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Friday, March 29, 2019
For 30 years, puppeteer Blair Thomas has been creating visual spectacle on and off Chicago’s stages
Chicago Reader: If anybody knows puppets—like really knows puppets—it's Blair Thomas, founder and artistic director of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival and codirector of the Chicago Puppet Studio. And yet, if you ask him about the artists who are most attracted to the form, his answer is entertainingly vague.
8 comments:
Katie Pyzowski
said...
I love puppetry because of how it creates so many possible “radically different ways to tell stories”. Puppetry is a unique form of entertainment because of the manipulability of the object you are performing with. A puppet or performance object can only carry as much meaning and energy as the person controlling it puts into it, and the vessel that carries that energy has the ability to do things and be treated as something entirely separate from the reality we live in. Puppets can be destroyed and contorted and they can be used to grow and shrink worlds instantaneously. And somehow an audience can still feel an intense closeness to a performing object even though it is not human or even really alive. I am glad that Thomas wants to be a catalyst for a new age of puppet performance in theatre, because I think that the theatre world has been revamping its appreciation for this art form in the last 20 years, and now that we are used to puppets being more than just children's toys, we can really start to push the boundaries of where puppets in theatre can take us.
I think puppetry, especially in the U.S., is very much an under-appreciated art form. To echo Katie, puppetry really does push the limit on how a story can be told. You can make as much theater as you want, but if it all looks the same there's no reason for people to actively seek out and watch theater. Especially from my childhood, whenever something would be advertised as a "puppet show," I unfortunately would downgrade the legitimacy of the content and artistry itself. While this has completely changed over time, I think a majority of people who still feel like this. Now, with creators like Blair Thomas, puppets are being incorporated into classic shows, or really any type. The use of puppets is not only a way for an audience to see a show from a new perspective, but it challenges the designers who not only have to achieve a specific aesthetic but also have to design based on physical needs or demands. The actors also have to take the time to not be the main event. That seems absolutely counter intuitive, but in the case of puppetry, the puppet is the actual vessel for the drama. I am excited about puppets being more and more integrated into our shows and how people will use it to push the actual image of theater.
I completely agree with Elizabeth that puppetry in America is very underappreciated. I have so much respect for artists that have mastered the art of puppetry. I think all too often that puppetry is all too much thought of as something that only children can enjoy, even though there are so many forms of complex puppetry that takes years to master. I love watching and learning about puppetry because I love learning about all of the different kinds of puppetry that exist in the world. I think what Blair Thomas is doing is great. Although he will face some troubles in getting his puppetry company off the ground and gaining popularity for it, he seems like the kind of person who will keep working past the struggles to bring puppetry to the world, which I think is great and really important. I think puppetry is good to introduce people to because it is a form of art that they do recognize from the puppetry they have seen as a child because it is accessible and yet people can gain a new appreciation for this art form that people have put so much work into perfecting.
This article is really picking up my interest about the puppetry. The most recent show I saw that involves puppets is Zamire et Azor by school of music. In the show, I first time saw a live production of a human-size puppet that put on the stage. The method used by the puppeteer is really fascinating, especially on the facial expression and body languages. The puppet is controlled by four puppeteers, three out of four of them are amateurs. But the performance of the four-man team is nothing but satisfying. Hard to believe that they can be trained under such a tight schedule. It occurs me that to make body which is spit in four sections performs and express the motion of a character is such a delicate piece of artistic skill. "The last thing an actor is trained to do is to be uninteresting," This note by Zimmerman in the article is really striking, since I never linked the training differences and commons between actors and puppeteers. But after looking into this ancient craft, I found it a everlasting form of storytelling.
Puppetry has always been an interest of mine in the realm of the performing arts. I always felt as Katie said perviously that puppetry is an under appreciated art form in the world of theatre. A lot of the time in American theatre we put puppets into the box of they are for kids and they can't be made or used in "adult" or grown up theatre. Which is really limiting when it comes to the world. Some of the coolest shows and characters I have ever seen on stage were puppets. Honestly I think we should just look at them as we do animated or CGI characters in todays film industry. They are simply a stretch of our imagination and they are a tool for which we can build the world that we are seeing before us upon. Puppets are something that I personally would like to see grow in popularity with new things in automation and machine design to become a more integrated and dynamic part of American theatre.
I think puppets are creepy and I have said that before but I will reiterate now. I am so uncomfortable sometimes just by looking at them and I hate that sometimes they look so lifelike but also dead if that makes sense. The less life like a puppet is the less creeped out I am. I do appreciate it as an art form because it is super hard. I am going to make a puppet probably for my design project so I have been reading a lot about building and designing puppets to do what you want them too and it is really difficult especially if you have no prior knowledge. I know t very little about puppets, except like sock puppets, and so trying to make something that looks good and work will be very hard but I am ready to take on the challenge. I hope that I will be able to operate it correctly because puppets can be really cool in theater and in experiences in general.
It is really nice to read such an in-depth interview of a puppeteer. Since Susan gave her presentation on puppets around the world, I have been infinitely inspired. Me and my friends have now all talked of making puppets together, and although is just a conversation topic at the moment, it is something I find personally important to me to pursue. Puppets, as spoken of in this article of ones made by Blair Thomas, can be coloured, expressive canvas’ of which we, as audience members, as spectators, and more importantly, engagers can project onto. The versatility of which that can be achieved using puppets constantly amazes me. These creatures, can draw me in unlike a human face, which while observing I will inevitably, place some unwarranted human standards. Puppets let us see the humanity in our stories without all that gunk we put on real people. This lets an honest story to really be told, which is what theater is all about.
I know a lot of people find puppets creepy or unsettling, and I think they definitely can be, but more than that I think that they are misunderstood and underutilized in American theater. “They’re misunderstood” makes it sound like puppets are an angsty teenager or a pit bull, but what I mean is that oftentimes puppetry is pigeon-holed into the world of children’s entertainment, and I think that that is a massive waste. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of a lot of puppetry that I have seen, but that doesn’t mean I discount the rest of it, and it doesn’t mean that those things that I don’t like don’t have a place in the industry. Puppetry is about exploration to me, and about telling a story in a different way, or transforming the human body in a way that costuming alone cannot. Notable examples of those transformations being Lion King (of course) and Warhorse, which I just recently learned about and am utterly infatuated with. European companies are doing a lot of interesting large-scale things with puppetry as well that I am very interested in and think the U.S. could learn a lot from. Rant aside, I am glad that there are people like Blair Thomas in the States and it seems to me that puppetry is finding more and more of a place in the industry as time goes on, which is great in my opinion.
8 comments:
I love puppetry because of how it creates so many possible “radically different ways to tell stories”. Puppetry is a unique form of entertainment because of the manipulability of the object you are performing with. A puppet or performance object can only carry as much meaning and energy as the person controlling it puts into it, and the vessel that carries that energy has the ability to do things and be treated as something entirely separate from the reality we live in. Puppets can be destroyed and contorted and they can be used to grow and shrink worlds instantaneously. And somehow an audience can still feel an intense closeness to a performing object even though it is not human or even really alive. I am glad that Thomas wants to be a catalyst for a new age of puppet performance in theatre, because I think that the theatre world has been revamping its appreciation for this art form in the last 20 years, and now that we are used to puppets being more than just children's toys, we can really start to push the boundaries of where puppets in theatre can take us.
I think puppetry, especially in the U.S., is very much an under-appreciated art form. To echo Katie, puppetry really does push the limit on how a story can be told. You can make as much theater as you want, but if it all looks the same there's no reason for people to actively seek out and watch theater. Especially from my childhood, whenever something would be advertised as a "puppet show," I unfortunately would downgrade the legitimacy of the content and artistry itself. While this has completely changed over time, I think a majority of people who still feel like this. Now, with creators like Blair Thomas, puppets are being incorporated into classic shows, or really any type. The use of puppets is not only a way for an audience to see a show from a new perspective, but it challenges the designers who not only have to achieve a specific aesthetic but also have to design based on physical needs or demands. The actors also have to take the time to not be the main event. That seems absolutely counter intuitive, but in the case of puppetry, the puppet is the actual vessel for the drama. I am excited about puppets being more and more integrated into our shows and how people will use it to push the actual image of theater.
I completely agree with Elizabeth that puppetry in America is very underappreciated. I have so much respect for artists that have mastered the art of puppetry. I think all too often that puppetry is all too much thought of as something that only children can enjoy, even though there are so many forms of complex puppetry that takes years to master. I love watching and learning about puppetry because I love learning about all of the different kinds of puppetry that exist in the world. I think what Blair Thomas is doing is great. Although he will face some troubles in getting his puppetry company off the ground and gaining popularity for it, he seems like the kind of person who will keep working past the struggles to bring puppetry to the world, which I think is great and really important. I think puppetry is good to introduce people to because it is a form of art that they do recognize from the puppetry they have seen as a child because it is accessible and yet people can gain a new appreciation for this art form that people have put so much work into perfecting.
This article is really picking up my interest about the puppetry. The most recent show I saw that involves puppets is Zamire et Azor by school of music. In the show, I first time saw a live production of a human-size puppet that put on the stage. The method used by the puppeteer is really fascinating, especially on the facial expression and body languages. The puppet is controlled by four puppeteers, three out of four of them are amateurs. But the performance of the four-man team is nothing but satisfying. Hard to believe that they can be trained under such a tight schedule. It occurs me that to make body which is spit in four sections performs and express the motion of a character is such a delicate piece of artistic skill. "The last thing an actor is trained to do is to be uninteresting," This note by Zimmerman in the article is really striking, since I never linked the training differences and commons between actors and puppeteers. But after looking into this ancient craft, I found it a everlasting form of storytelling.
Puppetry has always been an interest of mine in the realm of the performing arts. I always felt as Katie said perviously that puppetry is an under appreciated art form in the world of theatre. A lot of the time in American theatre we put puppets into the box of they are for kids and they can't be made or used in "adult" or grown up theatre. Which is really limiting when it comes to the world. Some of the coolest shows and characters I have ever seen on stage were puppets. Honestly I think we should just look at them as we do animated or CGI characters in todays film industry. They are simply a stretch of our imagination and they are a tool for which we can build the world that we are seeing before us upon. Puppets are something that I personally would like to see grow in popularity with new things in automation and machine design to become a more integrated and dynamic part of American theatre.
I think puppets are creepy and I have said that before but I will reiterate now. I am so uncomfortable sometimes just by looking at them and I hate that sometimes they look so lifelike but also dead if that makes sense. The less life like a puppet is the less creeped out I am. I do appreciate it as an art form because it is super hard. I am going to make a puppet probably for my design project so I have been reading a lot about building and designing puppets to do what you want them too and it is really difficult especially if you have no prior knowledge. I know t very little about puppets, except like sock puppets, and so trying to make something that looks good and work will be very hard but I am ready to take on the challenge. I hope that I will be able to operate it correctly because puppets can be really cool in theater and in experiences in general.
It is really nice to read such an in-depth interview of a puppeteer. Since Susan gave her presentation on puppets around the world, I have been infinitely inspired. Me and my friends have now all talked of making puppets together, and although is just a conversation topic at the moment, it is something I find personally important to me to pursue. Puppets, as spoken of in this article of ones made by Blair Thomas, can be coloured, expressive canvas’ of which we, as audience members, as spectators, and more importantly, engagers can project onto. The versatility of which that can be achieved using puppets constantly amazes me. These creatures, can draw me in unlike a human face, which while observing I will inevitably, place some unwarranted human standards. Puppets let us see the humanity in our stories without all that gunk we put on real people. This lets an honest story to really be told, which is what theater is all about.
I know a lot of people find puppets creepy or unsettling, and I think they definitely can be, but more than that I think that they are misunderstood and underutilized in American theater. “They’re misunderstood” makes it sound like puppets are an angsty teenager or a pit bull, but what I mean is that oftentimes puppetry is pigeon-holed into the world of children’s entertainment, and I think that that is a massive waste. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of a lot of puppetry that I have seen, but that doesn’t mean I discount the rest of it, and it doesn’t mean that those things that I don’t like don’t have a place in the industry. Puppetry is about exploration to me, and about telling a story in a different way, or transforming the human body in a way that costuming alone cannot. Notable examples of those transformations being Lion King (of course) and Warhorse, which I just recently learned about and am utterly infatuated with. European companies are doing a lot of interesting large-scale things with puppetry as well that I am very interested in and think the U.S. could learn a lot from. Rant aside, I am glad that there are people like Blair Thomas in the States and it seems to me that puppetry is finding more and more of a place in the industry as time goes on, which is great in my opinion.
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