Performances

The attendees here take only 4 workshops - tops, but much of the learning comes from watching the performances.  You pick tickets for 11 shows and then you can watch 1-2 performances with everyone else after dinner each night followed by a bunch of other pieces in the Puppet Slam (short pieces) on one night and the Fringe (longer pieces?) on another.  There's also a Potpourri night, which is kind of an open-mic event - The performers get 5 minutes to do something on Potpourri night.  The MC's for Potpourri were  3 puppeteers from Sesame Street.  They were hilarious.  I noticed that Telly's operator watched every 5-minute act with great attention.  Some of them were dumb, but there were a couple notable surprises such as a girl who had never performed outside of her house who had a 2-headed dragon puppet lip-synch "Confrontation" from Jeckyl and Hyde.  I know, sound absurd, doesn't it?  But here's what happened:  This girl remained expressionless throughout and put all the expression into the movement of the puppets.  One head would sink in despair, the other head would shake with rage - she never lost her focus through the whole song.  Her performance brought the audience to their feet, and she stood there impassive, bowed the puppets' heads, and bowed them again.  Perform. Transform.                A 99-year-old woman performed at Potpourri too.  She held a Ben Franklin doll and a John Adams doll and read the script verbatim (including saying "next page").  It was really funny and this woman is obviously a hero to everyone in Puppets of America.  The Sesame Street puppets posed for a picture with her after her bit.

There was also a really disgusting, really XXX monologue by a puppet, naked except for a Mexican wrestling mask and a cape.  It was called "I'm Sick"  They should have hooked that one offstage - if for no other reason than the puppeteer kept forgetting his lines and dragged it out forever. 

Besides Potpourri, I've seen "Dreams in the Arms of the Binding Lady" that fused dance, puppets, object manipulation, and storytelling of Japanese ghost stories. Izumi Ashizawa directed this incredible piece.  D-Generation takes place in a nursing home for people with dementia.  The patients were puppets who, guided by artists in residents (live actors) would make up a story about a picture.  The artists would turn it into a play, but the patients themselves would have this incredible fantasy that sprang from the story.  My friend, Jim Hoare once described the reaction of some elderly patients to one of his students' shows.  He said they unfolded in their chairs like flowers blooming.  That's what these puppets did.  It was so moving.  The Silent Shadow Cinema did some remarkable shadow imagery in "Voyage to the Skies", but I was blown away by Manuel Cinema doing "ADA/AVA" using both shadow puppets and live human silhouettes in a very touching story of loss.  The

scene in the house of mirrors was amazing and made me yearn for more.