To me a puppet is much like Frankenstein’s monster and the puppeteer is like Dr. Frankenstein. A puppet is nothing but a lifeless corpse made of a Hodge podge wood, cloth or whatever else might be lying around at the time, but through the puppeteer it is given life. Much like the monster, once it is brought to life, characteristics that the maker may have not intended to create seep their way to the surface and give this once inanimate object its own personality. The two cannot complete their individual stories without one another, and in many ways they come to rely upon each other.
I think the allure of puppets is how one has the potential to take an obscure or potentially abstract idea and give it life. No one on earth is the pure manifestation of greed, or sadness or bliss but you can make a puppet that can not only portray those emotions, but that can also be a physical manifestation of them. These different emotions can be understood by almost any age, culture, or belief and can bypass these barriers with little to no effort. Puppets are not merely children’s toys that bop one another over the head or teach us numbers, they are tools to allow us to visually display what we may not be able to show or say.
The amount of variety and creativity in the world of puppetry is simply astounding. I love the fact that literally anything can be made into a puppet and that even the simplest puppets can be just as good as expensive elaborate ones. They have become such a simple, yet powerful way of storytelling and I personally would hope that they never go away, however creepy some may be. Looking into some puppets id have to say I generally like the easy, creative ones over the complex ones. They seem to have more power or whatever it is I’m trying to grasp at behind them. When I see a complex puppet I think “ oh wow, that’s neat I wonder how it works” ,“ how on earth dose the puppet master know how to do all that” or simply “ who in the hell would waste that much money on something like that”, but when I look at the simpler ones, I become emerged in the story, I don’t think of them as a tool or an object. They come to life and have real emotions and tell real stories, it almost seems hard to believe that at the end of the day, the puppeteer packs them away in a musty old trunk and there they sit, unmoving until they are released once again.
Simply put, I love puppets and I can’t wait to make one of my own.
I have to say, I really enjoy your take on puppetry. It comes from an angle that I feel many of us don't look at very much. the energy with and behind a puppet is what really makes it real to the on looker. when the puppeteer immerses themselves into the puppet, that;'s when i feel that true puppetry happens. It's a bit like acting in someway. An actor that can add depth and insight and true deep emotions to a character is often time much more believable then some one who is just portraying another person.
ReplyDeleteAlthough sometimes I do find that I really enjoy some of the more complex puppets. Mostly because I find the engineering techniques to me really rather fascinating, but that may just be my inner mechanic talking. But I've always had a love for small intricate machinery, and I like to see what people have created in order to solve the problems of making a puppet function and appear more lifelike.