The Midnight Diaries of Catty Wampus

Howdy folks!

You may have noticed that the past few Fridays have been quiet here at the Midnight Diaries. That’s largely because I’ve just returned from a five-week road trip around the country. Some of you have been following my exploits over at The Road Trip of Catty Wampus. For those who haven’t–and who could blame you, really, it’s a lot of reading!–I thought I’d recap some of my favorite moments here as a way of putting a cap on the entire adventure.

I took a microphone along with me on my travels, intending to interview many people along the way. I’ll also be including some of my favorite interview clips here. I hope you find it all entertaining, and perhaps it will even inspire you when you’re thinking about your next travel destination.

So, without further delay, I bring you The Highlights of the Road Trip of Catty Wampus (of Portland, OR).

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DAY 1
Tuesday, July 15 2008
Portland, OR to Garberville, CA

Just south of Gold Beach, Oregon I met Eric. Eric was hitchhiking down the US101, and I decided that it would be nice to have some company along the way for a bit. He was a scrawny young man of 26, with dark red hair and a backpack full off whatever items he had found along his travels–a flag for a high school football team, a plastic yellow flute, etc.

Eric is a recovering drug addict, and working very hard at separating himself from the people he has been surrounded by; the people who are drug addicts as well, and make it very difficult to leave that lifestyle behind. I really applaud his determinism to get rid of his addiction and start on a new and productive way of life. He certainly seems smart and driven enough to find his way once he decides what he’d like to do with himself. He’s taking his time this summer, hitchhiking and biking and riding up and down the coast to find what his passions are.

Although it is something he is trying to leave behind, Eric has no trouble talking about his past drug use. With mystical hand gestures and eyes bugging out, staring off into infinity, he told me the story of an acid trip he and a friend took last year up on a hill in the Haight area of San Francisco. I’ve never been on an acid trip and it was fascinating to hear Eric tell his story. He has a calmness and a cadence to his speech that completely pulls me into his world. The full story is 20 minutes long, and I plan to edit it into a more cohesive piece later on. For now, enjoy this little snippet, which is one of my favorite parts of his trip:

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I dropped Eric off in Eureka, California, where he told me he knew of a good spot he used to sleep when he lived in the area. I thanked him for the interview, he thanked me for the ride, and I went off in search of my own place to fall asleep before the next day’s drive.

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DAY 6
Sunday, July 20 2008
Los Angeles, CA

Sunday, July 20 2008
Los Angeles, CA

If I had a nickel for everyone who said to me “While you’re in LA, you have to interview people on Venice Beach! There’s some real characters there!”… I’d have, like, at least three or four nickels. So on Sunday morning I headed down to Venice Beach. Down at the far end of the boardwalk, I met a tribe of post-hippies hanging out on blankets under an umbrella in a parking lot. The space belonged to a a lanky and grizzled man named Dreamcatcher. He had dirty blond hair (maybe dirty dirty blond?) hanging down in dreadlocks against his weather-worn face, and a half mustache/goatee thing (you know, the kind that doesn’t really connect at the sides? it’s like the mustache doesn’t talk to the goatee, and the goatee doesn’t talk to the mustache? they each just do their own thing). Dreamcatcher shared the space with Rebecca, who he referred to as “my first black lover.”

The moment I sat down with Dreamcatcher, I was caught in a bit of an awkward situation. We were approached by a large Mexican man, pointing and threatening “You stay away from me, Dreamcatcher! Don’t cross me, Dreamcatcher. It will be your downfall.” Dreamcatcher looked pretty confused about this, and after a few times insisting that he didn’t know what the man was so upset about, the Mexican said “You put too many fuckin’ people in jail, bro!” Apparently, the man believed that Dreamcatcher had been ratting out many of the Venice Beach regulars to the police. After the Mexican man left, Dreamcatcher was indignant:

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I didn’t quite understand the bit about how Dreamcatcher smokes marijuana but doesn’t smoke pot. If any tokers out there care to enlighten me, I’m all ears. (do they still say ‘toker’ these days?)

We were soon joined by Jules (”Jules of the Nile,” she explained), a mousey woman with salt and pepper hair cut into a bob, sunken eyes and sunken cheeks. I was intrigued by her story because the common perception is that homelessness is something that happens to you, either because you have made poor decisions, or bad luck has looked down unfavorably on you. Jules found this lifestyle in another way:

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The most interesting thing in all of this, aside from her gigantic decision to give up her entire former life, is how she says “I used to be a real person.” I’m not going to analyze that too much for you–but just let it sink in under that context.

I asked Jules what it was about Venice Beach that spoke to her the first time she saw it. This is what she said, along with a little history of the area:

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A few minutes later I was introduced to the concept of Spiritual Tourette’s Syndrome, or STS. It’s an idea Rebecca had with a friend in Boston years ago. Jules and Dreamcatcher helped to explain. (note “the beeping” that Rebecca mentions refers to a car horn that honked a moment earlier)

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Dreamcatcher often speaks in riddles and puns. This was his reaction to something as mundane as me talking about the weather, when I said I liked the atmosphere:

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All in all, I really felt a lot of my own preconceptions and inhibitions being challenged while I sat with these folks. As straight-edge as I am, I bolted from the room the last time someone offered me a hit off of a marijuana pipe. So it was a big deal for me to even be able to hang in there while Dreamcatcher and Jules rolled and smoked a joint. Dreamcatcher even offered me a hit, and I didn’t feel any of the kind of judgement that I would have expected coming from him when I refused. I know I’m a square, and it was nice to have the feeling among these folks that it was okay.

A lot of this is all wrapped up in my own insecurities about who I am, and who I would like to be. I think about these things a lot, and when I come face to face with such a different way of living than I’m used to it can really send me off into a heap of questioning myself.

On the walk back to Erik and Lauren’s, I saw one of Venice Beach’s vendors with a sign that read:

If you worry, you die.
If you don’t worry, you die.
So why worry?

It seemed to speak directly to what had been filling my mind at that moment. Maybe there’s something to this Spiritual Tourettes after all.

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DAY 11
Friday, July 25 2008
Denver, CO to Wichita, KS

While I was driving through Kansas, the sky turned completely gloomy and I saw a gigantic bolt of lightning reach from the sky to the ground out on the horizon! It was probably the brightest and thickest lightning I’d ever seen. It was one of those things that makes you say “If that was in a movie, I’d say it was a poorly done special effect and not very realistic.” Just goes to show you what we’ve come to expect from our world based on movies and television, and how it can still surprise us so very easily.

I grabbed my video camera and hoped there might be some more demonstrations of this amazing phenomenon. Here’s a little of what I caught in a four-minute period: (don’t worry, I’ve edited it so you don’t have to sit through the non-lightning parts)

Believe it or not, these were the babies that came before the real storm began, reaching down in fingers of lightning for the next forty-five minutes! I would have caught it all on the video, except that I’m pretty sure I would have crashed the car if I’d tried to hold the camera in one hand and steer with the other too much longer.

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DAY 16
Wednesday, July 30 2008
Dallas, TX to Austin, TX

In the late afternoon I arrived at my friend Rick’s house in Austin. I got to speak to Rick’s 4 year old son Adam. Adam was told me about some of the geography he had learned about in school, but I think he was a little confused:

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I love how quickly Rick and I were able to turn him around. Very suggestible, that one.

Rick told me that he and Adam play fight sometimes:

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In case you didn’t quite catch who Adam likes to be when he’s fighting his dad, here’s a little clue:

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Yup, that’s right. But even though Adam loves Spiderman, don’t pigeonhole him. He likes lots of things. Take a listen to this meandering ramble of a list:

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Gosh, I love talking to kids. Is there anything more entertaining that that?

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Note: gigantic post today–hang in there!

DAY 18
Friday, August 1 2008
Baton Rouge, LA

I stopped into a grocery store to get a little snack, but by the time I was ready to go the weather had changed from sunny to absolutely pouring. I’m talking about rain that comes down in sheets–sheets, blankets, pillowcases, and duvets! I have rarely seen rain like this. I believe it must have been the beginning part of the storm and hurricane that hit the area after I left, but at the time it just seemed like “Holy Cow, this is a lot of rain!” Many people were standing in the entrance to the grocery store, too timid to even run to their cars for fear of getting drenched. I stepped outside under an awning, and figured this would be as good a time as any to try to talk to people. I saw an older gentleman with big, muscular arms (one of them in a cast and sling), and asked if he would be interested in speaking. I’m so glad he was–I am super happy to have captured an extra-rich Louisiana accent.

While we were standing under the awning, Phil started to tell me a little bit about his background hanging out with hippies in the late ’60s, as well as a little bit about his brother. You may want to turn down your audio around the one minute mark of this audio clip: there are two loud thundercracks that nearly made my heart drop into my shoes. I could adjust the volume here on my end, but I feel like it’s really important to give you a taste of the untreated audio, so you can experience a little bit of this surprising thunder yourself. Just like that Kansas lightning, this was a kind of thunder I have never heard before:

P.S. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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Seriously, that second thunderclap literally knocked me off-balance, and I had to catch myself. So, um…. yeah. We stepped inside. Normally it’s mundane to simply talk about the weather, but I was in absolute awe. I asked Phil if this kind of weather was normal:

P.S. You can return your speakers and headphones to normal volume now.

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Again, I love that accent! I also got a little bit of local jargon thrown in there, too. Here’s a little more weather talk:

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I wanted to get back to Phil’s history from when he was hanging out with the hippies. I’m intrigued by the idea of what I think hippies were like based on what I’ve seen in tv shows and movies made decades later, and what it was actually like to be there. So I figured Phil would be an ideal person to ask:

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Ahh, that accent! I love it! I love how I couldn’t even tell he was saying “drinking parties” until he repeated it two or three times! I also like how he doesn’t know if he would have been classified as a hippie or not, because it just goes to show the blurriness of a culture. According to Phil, a lot of what distinguished hippies from non-hippies was whether or not you had a job. You couldn’t be a hippie and have a job because the hippie lifestyle had a very loose attachment to time and responsibility; and you couldn’t have a job and be a hippie because having a job required you to fit into a specific mold and reliably perform your duties. Phil floated in and out of the hippie and job cultures, but it sounded to me like he had a higher percentage of his footing in keeping down a job and earning money for himself than in drinking and partying.

At one point, Phil and I were talking about food. He doesn’t really fancy himself as much of a cook, but he enjoys cooking for himself and his wife. He was telling me about the different dishes he makes, but I had to stop him when he mentioned something I’d never heard of before. This is Phil explaining to be what a roux is:

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The topic turned from food to politics, and from politics to religion. Now, politics and religion are two things I have avoided speaking to people about because I pretty much assumed that my beliefs wouldn’t be the same as the people I’d meet–especially in the south. And you know what? I was right. But I also assumed that those differences, if they were out in the open, would lead to argument and bitterness. And that’s where I was completely wrong. I guess I’m just so used to being surrounded by people who, for the most part, believe the same things I do, and it’s so easy for us to caricature everyone else into a picture small-minded bigotry. Phil and I disagreed on a number of issues, but we simply included those issues into our conversations without either of us trying to convince the other to see things our way. Very different from what I would have expected, and I feel sheepish to even admit that that is what I would have expected.

Here is Phil talking about his Presbyterian beliefs, and explaining how they differ from Catholic beliefs:

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Near the end of our conversation, Phil told me how the Lord saved him in 1975. I’ll let Phil take it out from here and finish this section of the interviews with his transformation:

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DAY 30
Wednesday, August 13 2008
Indianapolis, IN

Today I went to the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. It is known as one of the most exciting Children’s Museums in the country, with wonderful hands-on exhibits and plenty of fun ways to learn about trains, Egyptian mummies, space, and dinosaurs.

Upstairs at the museum is an area called Story Avenue, a collection of life-size scenes (a bank, a barber shop, a dining room, the back of a car, etc.), where you can hear recorded stories from the experiences of Indianapolis’s African American community. This is where I met Portia Scholar Jackson, who helped create the Story Avenue exhibit. Portia is a professional storyteller, as well as a teacher of storytelling to all ages. I’ve recently become fascinated with the idea of storytelling technique (and I regularly listen to stories from The Moth), and I was fortunate enough to hear some of Portia’s stories of her Aunt Janice–you can tell that although these stories have a strong foundation in memory and fact, they have been crafted to enhance their ability to keep the listener entertained. The story begins when Portia’s supervisor at the museum asked a series of questions, designed to figure out what the Story Avenue exhibit should include:

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See what I mean? I mean, clearly Portia is already starting off as a memorable personality and just hearing her tell a story would almost certainly be engaging in and of itself. But when she adds on top of that her craft and skill, well, I could have sat there listening to her all day.

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DAY 32
Friday, August 15 2008
St. Louis, MO

I had a long walk and quite an adventure through St. Louis. My first big stop was the St. Louis Arch. Here are some photos I took of the monument:

And here’s one of the Arch’s reflection in one of St. Louis’s other buildings:

I happen to think those are some pretty cool pictures. But before I pat myself on the back too much, I have to say that one of the genius parts of the Arch’s design is that it is nearly impossible to take a bad photograph of it! Pretty impressive.

Now, I’m afraid of heights. But it seemed like it would be a shame to be so close to the Arch and not go up to the top. So I entered the underground ramp (after more security than I’ve even ever been through at an airport, by the way!), and found my way to the tram lines that run up either side of the arch. I shared an elevator with a family of four who were making a pilgrimage from Florida to Minnesota. And when I say “elevator,” I really mean something that’s a lot more like a space-pod, with room enough for five people to sit and stare at each other as the space-pod is brought up the Arch’s slope to the top. (a bank of eight pods run up and down on either side of the Arch)

At the top of the Arch are some thin, rectangular windows to peer out of. But even though the view from many of the windows was pretty cool, the most memorable thing I saw at the top of the Arch was an Amish family who was taking the tour as well! I was flabbergasted. I mean, I don’t know much about the Amish, but it seemed completely counter-intuitive to find them at the top of the St. Louis Arch. I decided that as much as I would have regretted not going to the top of the Arch, I would regret ten times as much if I didn’t try to get an interview with at least one of the family members once we were back on the ground. Thankfully, I was able to talk to Samuel Borntrager. Samuel told me that it’s not so uncommon for the Amish to make it outside of their community:

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Do you hear the way he says “Souzwest Missouri”? I don’t think that this is a speech impediment, I believe it is the way that the community pronounces their ‘th’ sounds. Unfortunately I didn’t get to speak to anyone else in order to confirm this, but I am pretty certain that many Amish have different speech patterns than Standard English.

I asked Samuel about the differences between how people like me are taught to think of the Amish, and what the Amish are actually like. For example, how it’s jarring to see them out in the city. I am certain that I was absolutely insulting in the way I presented my question, but Samuel was kind and patient in explaining:

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This got us onto the topic of religion which, if you’ve been following this blog, you’ll notice has been a pretty common theme among many people I’ve spoken to. But I will not go much into Samuel’s and my discussion because, frankly, it was a little heartbreaking for me to reveal to him that I don’t believe in Jesus. I could see such compassion and pity and concern for me, and by extension for America (and he said as much), it’s a little difficult to reflect on still.

So I’ll give one more clip from the man, if only to demonstrate what I think is another fascinating linguistic artifact. This is from when he and I were discussing certain theosophical doubts:

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This is something I’d read about in other dialects of English, but I’ve never heard first hand. “It’s always been a world.” “It’s always been a blue sky.” He’s using the pronoun it’s where the Standard English uses there’s. When you think about it, there really isn’t any real meaning specific to there that requires us to use it in constructions like this. I love thinking about how language develops in different places to find that one word instead of another has made its way as the pronoun in these kinds of phrases. Forgive me for getting all language-geeky on you.

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My final stop in St. Louis was the City Museum. I had been told by some friends that I absolutely needed to check it out, but they didn’t really tell me what to expect. I suppose I thought it would be a museum about St. Louis with some great exhibits, kind of like the ones at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. And I was dead wrong. In fact, “museum” doesn’t really seem to be the right word at all.

The City Museum used to be a shoe factory (in fact they take pride in the fact that Tennessee Williams worked in the factory, and even paid homage to the factory in The Glass Menagerie), but has long since been closed down. So the gigantic building was left abandoned until an urban revitilization project came along and decided to turn it into what I can only refer to as nothing less than the best treehouse ever!!!

Re-using all kinds of industrial beams, scaffolding, scrap, and other metal, the City Museum provides kids (and some adults, if you’re small and nimble enough) with twisty-windy ways to crawl through, slide through, run through, explore, and discover. And kids love it! This is just a small sample of the things I heard kids shouting throughout the museum:

“Follow me!”
“Where are you”
“Where does that lead?”
“We’re lost. Have you seen the Dragon’s head?”

I think it’s nearly impossible to get an idea for what the City Museum is like–how vast it is, how much fun it is–unless you actually see it. Nonetheless, I’ve tried to capture some video of a small fraction of the City Museum’s wonders. Tell me, if you were still 7 years old, wouldn’t this be the coolest place to be?

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Those are the parts of my trip that I’ve been sharing with all of my friends. Again, you’re welcome to delve into more of my travels at The Road Trip of Catty Wampus.

And I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there were some new interview clips popping up here at the ol’ Midnight Diaries from time to time, now that I’ve got a feel for pointing the mic at someone and trying to get good stories from them. Stay tuned, folks, I’m not going anywhere!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

This is going to be a fun post. Most of us got our introduction to puppetry through the Muppets. We were probably so young that our child brains didn’t even register the Muppets as anything other than living and breathing people, animals, monsters, and whatevers.

One of the great things about the following clips is that they were all performed in front of an audience of puppeteers and puppet fans. This gives the performers an opportunity to play around with the conceit of the art form:

I remember that when I was a kid “He’s got a beard” was just about the funniest thing I’d ever heard.

I love that Kermit is entirely self-aware while Fozzie just doesn’t seem to be able to reach that higher plane of understanding. It’s a wonderful contrast between the two characters: Kermit is smart without trying, and Fozzie just can’t be very smart no matter how earnestly he tries.

This is also a great demonstration of the rhythm that Jim Henson and Frank Oz have when they’re working together. They’re like musicians, trading off the character’s moments, reveals, and stretching out single phrases. Watch how Oz makes Fozzie’s “There is somebody…” into an entire showpiece by separating the words with gestures, repetitions, and pauses. I love that look downward that he does–all of it makes Fozzie such a real, living character… which, of course, adds to the comedy of him being controlled by someone else.

Speaking of contrast in character, sometimes it really can be just as simple as “big” and “small.” And sometimes that can be enough to imply a lot more. This is a sketch commonly known as Java, or The Javas, named after the title of the song performed by Al Hirt. You can see this sketch on the Muppet Show Season 1 DVDs (episode 22), but there are subtle variations in this performance, and I like knowing that it was performed live here:

I wonder how these puppets are controlled. They seem deceptively simple–if you watch them carefully, however, you’ll notice that the big Java does some dance moves that are pretty complicated if it was just a straight-forward puppet. I especially love the way his eyes roll upwards during one section of his dance.

Now, let’s get back to Henson and Oz. Here they are again, riffing off of each other:

While Kermit’s and Fozzie’s relationship shows contrast between smart and not-as-smart, Kermit and Miss Piggy’s relationship is a little more complex. Piggy has a big contrast within her own character: She sees herself as elegant and classy, but she’s actually crude and selfish. One of Kermit’s big flaws (and it’s a great one) is that he always buys into Piggy’s own image of herself until he recognizes and remembers her true boorish (not boarish, though) self. The comedy in this clip, for me, doesn’t come from Piggy as much as it comes from Kermit’s growing discomfort. Kermit is a great straight man, and he plays his part perfectly here.

Finally, a bit of fun that shows off how innovative Jim Henson and his team were when designing their puppets and thinking of new ways of performing. The puppeteer you’ll see here is Carol Spinney in a costume/puppet he designed himself in order to make Oscar the Grouch more mobile. Think about where his arms are as he performs here–you might need a second guess:

The end of this clip is a perfect way to go out. I am very taken with the way that Jim Henson talks about his role in the history of puppetry. There are so many labels that could be applied to Jim Henson: entertainer, entrepreneur, innovator–but all of these fall below his personal satisfaction as a puppeteer. Most puppeteers won’t achieve the notoriety of Jim Henson, but they all belonged to the same fabric of tradition he belonged to. And he belongs to the same fabric of tradition as anyone who picks up a puppet. There’s something incredibly humbling and charming about that, isn’t there?

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This concludes my series of posts and thoughts taken from “Here Come The Puppets.” I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing this material. The posts will continue to be accessible through this blog, specifically in the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Feel free to read and comment–I’d love to hear what you see in these puppets as well.

Cheers!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

One of the things that fascinates me most about puppetry is that the puppeteer, in addition to the puppet, is part of the performance. Some techniques call attention to it more than others; bunraku puppeteers dress in black and are in full view of the audience, while the Muppets are and marionettes tend to have their puppeteers work from off-stage. But whether you see them or not, there’s a part of your consciousness that’s aware of the puppeteer in a way that an audience is almost never aware of an animator.

In 1982 Bruce D. Schwartz opened his show, “The Stage That Walks.” The entire show was performed while Bruce was encased in a mobile-puppet theatre. Even though his body was completely out of sight, this helped keep the audience aware that this was all just one man performing everything they saw before them.

In this first example, I have to admit I have no idea how he’s pulling it off. Clearly one hand is in each puppet. His fingers must be working the puppets’ hands on their recorders. What I can’t figure out is how in the world he’s performing the music!

I love watching the interplay between the two characters. Even though they are roughly the same size and in practically the same pose as each other the entire time, you get the idea that one of them is a practiced musician, old and steady, while the other is equally talented but much more inclined to let the music carry them along into dancing. Another wonderful example of movement demonstrating the main contrast between two characters’ personalities.

The duet is a fun little piece, but what I really want to examine is this next clip from ‘The Farmer’s Wife’:

This clip makes me think about the idea of ’status.’ Now, as shaky as I am about the ground I’ve covered before, I’m even more of a novice in the area of acting and scene negotiation. But I’m going to try to analyze this scene the best I can, and if you feel like jumping in to add, or correct, or completely disagree, I welcome you to do so.

It’s been said that every scene is a negotiation for status. Not necessarily a negotiation for high status, but a status change. And it seems to me that there are many different types of status that you can examine. There is professional status as exists between a boss and an employee, there is moral status as exists between Superman and Lex Luthor, and there is intellectual/philosophical status as exists between two opposing participants in a debate. There are probably many other types of status that I can’t even think of, but this should be a good enough place to start.

We start off here with The Farmer’s Wife, who we’re told is a bit of a shrew. She is low status but thinks of herself as high status. How do we know this? Her attitude clearly suggests that she believes that she is a better and more worthy person than her husband, The Farmer: we can see that she believes her personality status is high. But we can tell that she is a bit of a complainer and possibly not very nice of a person: as an audience, we know that she is pretty low status. Also, since she’s doing her husband’s bidding, it’s clear that her status in her marriage is also low. The comedy is that, despite the fact that the audience knows that she’s low status, she acts high-status because that is how she thinks of herself. This gets even funnier later.

By the way, all of this talk of the wife being low status isn’t to say that we don’t enjoy her. She is not an annoying or bothersome character to the audience. We like her enough to laugh with her, instead of at her. Her little dance after the horrible “missing link” pun is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Even though we know she deserves a bit of a comeuppance, we’re delighted when she treats others as if they deserve one. Which leads us to…

The Devil. Now, the Devil is arguably about as high of status as you can get in every way but morally. (and even the morals in this play may be on his side) So when he is treated as low status, as a sausage or as a cow, by the actual-low-status-but-thinks-she’s-high-status Farmer’s Wife we get even more comedy.

As a brief side note, consider again the contrast in the way these two characters move: The Farmer’s Wife is frantic and moving all over the place, and the Devil is very still and calm and his gestures are sharp and direct. To tie it back into status, look at the calm, sure way he nods when the Farmer’s Wife notes that “It’s as dark as Hell down here.” Think of this moment taking place with the Devil nodding quicker–the literal meaning is the same, but notice how that would change the context and the character. It makes me marvel at all of the little choices that have to be made in order to realize a well-rounded performance.

So the Devil puts up with all of the Farmer’s Wife’s nattering on and on, and even tolerates his nose being tugged almost clearly off of his face. He finally loses his temper (but not his manners: he still calls her “good woman”) when she won’t stop slapping his shoulder in jest. And then there’s a moment that I love: the Devil makes the entire earth quake. This is a wonderful use of Schwartz’s one-man stage. In a conventional puppet theatre there may be some effective ways to shake the earth, but somehow having the entire set, puppets, and stage itself stomp and jump around adds a power to this moment that I can’t imagine being equaled any other way.

This earth tremor is the first thing to really stop the Farmer’s Wife from moving about and feeling so cocksure of herself. You can see her shaking in fear. Up until this point, we knew that the Devil was high status and the Farmer’s Wife was low status, but the Farmer’s Wife believed herself to be high status and the Devil (in her mind, the cow) to be low status. This is the first moment when the audience and the Farmer’s Wife are both on the same page about who is in control. And the Devil takes this moment to calmly (again, always patient and calm–even though he’s shaking with anger, I almost wonder if he doesn’t feel somewhat ashamed of having lost his temper briefly) explain who he is.

But after a moment’s thought and recognition, the Farmer’s Wife appeals back to the audience and regains some of her own high status by making a joke of the situation.

Back and forth, back and forth, the characters seem to say to each other “I have the status” and “No, I have the status.” It’s left up to the audience (or the performer, or the playwright, or all three) to decide where the status really lies. But what makes the scene interesting is what the characters believe about their own status in the scene, and how successful they are at achieving or maintaining those beliefs about their own status.

I could watch this scene again and again. And I have. I love it. Bruce Schwartz is clearly a master of his craft. He is still around, though my preliminary research seems to indicate that he doesn’t do much puppetry anymore. As talented and renowned as he was, it appears that there came a time when he decided “That was fun. Now I’m going to do other things.” As funny as it sounds, I really like that way of thinking about things. I know that it’s easy to fall into the trap of wondering how much wonderful puppetry we’ve been deprived of, but I really like the idea of being really good at something and not running it into the ground.

The most recent information I came across tells me that Bruce Schwartz is now a yoga instructor with his own yoga studio in Southern California. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he still had some puppets that he brought out every now and then, even if only for close friends and family. In any case, I hope that he is happy in whatever he is doing right now. I hope that much for everyone.

Next week: the big finally to the Here Come The Puppets posts. You won’t want to miss it!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

I wasn’t around when Fran, Kukla, and Oliver J. Dragon were entertaining American children on television in the 1950s and 1960s. This video was my first introduction to them, and remains some of the only examples of Kukla and Ollie that I’ve seen except for a YouTube clip here and there. Fran, an actual human woman who would interact with the puppets on the old tv shows, didn’t appear for the 1981 appearance. Burr Tillstrom operates Kukla and Ollie by himself. Have a look:

I’m going to take a break from talking about animation and talk a bit about comedy.

Recently, a friend and I have been discussing how comedy works. E.B. White is credited with saying “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies because of it.” But if you happen to be one of the few who are interested, and don’t mind risking a dead joke or two along the way, it can be a fascinating subject.

There’s a general theory that says that comedy comes from breaking the expectation of what’s supposed to happen.

“Knock, Knock”
“Who’s there?”
“Interrupting cow.”
“Interrupti–” “MOO!”

The more jokes you’ve heard the easier it gets to predict their punchlines. We already have our expectations set up by our foreknowledge of the typical knock-knock joke’s structured. (no knock-knock joke would work if you told it to someone who had never heard a knock-knock joke before) In the case of this particular joke, we expect to get all the way to “Interrupting Cow Who?” When we don’t get that far, one expectation is already broken. The second part of the punchline hits us when we recognize that the “Moo” is coming from the cow and, as a matter of fact, is a demonstration of the information we already had–i.e., this cow interrupts people. In a nutshell, that’s why this joke is funny.

Let’s go back to this Kukla and Ollie clip. There’s really only one joke in here, but it’s a good one and I laugh every time I see it. Most of the performance here is the joke’s set-up: Ollie likes to bite Kukla’s nose. The set-up is long and meandering, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I say it’s meandering because it takes us a little bit to even establish that Ollie wants to bite Kukla’s nose. It comes in during part of the conversation, when Ollie stops speaking and poises himself to bite Kukla’s nose.

The animator in me feels compelled to speak up here to mention the composition of the frame. It’s no accident that Kukla is leaning backwards and occupies only a sliver of the available puppet stage here, while Ollie is leaning forward and dominates almost the entire space. This helps us understand these two characters’ personalities–Kukla is easily intimidated by the dragon, even though they are friends. And the dragon is large large large, even though they are technically similar sized puppets.

Continuing on, we get a little mini-joke when Ollie denies that he wasn’t thinking about biting Kukla’s nose, when he clearly was. But we still haven’t had any big laughs. Part of this, I think, is due to the rather clumsy interaction between the character’s. Most of Kukla’s and Ollie’s performances are improvised, and I’m not always sure that’s helpful–it feels like the action stumbles a bit here because of it. “Let’s go down memory lane in dignity,” in particular, I feel comes out of nowhere. It could be a reference to something that happened earlier in the performance (before this clip began), but the whole idea of “going down memory lane” seems like Kukla was searching for something, anything, to say.

We also get a tiny laugh when Ollie admits “I spent a lot of money on therapy to get over that.” This isn’t a real joke, but I find it interesting because it’s one of several examples from this PBS special of puppets making reference to going to a therapist. I think that this must have been a big topic at the time, the late 70’s and early 80’s. Sure, people go to therapy these days, but the way it’s referenced here almost seems like a quick tap into a sort of ‘community joke’ that you don’t really need to set up or give a punchline to–we just laugh because that’s what we’ve been conditioned to do with the subject. These days you might bring up Brittany Spears or 30 Rock and get a similar reaction: we know they’re funny (in different ways, admittedly), and good for a quick audience reaction.

Still, this gets us to the song, and that’s what this is all leading up to.

Clearly, a song like this isn’t likely to be improvised. As an audience, we know this and we can even recognize that its simple structure is the kind that is likely to lead to a punchline. Like a knock-knock joke, or a poem that begins “There once was a man from Cape Cod…”. We know where the punchline will be, so we can prepare ourselves for it. Not only that, some joke structures are so old, we begin to anticipate where they’re heading. We know that we’re probably going to get four lines of song here, and the fourth line will rhyme with some other line in the song and will contain a punchline.

We’re already stocked up with the knowledge that Ollie is trying to refrain from any nose-biting tonight and now we’re given a song where we expect a joke at the end of it. By the time we get to “sweet as a rose,” you can already hear some audience member’s chuckling because they’ve anticipated the joke. “It’s going to be something about nose-biting,” they have deduced. The song slows down long enough to give the entire audience time to catch up to this idea, and await the final line–it will be clever, but the audience will already have a pretty good idea of it already.

And that’s when we get the real punchline: “You can see it coming, can’t ya?”

With that one turn to the audience, Ollie gets a bigger laugh than he could ever have gotten if he had simply finished the song. (and really, was there any kind of finish that would be remotely funny as the last line of the song?) It’s the breaking of two expectations that brings the house down here:

Expectation #1: We will hear the end of the song and it will rhyme with “rose.” (we don’t, and it doesn’t)

Expectation #2: Ollie doesn’t know that we have already figured out where the punchline will be. (he does, and we haven’t)

This is an incredibly satisfying punchline. We have followed all of the set-up very carefully; so carefully, in fact, that we believe we know exactly what road we’re on and we’re probably feeling a bit of an inflated ego about it. We believe we’re smarter than the people on stage. When the character finally tells us “Yes, I’ve led you right to the place I wanted you to be and I knew it the whole time,” we get a great release for being shown that are actually aren’t smarter than the people on stage after all. The joke is on the audience, and we have foolishly walked ourselves right into it.

I love this kind of comedy. Even given the clumsy improv part, Tillstrom successfully implants the idea of the nose-biting into our minds without calling too much attention to it. His performance never screams “This will be important later! Try to remember it!!” He simply places it in a prominent point of the characters’ interaction and lets things move along from there.

Another of my favorite uses of this type of implant can be found in Greg Behrendt’s “Crybaby Spiderman” bit. You can find it on YouTube with a simple search, or on his comedy CD or DVD, Uncool. I won’t say anything about the routine for fear of giving anything away. But if you get to check it out, you’ll see the same kind of implant happen–and again, you won’t recognize it has happened until the end because of Behrendt’s skill at telling a story and only giving you as much as he wants to give you at any particular point along the way.

More about puppetry, animation, story, and performance next time. See you then!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

I studied some classical Russian literature when I was in college. And at the risk of stereotyping, once you hear the plot of this piece there’s just no denying its culture of origin. It’s as Russian as they come.

It’s also a brilliant performance by Sergei Obraztsov. Here’s the video, with discussion to follow:

The thing that stands out the most to my eyes is the way Obraztsov separates his actions in order to tell the story. As animators, it’s always a good idea to keep this motto in mind: One Thing At A Time. Meaning that you don’t want to confuse your audience by trying to communicate two different thoughts at once. You want them to see one gesture and then see the next. It’s not nearly as easy as it sounds sometimes, and I really like how clearly Obraztsov communicates everything the audience needs to know in his character’s performance. Just breaking down the introduction, we can see the story unfold in a very point-by-point way.

Here is a glass.

It is empty.

This is me. I am the main character.

The empty glass belongs to me.

Notice that if we hadn’t had those first two actions, this shot might simply introduce the idea “I am a man with a glass.” There is absolutely no emphasis on the glass being empty here, and it would be easy to overlook it if it hadn’t been clearly shown to us directly a moment ago.

Here is a full bottle of vodka.

Again, notice how clearly we get the message of this gesture, largely because the man is not a part of the image. All we see here is the vodka and the empty glass. In addition to being a strong way to introduce the vodka, it also serves as an anticipation for the next gesture.

I will fill the empty glass from the bottle.

Each idea presented simply and clearly, and it helps the audience understand the story naturally. You can see this sort of thing done throughout the entire performance, with each gesture introducing a new important idea that helps enrich the story and/or move it forward. Even if you don’t understand the language being sung, you are able to follow along.

Sergei Obraztsov died in 1992. The theatre company that bears his name is still running in Russia, and in 2001 it celebrated Obraztsov’s 100th birthday with puppeteers from around the world performing in his honor.

By the way, if any of my readers out there speak Russian and would like to offer a translation of the snippet of the song sung in this piece, I would be happy to include it in this post.

Stay tuned next week for some classic American puppetry!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

For today’s installment, we’ll be looking at a little snippet from the Mermaid Theatre, which I’m pleased to see is still operating and quite successful. If you’re ever up near Nova Scotia you should check them out. As a matter of fact, their website lists some tour dates in the United States and South Korea so they may be coming to your town. Here’s a look at what they were up to back in 1981:

In the last post in this series, I talked a little about how contrast between two characters can help make an interaction more compelling. Here we have two characters with several visual distinctions that are immediately obvious: one is large and the other is small, one is darkly colored and the other is brighter, one is dressed in decorative robes and feathers and the other is hardly wearing anything.

You can also tell from the way the characters act that they are pretty different. The larger character is mostly silent and contemplative, and the smaller one is more of a bombastic little motormouth. If I asked a stranger to guess which of these characters prone to meditation and which was prone to tantrums, I doubt anyone would ever confuse the two.

The bigger issue to point out in this clip, however, is the way that the larger puppet is able to communicate and act even though the face stays in the same expression the entire time.

Eyeline is a huge deal when it comes to characters interacting with each other. The smallest move of the eyes can mean the difference between a character looking directly at a friend or a thousand miles into the distance over their shoulder. Where CG animation is concerned, it’s not always as simple as placing an eye target at the place you want your character to look–sometimes the eye target will be spot on, but from the camera’s view the character will be looking in the absolute wrong place.

When you’re performing on stage, you have an audience in place of a camera. I have heard that actors are often directed not to look directly at each other but rather to turn 45-degrees and look forward, essentially facing as if they are both addressing a third person. To the actor this must feel incredibly awkward, but the audience will see the two characters addressing each other naturally.

The same thing is going on here with the large character’s eyeline. Especially with a character that doesn’t have the ability to move its irises (most puppets don’t, after all), the head angle is all you have to rely on. And yet, look at how clearly this character addresses his focus:

The puppeteer, Donald, also mentions that subtle gestures in the hands are an immense help for getting the character to clearly illustrate his dialogue and the context in the scene. The use of hands and fingers is a subject which is way too broad to begin to explore at the moment, but if you watch the video again, you can see how clearly even the tiniest moves of the fingers can be read, even though the fingers are as thick as Twinkies on the ends of those gigantic hands.

To be perfectly honest, however, my favorite thing in this clip has nothing to do with puppetry. My absolute favorite thing in this clip is what happens when Donald takes off his puppet’s head. Check it out:

What a smile!

From an animator’s perspective, I love the way he has that “O” shaped mouth indicating “Boy am I glad to be out from under that sweltering head!” and then it becomes this big toothy grin that takes up almost the entire bottom half of his face. But even if I wasn’t thinking about animation at all, it’s a wonderful smile that is warm and charming and it seems to radiate that this is a genuine and friendly guy. Wherever he is these days, I hope he’s happy and still smiling.

Next up: Master Russian puppeteer, Sergei Obrotzov. Stay tuned!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

After a large positive response to the previous puppetry posts, I’ve decided to continue with some of my other favorite pieces from the ‘Here Come The Puppets’ special. This post will focus on the second highlighted performance from Peter Waschinsky (see the first piece here), a selection from his performance called “Earthworms.”

In animation terms, this piece is almost entirely about line of action and timing. Let’s talk about the timing first.

A friend of mine recently said “It seems like a lot of animated movies have similar pairs of characters in them: a lot of the time, it’s just a big round fat guy and a tall skinny guy. Is that because that’s the only thing that works in animation?” She wasn’t being sarcastic, she was legitimately curious if having those two character types are the only way to make animation interesting to an audience. I understood where she’s coming from. After all, it seems like “Big and Little” are everywhere in animation. Have a look at Mike and Sully, or Woody and Buzz, Shrek and Donkey, Dori and Marlin… heck, even Lightning McQueen and Mater.

My initial reaction was “Well, they’re not all paired up as big and small, or fat and skinny.” But the question remains, why are there so many that are? And the answer is: Contrast. The visual contrast in two characters’ design help us separate them in our minds. This isn’t just limited to animation. Just taking the “Short and Fat vs. Tall and Skinny” example, you could point to Laurel and Hardy or Abbot and Costello. Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza. If I were being a little more pompous (which I’m clearly going to be, so hang on), I might even bring up Falstaff and Prince Hal… but to be honest, I haven’t read any of the plays Falstaff is in. I just know that he was a big, tubby guy and Hal was probably a little more on the lithe side.

It’s not always “Big and Small” that creates visual contrast, however. Two of my favorite characters from animation are Futurama’s Fry and Bender. Human and Robot. How about the Lethal Weapon franchise, whose two main buddies are Black and White. Or any number of movies that pair up a woman and a man for a thrill-ride adventure, like the recent Transformers or the Indiana Jones movies.

Of course, it’s not just the visual contrast of two characters that we respond to. There has to be a difference in their personality. One is dumb and the other is smart (Pinky and the Brain, perhaps?), one is cool as a cucumber and the other is a ball of energy (Jay and Silent Bob, right?), one is neat and tidy and the other is a boorish slob (Felix and Oscar, from The Odd Couple). To call out one of my other favorite television shows, LOST has Jack Shepard whose entire personality is rooted in science and fact, and John Locke who is a dreamer and willing to follow the mystic side of things because his world is based in faith. Heck, look at fairy tales: The Country Mouse and the City Mouse!

This kind of contrast really starts making its presence known when the two characters are placed in the same situation with each other. Any two characters put in a situation and will react differently. Typically, the more different two characters are, the more extreme their reactions will be from one another.

Now, puzzle this for a moment: what if your two characters are nothing more than two fingers? In fact, they’re the same finger from opposite hands. They look exactly alike, so you can’t rely on any kind of visual contrast in their design (except maybe “This one’s on the left and the other one’s on the right). They don’t talk, so you can’t rely on one screaming and shouting while the other speaks in only a whisper. Your only tool is this: how they move. To put it another way, their timing.

Watch the clip again and notice how the worm on the left moves with slow and cautious gestures, while the worm on the right is much more jumpy and quick when moving from pose to pose. Even when Left Worm starts moving more quickly there’s still a slowness and a grace to its movements, while Right Worm slows down, but still has much more quick timing in its movements by comparison. This is contrasting timing in its very essence. And I’ll bet that if you go watch any of your favorite comedy duos, you will see that they move very differently from one another–just like Waschinsky’s simple finger-earthworms. This is what we’re responding to.

Now, let’s talk a little bit about line of action. I did a little side-by-side comparison here:

Admittedly, this is an almost comical exercise since the line of action should be pretty clear from Waschinsky’s fingers. But sometimes it helps to separate things out in a clear graphical space as if it were an animation line test, instead of seeing the details of skin, joins, and fingernails. The important thing is that you can clearly see where each character is looking, and more importantly the attitude that is conveyed through their poses.

Look at the first picture: with Left Worm just peeking out of the ground, and Right Worm pretty aggressively observing him. Things change pretty quickly in the next panel as Left Worm approaches closer and Right Worm has an almost complete reversal in the base of his pose–it’s clear that he has gone from being in charge to being startled. The third panel pushes this idea even further.

You can even see in panels 4, 5, and 6 that Left Worm’s upright position conveys a message depending on what angle he’s at. He’s not merely “standing upright,” but he is at one moment inviting, and then confident, and then happy.

Panel 7 shows Left Worm in a wonderful anticipation, while Right Worm is now striving forward to get closer. I admit I can’t tell exactly why, but I can tell almost just from that single frame that Left Worm’s line of action isn’t recoiling in fear like Right Worm did earlier. Perhaps it’s the base of his pose, which is still slightly leaning forward.

Then finally, in panel 8, we see both worms supporting each other, being affectionate. Again, you can tell that this is affection as opposed to being belligerent or standing guard or anything else. It’s clear because the lines are so relaxed and calm (they’re not struggling against each other), and they are just barely giving each other a soft little touch–literally a kiss–where they meet.

As much information as a character’s line of action can give us, I believe there is even more information when we see two lines of action playing off each other. It’s almost like the two form a Line of INTERaction. I’ve always had more fun animating two characters reacting to each other–even if one character is completely silent during the entire scene, I find that simply having them there for the other character to talk to, or talk at, or avoid talking to can help draw the audience into the personal dynamic between the two. And the line of action always helps me define where each of my characters’ attitudes are coming from.

By the way, aside from all of this cool theory and observation, I just want to point out something that might not be apparent because of the darkness of the video: Peter Waschinsky performs this entire story (and I can only imagine there’s more even after the video cuts off) while lying on his back! The “stage” is nothing more than one leg crossed against the other with a black sheet draped over it. This is a quick overlayed sketch of what’s actually going on:

One of the things that separates puppetry from animation is that the puppeteer has the choice over how much the audience is aware of their presence. Sometimes you want the audience to only see the puppets and relate to them as characters, and other times you will incorporate yourself as puppeteer into the audience’s awareness, even if you don’t participate in the story at all. We’ll get into this in a later post, but I thought it was worth noting here.

Next Friday, when we return to Here Come the Puppets, we’ll take a look at a troupe from Northern Canada. See you then!

(note: if you simply want to hear the audio in this post, scroll down to the end–but I hope that what I’ve written will give it some context, and be interesting enough to read through)

Learning a new skill can be exhilarating. It can be fun, and frightening, and inspiring. It can also be incredibly frustrating.

After listening to so many episodes of This American Life and Radio Lab and any number of the wonderful documentaries at Transom.org, I decided that I would try my hand at producing an audio piece of my own. As luck would have it, my friend Renee had a story that seemed like it would provide a great opportunity for a first attempt: she had made a mix tape for a friend, and the inspiration for the mix was funny and quirky and I knew it would be a lot of fun to talk about!

Renee and I sat down earlier this year to record the initial interview that would give me a foundation to build the documentary on top of. Renee is always great to talk to, and I truly enjoyed interviewing her for an hour and a half about the mix tape, the songs she included, and even some personal stories she associated with particular songs. I felt like I was off to a great start.

It turns out that the interview was the easiest part of the process. When I tried to edit the audio together into a cohesive story, I discovered it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

This is generally the case when you’re trying anything new. Many of the people who read this blog are animators. They can testify that their first attempts at animation were difficult, and may have even ended in abandonment. But they learned from those first attempts, and brought that knowledge to their second attempt. The second attempt may have been a bit better, but chances are that it was another opportunity to learn how to approach their third attempt.

And this is where I am with my first attempt at putting together an audio piece. I have reached a point where there are several sections I am proud of, and some I am less than happy with. Overall, I have learned a great deal from this experience. The piece is unfinished, but I will take my experience and knowledge and carry it over into my second project, whatever that might be.

The lack of posts at this blog has been due to my decision that I would not write another word for this blog until I was ready to post either the finished audio, or at least something that would give me closure on it. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to ask for 6 and a half minutes of your time to listen to four sections of the unfinished audio documentary, Junk In The Trunk

Enjoy!

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

I would appreciate any feedback you have; whether you enjoyed it or not (and why), whether the story was easy to follow (and if not, where and why), the production quality, the editing choices, anything at all. I look forward to hearing your thoughts, and I will take them with me to guide me on my next project as well.

Finally, and most importantly, I want to express special gratitude to my very good friend Renee Marcotte, who has always been a source of smiles and laughter for me. Renee is the curator of the Gassy Knoll Gallery here in Portland, along with her boyfriend Robert Lewis, who has been one of my best friends for years and I hope will continue to be for years to come. Thanks so much to both of you!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

Jim Henson’s voice introduces this clip, part of a performance from Peter Waschinsky. I’d like to take a brief side-step from the puppetry talk to call attention to the statement that “Waschinsky is from the German Democratic Republic; East Germany.” This was 1980, remember. I’m just old enough to remember that it would be years and years before the wall dividing East and West Germany was brought down. Before that point, East Germany and West Germany were two separate countries. It was rare for East Germans to leave the country, and rare for anyone else to enter into it. I am, sadly, pretty ignorant about world politics but it seems very much like the difference between North and South Korea.

I mention this because in my lifetime, my very short lifetime, Germany has been unified once again into one country from the two halves it existed as for so very long. This kind of world change blows my mind, and I find it somewhat inspiring that things this big can still happen in our modern age when we tend to see the world as set in its ways. In my basement sits an atlas that was mine as a child; not only does it include East and West Germany, but the entire U.S.S.R. I’m sure that there are dozens of other changes that have occurred since then–countries have expanded and contracted, have been created and destroyed. ‘Twas ever thus and shall ever be. There’s a kind of hope in that, as I see it.

In any case, back in 1980, this is why Henson says “This was the first time many of us in this country had seen [Waschinsky's] work,” and why he says it with such awe. It was a rare treat. Have a look:

What stands out to me the most in this clip is Waschinsky’s use of timing. He knows exactly when to let an action linger, when to let it pounce, creep, amble, or freeze. Watch when the Leopard appears. He hangs there on his tree branch, looking around for any safe haven from his pursuer. Then he sees the man: the Leopard does a take, and then pulls back in curiosity, hangs there a minute and then pops up quickly to look over the tree to where the hunter might be (or perhaps he’s holding himself face to face with his puppeteer–what wonderful philosophical potential there is in that idea!), and then leaps down from the tree into the Man’s path.

Each action is as long as it needs to be, holds as long as it needs to be held, and each action’s timing is varied enough to feel natural and organic. Add to that the beautiful overlap Waschinsky gives to the Leopard when he leaps from the tree, and I could watch this sequence over and over.

Then, watch how the characters of the Man and Leopard come across merely in the speed of their movements. Though the man is initially startled by the Leopard, he is generally calm and casual about the meeting. He appears world-weary, a bit wise from his age, and accepting of strangers. The Leopard, on the other hand (literally–ha!), is anxious and curious. Each of his gestures is like a running stream of punctuation marks: an exclamation point! a question mark? a question mark? a question mark, an exclamation point! He needs to know if this Man is a threat or a friend.

Even when the man invites the Leopard to join him, the Man’s invitation is calm and friendly while the Leopard’s reaction is quick with just a shade of timidity.

It’s interesting to note that there are times when the Leopard moves somewhat slowly and the Man moves somewhat quickly. We recognize the Leopard’s movements as being mostly very fast–these movements help define his character, and his slow actions give us contrast to add into what we know about him. In the same way, the Man is primarily a slow mover, so the times when he moves quickly catch our attention and help to paint those actions with meaning we get from that contrast.

When we meet the Old Buffalo, we see another world-weary character who moves slowly. But unlike the Man, whose slow movement seems to slow from kindness, the Old Buffalo’s slowness comes from being abused for years of hard labor by men.

Pay particular attention to the silence after he declares “Men are ungrateful. Devour him.” This is a wonderful use of silence. That “Devour him” hangs so heavily in the air. When the Leopard and the Man look at each other, you can feel the question mark between the two of them. “Will this Leopard I have helped truly devour me?” “This man saved me from the hunter. Should I believe the Buffalo, that all men are ungrateful?” Notice how there is a (beautiful) half-second of the Man and the Leopard holding each others’ eyes before the Leopard begins to nod. And don’t we, as an audience, feel the tension of this moment–don’t we want to urge the Leopard to be merciful?

All in that silence, we feel that the Leopard is only slightly leaning towards the Buffalo’s point of view. His nod is slow and tentative; his decision could still turn towards the Man’s favor when the Buffalo pounds through the silence with an even larger question: “Why should you spare him?” And when you recognize that the puppeteer likely has enough control to place his foot softly on the ground, the fact that he disappears the Buffalo with a bass-y “thud” makes the question loom all the more heavily.

Now the Leopard moves very slowly, almost as if he’s been beaten by the heaviness of the question. He was ready to take the Buffalo’s directive, “Devour him”, because he was being told to act. But at the last minute, the Buffalo throws back a question “Why should you spare him?” and this turns the Leopard away from instinct into a more pensive state. He knows why he should spare the Man: the Man saved his life. It’s not an easy decision at all; and all of this is reflected in the Leopard’s slow movement as he crawls on top of the Man’s pack and rests his head to consider things.

I desperately wish I could see more of this performance. I want to see more of this mesmerizing puppetry. I want to know what happens next! Unfortunately, this was as much as the original PBS program showed and so it is all I have to share with you.

Watching each of the characters, it’s very clear how much the contrast of fast and slow actions, of movement and stillness, can give to a performance. It reminds me of Victor Navone’s post about Three Speeds.

I love watching these puppet performances so much. To be honest, I had intended these Here Come The Puppets posts to be merely a 3-part series, this being the third and final part. But I am tempted to revisit other performances from the old PBS special as well, so keep your eyes on this space. There is a very real chance that I will post even more before too long, and I am all too happy to be able to share my thoughts about them. I look forward to yours as well.

Cheers!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

This video is a real treat. Jim Henson, who is rarely seen without any Muppets, sits down for a talk with Albrecht Roser, one of the world’s finest marionettists. Most of us know Jim Henson because of his wide influence on all kinds of media that most of us have grown up with. That is the context we know him in. One of the things I love about this interview is that we see Jim Henson in the context he clearly casts himself: the history and craft of being a puppeteer.

As animators, we often hear about lessons we can learn from The Muppets. One of the major points discussed here is that of a limited character. How many of us have been frustrated by a rig that didn’t have a full range of motion? And how many of us have seen a talented animator give emotions and feelings to nothing more than a bouncing ball?

“Like you do if you direct a show. You call from someone, from an actor, not what he can not do: you try to find out what he can do best.”

- Albrecht Roser

There’s such power in that small statement.

For example, you can’t make a bouncing ball wave its arms frantically as if it’s agitated and upset. But you can look closely at your bouncing ball and think about how the ball would act if it were agitated ad upset.

Taking this idea a step further, philosophically: Find your own strengths and play to those. Some people can cook a hell of a meal, but can’t play a lick on the piano. Some people can organize a business plan, but are not very good drivers. Some people are great athletes but not very good actors. Even as an animator, there are some people who are amazing with soft and subtle scenes, while others can come up with a sight gag and timing that will knock you out of your chair with laughter. Find your strengths and play to those.

But back down in the world of rigs and characters, Roser and Henson talk about how to take a simple character and fool the audience into thinking that there’s much more complexity going on. This rings so very true for me as an animator. I often find myself overthinking my characters in a real three-dimensional space instead of being concerned with how the performance will come across to the viewer. In some ways, it’s the audience as much as the animator who brings the character to life. If you endow you character with emotion and intent, the audience will be able to project their own ideas of a living and breathing character onto your Rat Chef or your Green Ogre or your Downloaded Free Rig.

At the risk of mixing metaphors, it’s our responsibility to build a bridge between our characters and the audience, and if we’re successful the audience will feel invited to suspend their disbelief over that bridge. ‘Cuz it’s a suspension bridge. Get it?

Moving right along.

The last part of this clip blows me away. Roser demonstrates a marrionette made of five beads and two scarves. (I see only one scarf, but I’ll give Roser the benefit of the doubt here) This is, I’m guessing, analogous to the animator’s Flour Sack test. Watch this puppet dance–see how Roser subtly manipulates the five strings so that we see the puppet shift its weight and balance over each foot as it dances. Even before the dancing begins, while the two men talk, you can see that Roser holds the puppet so that it sits up on the ground, as if it is simply waiting to be told what to do. He could easily let all of the strings droop until he’s ready for the puppet to perform, but seeing this relaxed sitting pose creates (for me, at least) such an intimate relationship between the puppet and the puppeteer. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are animators who feel this same intimate connection with the characters they animate.

Albrecht Roser still performs and teaches in Germany. You can find out more about this incredibly talented man at www.albrecht-roser.de

Stay tuned for the final installment of Here Come The Puppets, coming up soon!