From: CzechMarionettes-AT-aol.com
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 00:41:48 EST
Subject: PUPT: Dmitri, itinerant puppeteers only knew how to carve stolen fowl


In a message dated 11/2/2003 9:03:07 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
dmitri-AT-nwpuppet.org writes:


> Also interesting with these massive institutions is the departmentalization
> which lead to many puppeteers not knowing how to carve, carvers who did not
> know how to make controls, set designers, costumers, etc... whereas the
> traditional model required everyone to know how to do everything albeit
> often without the level of expertise that the specialists had.
> 

Dmitri,

Across the wastness of these United States (Dmitri's in Seattle, I am in NYC, 
we haven't ever met, I think) I will try to answer some of your interesting 
questions over time.  But first I'll call you out in front of the beer-joint to 
straighten you out on the statement above.  Traditional puppeteers (at least 
in central Europe) were jacks-of-all-trades, indeed, but very few were able 
carvers (some of the patching I found on antique puppets is quite dismal, even I 
can do better, occasionally).  Carving was mostly done by specialists, whose 
main line was making statues of saints.  They used to live close to cathedrals 
that provided their main source of business.   The performers did know how to 
make controls, clothes, etc.  but even for backdrop painting they often used 
specialists.  On the other hand, some carvers, usually not the cathedral 
craftsmen, but self-taught folk carvers (their often gorgeous "primitive" puppets 
used to be called "cobbler marionettes," since "any cobbler could make them"), 
or some visual artists with a romantic streak or restlessness in their blood, 
were lured into performing (which as we all know leads inevitably to chicken 
thievery).  

That's enough of runaway prose for now, time for a commercial.  

(Cf.  essay "Czechoslovak-American Puppetry" by Vit Horejs in eponymous book: 
Czechoslovak-American Puppetry, New York: GOH Productions 1994, 84 pp 
numerous black and white and color plates, available from Puppetry Store, Amazon.com 
and GOH Productions (our umbrella).  

Vit Horejs
Wandering Performeer
The Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre

P.S.: Sorry about misspellings in my last contribution (and quite likely this 
one as well).  I often make or think snide remarks about other cyber-fiends 
careless spelling, but then sin the same way.  Despite this character flaw, I 
do not steal chicken too often any more, and poach only rarely,  but I do pick 
road kill and cook it in 4th rate motel rooms on my illegal hot-plate. 

P.S.P.S. no wonder "vandrovni" (not "vanrovni") "loutkari" or "marionetari,
" sound so similar to "wandering puppeteers," the Czech expression uses a 
word of German origin which has common ancestry with the English expression, and 
replaces "w" by "v."

v

For more info on The Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre:
http://www.czechmarionettes.org


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