File spoon-archives/puptcrit.archive/puptcrit_2003/puptcrit.0308, message 94


Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2003 12:00:03 -0400
From: john bell <john_bell-AT-emerson.edu>
Subject: PUPT: Ben Brantley gets it wrong (again) about puppets


         I'd like to point out that despite the great success of Avenue Q 
on Broadway (it's an amazing show!), mainstream theater criticism is still 
hobbled by a lack of sophisticated means of analyzing puppet theater 
(although I have to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the 
time).
         My example: Ben Brantley's New York Times review of Avenue Q 
(kindly forwarded to Puptcrit by Puppethead on August 1), in which he 
refers to Rick Lyon's Muppet-style puppets as "sophisticated variations on 
the sock puppet."  Bentley's nomenclature neatly extinguishes or avoids the 
context of decades of work by Jim Henson and others in the development of 
hand- and rod-operated puppets with moveable mouths which completely 
changed the nature of television puppetry in the U.S. and around the world.
         I'm not sure what a term Brantley should have used, but 
"sophisticated variations on the sock puppet" is not adequate.  It's a bit 
like saying that digitally projected images are "sophisticated variations" 
on shadow theater: the statement is technically true, but simplistic and 
misleading; it begs for much more clarification.

yours,
john bell

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