The Midnight Diaries of Catty Wampus

(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!