but the puppets (at least in this case) were present 
specifically to present the story.

What makes one uncomfortable, I think, is the notion that because the 
story/message gets precedence over the medium (again, in this case, 
puppets), that the artistic merit or technical skill of the medium 
can be given second consideration. For those of us who love puppets 
and value the art for its own sake, that's pretty unsettling. But in 
the end, I think that most of us (and hopefully our audiences) 
believe that there's no point in telling a story if you aren't going 
to do it well. So, if the medium is shoddy, who's going to pay 
attention to the message?

I suppose that the trick is to find a place where you work hard at 
the mechanics because you care about getting to the soul that's 
present in your puppets, your work, and yourself.

  And that's all I have to say about that.

Carolyn



>Lately I've been doing some research on Bunraku and keep coming across
>things similiar to this quote.  "Of the three elements which make up
>Bunraku- namely, the chanter, the shamisen accompianment, and the
>puppets- I consider the chanter and his narration the most important."
>(Bunraku, by Tsuro Ando p. 4) Which struck me as odd, but as he goes on
>I discover that sometimes a chanter will perform with great acclaim
>without the puppets, but the puppets never go on without the chanter.  I
>was inclined to dismiss this as peculiarly Japanese, but further reading
>and some puppet shows I saw this weekend are making me reconsider.
>
>I saw three shows this weekend.  Vietnamese water puppets, "Odon" by
>Ping Chong, and the Carter Family's version of Haydn's puppet opera
>"Burning House."  In all three of these shows, the puppeteers did not
>voice the characters, and in "Odon" everything, including the music was
>pre-recorded.
>
>The Vietnamese water puppets and the Carter's show both had a live
>orchestra and singers were far more satisfying than "Odon", yet "Odon"
>on the face of it is a more polished production.  It is in a Union
>theater, has brought talented puppeteers in from across the US, has an
>internationally respected director, had a huge design team and was
>strangely unsatisfying. 
>
>The Vietnamese water puppets manipulation was, shall we say, unrefined,
>there is no plot, but the energy and enthusiasm of the musicians and
>"chanters" bridged the gap between the puppets and the audience.
>
>The Carter's show was even more enjoyable but also on a much smaller
>scale than Odon.  The Carter's did voice the speaking parts of their
>characters, while the professional opera singers did the singing.  I
>have never liked the idea of puppet opera, but I was utterly charmed by
>the Carter's production and enjoyed it the most of the shows in the
>weekend BUT Odon was the show that seemed to take the most artistic
>risks.
>
>Why was "Odon" my least favorite?  The one scene in "Odon" which
>captivated me had a live actress who spoke her own lines.  I am haunted
>by images from that one story.  Was I brought into the scene because of
>her, or was the scene truly better?  The director said that he
>pre-recorded the puppets lines because it was too hard to find
>puppeteers who could act.  I think he might have killed the show because
>of that choice.  I think that even if he hired actors and musicians to
>sit by the side of the stage and speak for the puppets it would have
>been a living show.  One person said that the felt like "the soul of the
>show wasn't in the room."
>
>Then too his complaint about puppeteers who can't act brings me to this
>passage in my bunraku research.
>
>"Although in theory the puppet theater requires teamwork involving equal
>participation by the chanter, samisen player and the puppet operator,
>with rare exceptions the puppet operators have been machanically
>dextrous persons rather than intellectual serius artists.  Thus, in
>practice, the puppet operators have been on an inferiour artisitic level
>when compared with the other two, and although one speaks of the "puppet
>theatre," in fact the puppets do not play the most important part in
>this art.  Yoshida Tamazo, for all his skill, was a great mechanic
>rather than a great handler of the puppets, and he apparently made
>almost no attempt to discover the symbolic meaning of the puppets."
>(Japanese Music and Drama in the Meiji Era, Komiya Toyotaka, p.148)
>
>I have to admit that when I read this I bristled a little- what does he
>mean "inferior artistic level" but- it also points to a complaint that I
>often have about some puppetry.  That there is "no attempt to discover
>the symbolic meaning of the puppets."  I think that too often we get
>caught up in the mechanics of making the figure come to life and that we
>sometimes neglect the soul. 
>
>Well- this out to provoke some discussion.  What do you think about my
>rambling thoughts?
>
>--
>Mary Robinette Kowal
>Other Hand Productions
>http://www.otherhandproductions.com
>
>
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-- 
"You can't solve any problem on the same level that you created it."
						--Albert Einstein

Carolyn D. Roark
w- 512-475-8168
h- 512-326-3276


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