Although they never really went away completely, it seems as if the Muppets as we old-timers knew them are back, and in full force! When the Walt Disney Company acquired the Muppet properties in 2004, the Muppets had just about faded into obscurity. They were seen around on the occasional TV special, interview show, or direct to DVD movie, but had not been able to reach a broad audience for awhile.
“…a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”
Ok, so this is my puppetry blog and Star Wars doesn’t really fit in does it. Or does it? After all, there are puppets in Star Wars. Yoda was originally performed and voiced by one of my all-time favorite puppeteers, Frank Oz, and many of the Special Effects were puppet related, weren’t they? So this is on-topic, “from a certain point of view.”
The idea for StoryQuest Puppet Theatre actually came about several years ago. The concept for StoryQuest was a story within a story within a story. The general backstory involved a knight, Sir Quest, whose mission was to bravely seek out all of the stories, legends, and tales of the world to share.
Sir Quest was originally introduced in a poem that I wrote as potential lyrics to a song we hoped to use to open our shows. The song and the poem never actually ended up being used in performance, although we kept the concept as a backstory.
You can read the poem here.
One of my favorite Halloween books for storytelling purposes is “The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything” by Linda Williams.
The story involves an old woman who is approached by several disembodied articles of clothing as she makes her way home. One by one she admonishes the clothing, telling them that she’s not afraid of them. The clothes, and finally a pumpkin-head, follow her home, where she finds a use for them, turning them into a scarecrow to scare away the birds.
For the puppet version, I use Miss Millicent, my resident “little old lady” puppet. A quick shopping trip to a thrift store turned up matching pairs of pants, shirts, hats, shoes and gloves, in extra large sizes. I begin my storytelling with my front of house “helper” handing out one set of the clothing, including a plastic jack’o'lantern head, to members of my audience. As the story progresses, these audience participants will be the puppeteers of the floating clothing.
Miss Millicent tells her tale, sharing a story of a previous Halloween with her audience. As she mentions each article of clothing, she encourages the child puppeteering that article to come forward and attempt to scare her. In the original story, each item has its own sound effect (One shirt goes SHAKE SHAKE, one pair of pants goes WIGGLE WIGGLE, etc.) and she encourages them to use those sounds and act them out – the sillier the better.
Since Miss Millicent is not afraid of anything, she tells each of them in turn that she’s not frightened, and the child is encouraged to hand their prop over to the helping hand.
Miss Millicent then tells the children that the clothes followed her home. Miss Millicent wonders what to do with the floating clothes that seem to want to scare somebody. She suddenly has a brilliant idea! One by one, the assistant hands the shirt, pants, hat, gloves, shoes, and jack’o'lantern to Miss Millicent, who whispers her idea to them, then passes them back stage.
After all the clothes are all offstage, Miss Millicent lets the audience in on her idea. She’s encouraged the clothes to become a scarecrow, to scare the birds away. As she tells them about her plan, the “clothes” reemerge, on an actor playing the scarecrow! The scarecrow is of course dressed ahead of time in the second set of clothes, with a painted pumpkin face.
We first performed this skit at a nursing home for a Halloween party for the families of the residents. My mother bravely volunteered to serve as the scarecrow, even allowing me to paint her face as a jack’o'lantern! My front of house assistant, a member of the nursing home volunteer staff, gleefully handed out clothing to the kids and gave them their cues. One of the fun things about this story as a puppet sketch is that it really ISN’T scary. In fact, the punchline is just how NOT SCARY the clothes really are, at least to little old ladies (and kids). This makes it an excellent story for younger audiences or mixed audiences where smaller children might be easily frightened. Audience participation makes the story move along nicely, and kids can even team up on things like shoes and gloves to allow everyone to play a role.
Of course, the real star of the production is the scarecrow! Finding someone exciting and enthusiastic who is willing to pop out in outlandish costume at the end of the story is a plus. My mother was wonderful! Having been a school teacher previously, and used to her daughter’s puppetry (my family frequently gets sucked into my shows in one way or another) she was a fabulous scarecrow. As an added bit of audience participation, you could have the kids flap their arms like birds, pretending to be “scared” by the scarecrow, or you could incorporate a crow puppet into the show if you have enough puppeteers (or hands). In my case, the scarecrow made “his” appearance, mingling with the audience, shaking hands and wishing everyone a happy Halloween. “He” then handed out treats and sent everyone on to their next event for the evening.
There are lots of Halloween stories and books out there, but this one is really well-suited as a puppet show. It involves audience participation (always a plus) a not-so-frightening plot that’s terrific for younger audiences, and a fabulous “surprise” at the end. If you’re looking for a book to turn into a puppet script, I recommend this story. Even if you actually create puppets for all of the “characters” it lends itself wonderfully to the world of puppetry!
While attending college at Illinois State University, I was lucky enough to enroll in a Puppetry Arts class. The class was fairly basic, and included some of the rich history of puppetry, some basic performance skills, and some very basic puppet-making. One of the “projects” we did involved very simple “Balloon Marionettes.” We did a group performance using these very simple puppets as part of our assignment.
After college, I had the fortune of traveling with the group “Up with People” for a year. We traveled all over the United States and Europe, performing in a musical show and performing “community service” activities in the places we visited. One of the things we frequently were asked to do was to appear in local classrooms, discussing our group. If you are unfamiliar with “Up with People,” their main purpose is to bring the world together through music and performance. We frequently discussed diversity and tolerance of those who are different when we went into those classrooms.
I was asked by a school teacher in Germany to “teach” a class for her while I was visiting. She wanted a simple workshop that would tell her students what the group I was traveling with was all about. I had told her that I had studied Elementary Education in college, and had even taught for a short time. I also had told her I was a puppeteer. A light bulb went off over my head, and a simple puppetry workshop was created.
The first step? Build the marionettes!
Diane began performing as a puppeteer when she was only six years old. Her first marionette, Clippo the Clown, a gift from her Grandmother, accompanied Diane to school every year through college. As an adult, Diane began making and performing hand puppets. She writes the shows, fabricates the puppets and props, performs all of the puppetry, and even serves as her own lighting and sound engineer!
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