Subject: PUPT: Training
Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 10:06:23 +0100


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It's very interesting to follow this thread on training. I imagine that most of the posts so far are from US puppeteers, but many of the problems described are equally pertinent to the situation in the UK. I would look for the problems of puppetry in a wider context than tertiary education. The simple fact is that, for most schoolchildren in Britain, theatre - any theatre - is introduced as a branch of English literature. For a start this usually has the effect of making school theatre productions the responsibility of the English department, and keeps the visual art departments well away from the stage. More fundamentally, it sustains the received wisdom that theatre is synonymous with drama. 



Conversely, while many art teachers in schools will encourage pupils to make masks or puppets as part of their art activities, these usually end up decorating the school corridors or art room display boards. Exploring the mask and puppet within a performance context as a logical next step is nearly always abandoned either for lack of confidence on the part of the staff, or because of the restrictive and specialist nature of the curriculum and timetables.



In most tertiary Theatre Courses a mirror image of this process still takes place. It isn't so much that the teaching will be largely text-based, but that the other elements that make up theatre become marginalised within the teaching process. So the very crucial visual elements of making theatre are reduced to 'design' and 'lighting'. Theatre music likewise becomes a highly specialist area. Some mask work will probably be taught, but in all likelihood it will be considered as an additional makeweight skill for the CV, perhaps on par with stage fighting. Puppetry itself, almost certainly, will be left well alone - beyond the pale.



I believe that the pigeonholing of puppetry as a specialist area has enabled it to be so readily pushed aside, and ultimately dismissed, within the wider debate about theatre. Instead of stressing the specialist nature of puppetry, I would prefer to stress quite the opposite - the centrality of object animation within theatre practice. Working with masks and puppets gets to the very root of theatre. The magic of transformation that starts with children's play surely remains the central and defining characteristic of theatre.



Central, too, is the ability that puppetry has to democratise theatre. Anyone can do it. Anyone can play with an object - in fact it's among the first things we do as human beings. The very limitations of the form can enhance the ability of people to do it well without being a specialist. Perhaps this is another reason why organizations with a vested interest in professional theatre training are nervous about puppetry? Because it has the power to undermine the rigid and often wasteful conventional professional structures, practices and routines that underpin much of the theatre world. 



Of course I don't deny that puppetry desperately needs advocacy, that it should look after itself by having its own professional bodies, and must develop its own networks. Training to improve skills and the understanding of puppet and object manipulation also has an important role for many practitioners. However I believe that the second most useful thing we can do, after creating great theatre, is to work towards placing puppetry at the heart of theatre training and study institutions, starting within our schools.



Bob Frith
Artistic Director
Horse + Bamboo
www.horseandbamboo.org

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