Jim Henson left us a great legacy – he taught us that puppets are not just for kids. No one believed that a puppet show aimed at adults would succeed in a prime time slot, but “The Muppets” proved them all wrong. If you need any more proof, hire out “Team America – World Police”. The inaugural International Puppet Carnival was an excellent showcase of the wide diversity of puppetry but did not really succeed in promoting it as a legitimate viable art form for all ages.
The main problem I had with this carnival was that all the workshops and most of the shows during the day were aimed at kids as a sort of school holiday activity thing, in fact it was called a ‘School Holiday Program’. The smaller evening program aimed at adults had at its centre “Puppet Burlesque” advertised with a hideous naked female puppet and the line “No cow is too sacred, no lyric too rude, and no joke too politically incorrect”. This may have attracted a certain crowd but the sleaze & gross-out humour of it may also have turned many puppetry fans off, including me. It suggested that adults would only go and puppetry if they were promised some titillation or shock. I wanted to see talented puppeteers and engaging puppets, possibly some interesting stories and a few laughs, luckily that was all there too if you took the chance to check it out.
The three puppeteers of ‘Men of steel’ who made a great impression with everyone during the Melbourne Comedy Festival are back with a brand new show which was part of the kid’s holiday program. Sam Routledge, Tamara Rewse and Hamish Fletcher (all graduates of the VCA puppetry course), obviously have a ball performing puppetry with found objects. The stars in their shows are 2 men-shaped cookie cutters who get up to lots of mischief. “On Holiday with Men of Steel” had a simple plot revolving around them taking a holiday from their home in the kitchen, in their flying wok to the other rooms of the house, where objects came to life. They travelled in their flying wok, having many adventures and making a huge mess. The puppetry is performed on a long table covered with plastic sheeting, because these are messy puppets (or puppeteers!) In the bathroom they managed to make a mess with shampoo, hair mousse and talcum powder etc and in the study they did some expressionist painting using a slingshot and lots of brightly coloured paint. Eventually they returned to their home in the kitchen where they made a human lamington, using chocolate sauce and coconut, of one of the puppeteers, who was wearing the face mask of Naked Chef Jamie Oliver, who seemed to be portrayed as an amusing villain here. Each scene ended with a brisk wiping down of the long table. The performers speak in a sort of gibberish that made me feel like I was watching a Japanese version of “Art Attack”. It put me off a little, ‘cause I remember hating this sort of thing (often in animation on the ABC) when I was a child, even though I could see the advantage of being able to show it all over the world. I heard a child say to her mother “Are they speaking English?” Although “On Holiday with Men of Steel” was obviously aimed at very small children, it had quite a few jokes aimed at adults. I felt the story in the bathroom about the Men of Steel trying to get past a bouncer of a night club, by taking on disguises and creating diversions so they could slip in, was quite an adult tale, but appreciated by all. The kids loved it. Me too! I cannot praise the sound in this show too highly, several of the jokes depended on sound effects that were always spot on.
The next show, part puppetry, part live theatre and part film was called “Sad Bird Boy and Other Dreams of the City” by Theatre in Decay. The original tale of the Sad Bird Boy began as an entrant in Short and Sweet last year and won Best Overall Performance. It has grown to become a group of stories based on entering and experiencing urban life, it was written by Robert Reid, who’s writing was very poetic and I felt a little pretentious at times. I’m not a big fan of deathly serious obscure theatre that makes you come out thinking “What the hell was that?” and this verged on that at times, but there were some nice ideas here. A live violinist, interesting stories, beautiful puppetry and – thank god, a bit of fun. The most fun and my favourite story of the group was a Film Noir scenario of a simple barman played by a lovely foam muppet-like man-size puppet attached to the brilliant puppeteer’s feet who is planning a heist with a double crossing Femme Fatale played by an actress in a mask. The Sad Bird Boy puppet was a beautiful delicate wooden puppet performed by the same amazing puppeteer Andrew McDougall who is a true master of his craft. This play also had a bit of nice shadow puppetry, but was probably a little too strange for me to really love (a boy with wings I can accept, but a scalpel fingered girl – huh???). Overall the show was occasionally let down technically, especially by the lighting during the black light sequence where the puppets were supposed to glow in the dark, but sadly there was more ultra violet light on the audience than the puppets! I didn’t think that sequence was particularly interesting anyway, it only reminded me how really thrilling black light theatre can be when done well. This show was definitely worth seeing for the magical work of Andrew McDougall, I look forward to seeing more puppetry from him.
The short ‘Shadow Play’ was all shadow puppetry performed by the hands of one man, Sean Keenan and began with the puppeteer in front of the screen making shadows as you watched his hands form the many shapes of animals and people. He then slipped behind the screen and performed a story of love and sex and other stuff, using the many mind-boggling shapes. It was often funny and sometimes quite moving, but mostly very impressive.
My favourite experience of the night had to be the classic, ‘non PC’, violent version of Punch & Judy. Punch is quite the scary psychopath clown! Basically, he murders most of the rest of the cast. I can imagine it originally done a few hundred years ago in pubs, it’s very blokey. Punch annihilates all the troubles of the average working man. Is there a screaming baby driving you up the wall (or to the pub)? – just chuck it out the window. Bash the angry nagging wife to death with a big stick and then the policeman, who comes to investigate, followed by the suspicious hangman (I bet these 2 figures got huge cheers!) and finally the devil who comes after you, laughing maniacally all the way. For some reason there is also a side story with a clown who gives Punch some sausages to mind, that are stolen by a crocodile. Even the Clown can’t believe that there would be a crocodile loose in an English village! I’ve since learned that there have been many side stories that have come and gone, adding to the mayhem over the years and that the crocodile was originally a dragon, which makes much more sense! Apparently the crocodile became popular after Peter Pan was a hit and replaced the poor old dragon. We enjoyed lots of audience participation with great gusto and the whole thing was performed by one man, who did all the voices and worked all the puppets in a perfect period looking little puppetry tent. He emerged sweating, to much deserved, delighted applause. Its hard to know how old the Punch and Judy show is, although the records for the Punch puppet alone appeared in England about 4 hundred years ago, he could be much older. Puppetry is certainly very old and I’m pleased to see the art is still well and truly alive.
Now a word about the venue, I am not a fan of Federation Square, it is still a relatively new space to most people and not a people friendly space, especially if you are disabled in anyway or new to it and signage is barely adequate, if you can find any. Frankly it drives me NUTS. If you entered the Square from Swanston St (from the tram stop or train station) there was NO signage at all about the Puppet Carnival or where it might be located, no hint of its existence and not even a general map to show how Federation Square is set out, what the spaces are called and where they were. I missed 5 mins of my 1st show trying to find the Umbrella Revolution Tent, which was hidden further away in the car park. It’s not easy to hide a Circus Tent, but they managed it!
I had a great time at the first International Puppet Carnival, as a puppeteer myself, I’m hoping that it will blossom and grow to include workshops for adults and is not promoted in future as a place to bring the kids during the school holidays or some kind of dodgy sideshow, but more like an Arts Festival of Puppetry.