Potato-faced men with butterflies floating out of their heads. An ethereal, 10-foot-high bird woman in an illuminated ball gown. Ghosts. Naked Irish dancers. Insect shadows.
Bizarre hallucinations? No, it’s the future of puppets in the South Sound. Three Olympia-based puppeteers, tired of conservative venues, have banded together to form PLOP, or Performance Laboratory for Objects and Puppets. Starting last fall, PLOP has been quietly offering radical, experimental and definitely grown-up puppet shows every month at Northern art space, plus daytime puppet-making workshops. Why? Because, say the founders, puppet theater offers visions and experiences that no other theater can – and because Olympia is quirky enough to handle it.
“I wanted to have a venue to show innovative and experimental work that didn’t have the controls associated with bigger venues and fundraising,” explains Ariel Goldberger. A nationally-known puppeteer, the Argentina native teaches puppet theater at The Evergreen State College, one of only four schools in the country with such a degree. Goldberger has performed everywhere from New York to Las Vegas, from Europe to South America, but he was getting tired of places that wouldn’t risk his avant-garde style of puppetry.
An example of that is “Sudden Orpheus,” a Hieronymus Bosch-inspired piece on hellish torments that was in the February PLOP show. It features skull rod- puppets with ghostly drapes, and a poetic vision rather than a plot.
“I just got a grant rejected from the Jim Henson Foundation for that show,” says Goldberger. “They said they didn’t understand the story. Actually, there is no story. It’s generated from images ... from the concept of huge mistakes that come back and haunt you.”
And so, last fall, Goldberger decided to create a permanent home for experimental puppetry in Olympia. Teaming up with fellow puppeteers Daniel Luce and Diane Ferrer, Goldberger created a home both for their own work and that of touring artists such as Bill Martin (a Punch and Judy puppeteer) and animator Erin Tanner, who’s doing the March show. The vibe at the monthly shows is eclectic, from leather-clad college kids to hippie baby boomers, but there’s also a series of twice-monthly workshops for adults and kids alike on Saturday mornings, covering everything from marionettes to large creations worthy of Olympia’s Procession of the Species. It’s the only South Sound venue to have such regular puppetry classes.
Goldberger has bigger plans, though.
“Olympia’s a quirky town – like Ashland, Ore. That started with a small idea, and grew. If this takes off, Olympia could become the puppetry capital of the USA, or at least the Northwest.”
Which begs the question: What’s so special about puppet theater?
Part of the answer comes from the dozen or so participants in the February workshop on rod puppets. Armed with glue guns, brushes and sculpting tools, they’re learning what is, demystified, an actually very simple process. Take a Styrofoam sphere and sculpt a head, then paper-maché. Wedge in a dowel, and attach some cut-out cardboard hands with cord. Drape with fabric and voila! A rod puppet, ranging anywhere from ghoulish to childish. And it’s exactly this range of character that gives puppets value, say the workshop participants, who are mostly trainee teachers at Evergreen.
“Puppets are a great way to explore emotions with kids,” says Jackie Palmer, who intends to work in special education. Her 9-year-old son, Christian, is making an electric-blue avenging angel with popsicle-stick wings.
Katy Bingham, busy making a grandpa with big wire ears, hopes to teach theater. “I think it’d be great to bring in puppets to get students to focus on using their voice,” she says.
Dan Luce agrees. A co-founder of PLOP and former student of Goldberger, he’s leading the workshop, and points out that with puppets, the spotlight shifts off the actor. Terribly shy, he sees that as a huge bonus.
“I grew up thinking the Muppets were real, captivated by the magic of those beautifully-done puppets. I want to do my part so that other kids will see it as beautiful, not just a novelty or crude art form. I also love playing music, building things, sculpting, science; with puppetry I can blend all those media.”
Like Goldberger, Luce has a day job – contract work with the Portland-based Michael Curry Design that makes the enormous masks and puppets used for Broadway and Disney. It’s given him the tools to make large rod puppets, such as the bird-woman that recently debuted at Olympia’s Illuminated Ball – a towering Tim Burton-esque vision in white elaborately jointed with cable-and-pulleys and attached via an aluminum pole to a tool belt around Luce’s waist. This, too, is another puppetry technique that PLOP will make available in a public workshop in April. Others include marionettes, shadow puppets and hand-puppets.
PLOP is not, of course, a money-spinner. Most audiences number around 20; some workshops are even thinner. Not wanting the constraints of nonprofit status, grants and fundraising, Goldberger is operating on a shoestring. “We’re used to not having money,” he says.
What’s important for the PLOP founders is the artistic integrity of experimental puppet theater. While Goldberger applauds shows such as the recently-touring “Avenue Q” with its human characters and storyline, he’s after something different.
“With human theater, you work with what you have, but with puppets, you can invent everything. It’s like poetry, you can invent whole worlds. And because it’s smaller, you can do things that are impossible with regular theater. Puppets exist between the realms of death and life. Poetically, mystically, they bring attention to the psychological, the mythical, the emotional. They lift the veil ... I’d like to see puppet theater exploring alternate ways of seeing things. If our theater can do that, then I’ll be happy.”
Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568
rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com
How to make a simple rod puppet, courtesy of PLOP
What you’ll need:
A 2-inch Styrofoam sphere, one 1/4-inch and two 1/8-inch dowel rods, 12 inches of cord, 18-gauge steel wire, paintbrush and Elmer’s glue, colored tissue, fabric, thick cardboard, glue gun, a drying rack (dowel rod attached to wood block)
How to do it:
1. Sculpt the sphere into a head using fingers, metal files, sticks, etc. Create protrusions (nose, ears) by inserting bent wire.
2. Make a hole up through the bottom using a pencil, then slide head onto drying rack.
3. Paper-maché a layer of tissue using brush and glue. Allow to dry. Repeat. Push in bead-head pins for eyes, teeth, other facial decorations. Glue on yarn for hair.
4. Make hands either by cutting out of cardboard (flat) or making wire frame (can be sculpted). Paint cardboard or overlay wire with paper.
5. Cut a 4-inch cardboard oval and bend in half. Poke a hole in center. Wind some tape around the 1/4-inch dowel about two inches from the top to make a lump, then slide the oval onto the dowel (this is the puppet’s shoulders.) Glue.
6. Knot center of cord around dowel above shoulders and glue to each side of the shoulders.
7. Knot cord ends onto each 1/8-inch dowel about 3/4-inch from top. Glue.
8. Position hands onto each 1/8-inch dowel at the cord. Glue.
9. Cut 15x30-inch rectangle of fabric for puppet’s clothes, cut hole in middle. Drape over central dowel and glue to wrists near hands. Add embellishments like belt, wings, Styrofoam belly, etc.
10. Glue head onto central dowel.
WATCH IT
What: Alternative animation and puppets by Erin Tannear
Who: PLOP Olympia
When: 8 p.m. March 19 and 20
Where: Northern, 321 Fourth Ave. SE, Olympia
Tickets: $12-$8
Also: Puppet-making workshops 9 a.m.-noon on March 6 and May 15 (marionettes), March 13 and May 1 (shadow puppets), April 3 (toy theater), April 10 (pageantry puppets) and May 8 (hand puppets)
Cost: $20
Information: 360-481-3029, www.plopolympia.org
