Day of Puppets 2025

The Backstory

A couple months ago, a little after the Petra and the Bugs show (which I should absolutely make some sort of page on - what a fun project) I went up to the Wildland Roots studio in Green Anchors, St. John’s, to talk to Moni, the organizer there. I heard from Adam Ende of Jawbone Puppet Theatre that Mini was planning a “puppet camp”, a day camp for adults to experience presentations and workshops in different styles of puppetry. I was immediately hooked, reached out to Moni right away, and after a little deliberating decided to make the trek north to get covered in paper mache glue and talk puppets.

Guys, I can’t recommend it enough. I’ll be talking about a specific event here, but Wildland Roots holds volunteer days weekly, with additional classes and camps on the weekends. I had the nicest, chillest day sitting in the shade and chatting while methodically glueing cardboard hands together.

And we talked about the lack of community events specifically for puppeteers, the mysterious disappearance of the Portland puppet guild, the retiring of many local puppeteers who had been leading the charge in bringing new people in. At the same time, we had both noticed a growing interest from sparse groups across the city. Petra and the Bugs, as an example. Moni’s response had been to think up this puppet camp, a place for those interested in puppetry to learn from professionals and try their hand at styles they might never have seen. After the camp there would be a performance, open to the public, with a handful of acts to expand on those lessons and showcase puppetry as a vast art form to be taken just as seriously as other forms of theater. The 12 slots for the camp quickly filled up, and were expanded to 24.

I offered to volunteer and perform, deciding to finish up a back burning project which turned into Nothing Kingly About It, my rat king play which you can learn more about here.

I would be helping out the full day and assisting in the different stations. In the evening I’d return with my crew of puppeteers to perform one of the pieces. I was super exited to participate in something that means a lot to me, demystifying and legitimizing puppetry as an art while encouraging people to get involved is the whole point of this site. It’s also wonderful to find someone who has the resources, a grant and a venue, to join forces with. Anyway, enough backstory, let’s get to…

Puppet Camp

I woke up at 6:30am to get ready. Picked up some caffeine, breakfast, and a sack lunch and headed right to the bus stop- just to get the routes wrong... twice. But I made it there at 9:20 in time to help set up and check people in as we got closer to the 10:00am start time. The attendees were split into three groups which would rotate between three stations. I haunted around, per usual, listening in and keeping an ear open for anything I was needed for. The morning’s stations were as follows:

Direct Manipulation with Adam Ende

I know Adam well, he’s been a wonderful mentor since I’ve known him. Adam’s work is a mix of simple cardboard puppets (some literally flat images with no moving parts), toys, masks, and more complex cardboard and paper mache bunraku puppets. He showed off a little bit of each, and then moved on to the activity.

This is the part about his presentation that I really enjoyed. He set up a table a little ways from where the group was sitting, and instructed them to stand up from their chairs, walk over, mime picking up a cup from the table, take a drink, walk back, and sit down. He told them to think about each motion, how they carried their weight, where their center of balance is, how their feet hit the floor. As they did this, he set up his bunraku puppets each with a tiny chair, a tiny table, and a tiny cup. The group split into pairs, and got to experiment with translating the movement in their body to the movement in the puppet. I think starting small like this is such a genius idea, especially with limited time, to get people thinking and paying attention to their bodies.

Adam’s setup also had a puppet which was a drunk, I remember each team having a lot of fun making excuses for their sloppy movements and accidental mishandling with how much their character had had to drink so far. I looked over at one point and they were acting out a scene of a son trying to get his dad to stop drinking and the dad goes “I’m drinking it so you don’t!” So much immediate creativity in the air.

Shadow Puppets with Shae Wish

Shae had a collection of stunning Indonesian shadow puppets - I’ll add some example images off the Web here - donated to her from Tears of Joy when they closed. She also had her own shadow puppets, some matching the traditional ones in complexity but made of modern materials, and some simpler. She emphasized how many different materials there are, and how experimentation is more important than having a set idea of how it has to look.

My ears perked up as she mentioned using an overhead projector, since I have a show concept using the same idea that’s been in the back of my head for a minute. She talked about putting a large square dish of water on the lightbox to create a ripple effect for her underwater scenes. It sounds really cool, and shadow puppetry is something I’d love to play with if I can find or rent the setup.

In her presentation about Indonesian puppetry traditions, she said that even shadow puppets would be performed in the round. You were given a choice, then. Do you watch the illusion? The story being told? Or, do you watch the puppeteer? The reality, the creator? The appreciation for the puppeteer and their process being just as impressive and entertaining as the show itself contradicts our modern western idea of “not ruining the magic”. Good puppetry is just as wonderful and engaging whether the puppeteer is hidden or not, because you’re too captivated by the world they’re creating to worry about breaking the illusion.

Object Puppetry with Tim Giugni

Tim went to Del Arte in California, a well known clown and movement school. I’ve known a couple people who also went there, I could definitely see the tells. Tim has been performing for a long time and done many different styles of puppetry and clowning, and his recent delve into object puppetry has been a new clean slate for himself. He said he added something new, and he needed a challenge. To put the most restrictions on himself, working only with objects he had around him, to focus on story and movement.

Tim has a lot of opinions, which were entertaining. Though I don’t even fully disagree with some of the harsher ones. He said he doesn’t trust Muppet fans, that he respects all the Jim Henson has done for puppetry and respects his work, but doesn’t trust people who are just fans of his work and don’t see puppets as anything else. I have to agree, I think the ubiquity of Muppets and Sesame St. causes frustration for master and novice puppeteers alike. The master puppeteer, since their work won’t be given the same level of attention and respect for not looking like the puppets a Muppets fan expects. And a novice, striking out on their first puppet projects and realizing how damn difficult fleece and foam puppets are to get right, their results not looking perfect or not fitting the tone of the piece, and giving up assuming it’s their fault. I love Henson, though I love him a lot more for his ability to bring people together and herd artists into a functional team that was both creatively fulfilling and able to keep itself afloat successfully. Or the innovations in SFX, servo puppetry, blue screen, mocap, and WALDO technology that was constantly ahead of its time. But he wasn’t a uniquely skilled puppeteer. There is tons of amazingly technical work out there in far more difficult puppetry styles, that unfairly often fall by the wayside. Even Jim Henson was frustrated that all he was known for was the Muppets and Sesame St, and his work on Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Jim Henson Hour, and The Storyteller (and many more!) never managed to replace that label no matter how hard he tried.

We also share a general distaste for media which uses the medium of puppetry for its comedy. Things like Team America World Police or Avenue Q or countless other mascot horror, where part of the comedy is the implied irony of taking puppets seriously in the first place. It degrades the respect for the medium for the puppetry itself to be the joke, the same is done with adult animation far too often. Though I think Avenue Q has moments that satire not just the puppetry of Sesame St, but the show’s entire educational format and what it would look like if it was aimed for adults. The less raunchy and more sincere moments don’t get as much buzz. But if Avenue Q does it decently enough in my opinion, most others fail to get past a superficial joke that relies on the assumption that puppetry is for kids in the first place.

ANYWAY… we can have the rest of this rant another time.

It was interesting watching Tim push his students to put more and more restrictions on themselves. You can’t combine objects. You have to think of every possibility before you run off with one idea. But he’s training them to think like puppeteers, to see that fancy puppets don’t matter, your creativity, performance, and dedication are what create a moving piece. To quote him directly, “the definition of a puppet is an object moved with intent. The opposite is also true, and object not moved with intent is also a puppet” he said, and pointed to the tables the objects were on. If I tell you that table is also alive, what does it say about its character that it isn’t moving? What is it thinking? How does it feel about staying still?

I can hear his clown training. Stillness is just as important as movement.

Now, for a quick lunch, and Adam performed a short piece about a turnip. He also read a beautiful statement on puppetry written by one of his students. The poster was not posted online, and I don’t believe the statement is published anywhere, so I will have to ask permission before I copy it here.

And now, on to the afternoon’s group activities:

Giant Puppets with Moni

Wildland Roots follows in the Bread and Puppet tradition, with large paper mache puppets and masks made from simple, often natural materials. Their display was less about the esoteric details and more about the safety and practice of having an eight foot pole on a backpack strapped to your back and not breaking anything. These are the puppets they work on during their volunteer days, and they mostly use them for various parades. These giant puppets are great for parades and protests, and pop-up theater out in the park.

I would love to work with them more, that’s my main takeaway here.

Rod Puppets with Shae

More beautiful Indonesian puppets. The craft and care in these is obvious, and even with the slightly unconventional movements you can really get a feel for how much life is in them. They are stunning pieces of art, with finely carved and painted faces representing all manner of mythological characters, beasts, and gods. I’m glad she still performs with them too, they aren’t just on display. I think everyone had the most fun interacting with each other in character during that group session.

At the end of the day, Moni and I wouldn’t want to ring the bell that signified the rotating of the groups. Everyone was just having so much fun and it took multiple rings to get them to move to the next station. Clearly, future camps are going to need more than one day to fit everything in! Each activity could have been an hour. Or, possibly, after the shorter sessions each person could chose which instructor they would like to spend additional time with. Maybe that would be too tough of a choice!

After camp was over, we all took a huge group photo and said our goodbyes. Many of the attendees and presenters would be at the show later, but some were leaving for the day. My partner joined me to get some real food during our lovely two hour break, and the rest of my cast showed up at 5:30 to set up the stage for our the show!

Puppet Night

3 Billy Goats Gruff

by Tim Giugni of Teatro Calimari

The classic story told pretty straight, but made very entertaining by his performance. The goats were small and cardboard, and he played the troll himself with a Commedia mask. His sense of timing and comedy and ad-libs are what made it really fun. The audience participation was getting just a bit out of hand, but he was playing along with it! He did break character at one point to go “You guys aren’t supposed to make ME laugh”.

It did make the show an extra 30 minutes longer, so we started a bit late.

Pirate Bard (pt 1)

In between shows they had a musical act! I still need to catch her name, but the pirate bard started their first set by inviting people onstage to represent the sun, clouds, and rocking waves with giant puppets from Wildland Roots’ catalogue. She sang a couple of original upbeat sea shanties, one of which is going to be stuck in my head forever, and we all had a fun time while waiting in the “wings” at the side of the stage.

Nothing Kingly About It

by Six Letter Notion

My show!

My friends had a really good time! Two of my puppeteers were completely new to even being onstage, I was so happy to encourage them in this opportunity. Especially seeing how much they react to Adam’s previous shows we saw together, engaging earnestly and responding openly and spontaneously. Those are the kinds of people who make great performers, you either gotta train artists to be bolder or give bold people the skills to be artists.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t accounted for the wind. Our greatest enemy. The curtains that hid us from the audience were blown sideways, which wasn’t too big of an issue, but our scripts were pinned to the fabric and were also blowing sideways. But aside from a little bit of difficulty there, It went really well! We got a couple laughs, but mostly gasps. Exactly where wanted them to be. Looking back on it, I think this show wants to be Grand Guignol, something that will cause visceral horror in the audience.

Tim asked me afterward if I would continue working on the piece, and emphasized the need for more memorization and practice. I told him we had three weeks and busy schedules. But was intrigued by what it was so far, liked the rats, and told me “I hope to see it when it’s complete. Not finished, it should never be finished, but complete”. I got similar supportive words from Moni and Adam, who had heard about my concept from the show way back in November when I first started thinking about it.

Pirate Bard (pt 2)

She’s back for the next transition! This time, the audience volunteers were invited to play the moon and a stormy sea, and she sang a couple of slower dramatic ballads.

"der golem"

by Adam Ende of Jawbone Puppet Theater

It is difficult to put into words how much I love this show. Der golem is, in Adam’s words, the story of a secular jewish puppeteer tasked with making a golem puppet. And him connecting the practice to the history of the golems made by jewish rabbis to protect the jewish people, the practice of bringing life to inanimate objects as a way to share in creation and bring oneself closer to the Creator. But he is preoccupied with the genocide in Gaza, at this moment the jewish people are not the ones who need protecting.

This weaving of divine creation and puppetry and storytelling and what power our creations hold built a complex narrative about the creation of the very show we were seeing. As he struggles to put these complex feelings into words he gets distracted, does fake drugs, and ultimately scrambles to fit puppets into what was supposed to be a puppet show.

I don’t want to spoil any more. But I’ll leave it at the final sentiment of the piece, “if I could create a puppet show that would change the world I would be making that show, but I’ll make the silly little dirty puppet shows that I can.”

Adam’s shows are usually incredibly blunt and dirty and violent and cathartic. They wear their message on their sleeve, but they never feel edgy when describing awful politicians being sent to hell to be fucked by demons, or sappy and satirical when describing a world with no borders run by a matriarchal council, because his delivery is so earnest. He has an awkwardness that is immediately endearing, I’ve even heard other performers suggest it’s a sad clown act, a character. But I’ve hung out with him outside of shows, it’s only a slight exaggeration of his self. He has been doing his plays for so long that they come completely naturally from his head, nothing feels rehearsed because it’s all in there. It feels like he is coming up with a story on the spot, a story he just HAS to tell you.

Pirate Bard (pt 3)

The last performance was done with a calm sea and a moonless sky. It was about 9:30 at this point. The pirate bard welcomed in a huge water dragon puppet, held by many audience members, which wove around the audience before curling up onstage to listen. This piece made me tear up a little, it was a poem about a sea hag. An old mermaid who, never haven fallen in love with a man and given up her fins to walk on land, grew larger and more beautiful than any mermaid. The expressive language describing her long silver hair and rolls of fat rippling in the water with such loving detail. It was a love letter to growing old. To truly seeing aging as beautiful. And yeah, I cried a little.

And that was it, that was the end of the night.

We struck our puppets and curtains, talked to the other performers as they cleaned up. This is when I got all the feedback for my show mentioned earlier. We packed up and said goodbye to my cast, rode home, and collapsed into bed while talking about the events of the day.

I had someone come up to me after the show and say "this is exactly what I needed right now".

I had many people come up to me to ask "how do I get involved?""how do I do this?". And to be honest I don't really hav a good answer for them. I tell them to join my discord where I post puppet opportunities, I tell them to subscribe to the Wildland Roots email and show up to their volunteer days. Natural conversation with the right people will get you a lot farther than following their social media, the almighty algorithm doesn't usually serve up the unpopular posts even if you do follow them. I started this with my and Moni's conversation about this very issue. They use the Wildland Roots email for a similar shoutout, but it's the conversation that makes a community, that makes people comfortable to actually go out and participate. Maybe a forum? I think that's my next step, I know I hav all these people who want to join what I do. I just need to figure out how.