Ian Thal, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen!
Blogs by Ian Thal
Two Weeks with Bread & Puppet Theater: Epilogue 1/23/2004 3:18:43 PM
The end of the series. Comments and criticism welcome from any involved parties. After this, I will be returning to my regular blog. For the last few years I have been in the habit of documenting my artistic life, writing down anecdotes about performances, rehearsals, experiences with publishers and presenters and posting them first to a small virtual community called LambdaMOO and more recently to this blog. It was obvious to me that my time with Bread & Puppet would warrant some notice in this personal project of mine but I never expected to write anything of such length. Had I planned so, I would have asked for permission to take photographs or conduct interviews, so to make a proper "documentary."
Bread & Puppet was informed about the existence of this project almost from the moment that this narrative began to appear on my web site and as of this writing the participants who have commented have only voiced curiosity and encouragement-- though I have stated a willingness to receive criticism.
Barely a week goes by without somebody recognizing me from my time with Bread & Puppet. Many of these people I meet say they remember remember my lack of shoes and my animated nature. I meet them in coffee shops when I'm editing my poetry, or at the theater as I grab a seat before the show. They ask about what it was like and how and why I got involved. As I answer questions, I realize that I feel great pride in the time and energy I invested. Sometimes these fans even become interested enough to ask me about my own projects.
Some seem surprised that I was one of the volunteers and not part of the touring company. I realize that part of this is how well I fit in with the show. There is something about the arts of puppetry and mime that make us connect in a way that more conventionally trained actors and storytellers cannot do with either. Puppets and mimes do not attempt a similacrum of reality as most actors do as attempt to subvert reality: One makes a world out of muscle tension; the other makes life out of the inanimate. The results are similar. On the other hand, actors trained in realism and accustomed to playing characters in conventional plays seem tiny in this world of cardboard and paper mache.
I am reminded of a line from one of my favorite underground comic strips, Mark Poutenis’ Thinking Ape Blues: "Realism is for assholes."
