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| Huge puppet from our Friday performances. See video below. |
At dinner tonight a friend asked, "Oh Monica, how was your two week puppetry excursion?" Well it's been weeks since I returned and I realized I haven't reflected or documented my experience yet. There is so much to think about that all I could say was that I developed a preference for a specific outhouse over the other options. Yes, it was a special composting toilet maintained by a company called Clivus. I was not the only one who favored this outhouse, it was a shared and celebrated commodity. Like a giddy school girls giggling about their boy crushes, my fellow apprentices and I would smile and giggle saying, "I just used the Clivus." Totally ridiculous, but I'll tell you my apprenticeship was full of appreciation for such commodities.
There's actually quite a bit I could share about the experience. I wrote in my journal everyday with descriptions of my day, stories of triumph, documentation of learning, and recounts of experiences that brought back nostalgic memories.
So perhaps I should recap what I did. In short, I took two weeks vacation to apprentice at the Bread and Puppet Theater company in Glover, VT. I had some experience with the company ten years ago (see Accepted blog post), and was honored and excited to be an apprentice. In this blog post, I'm not interested in recapping all of Bread and Puppet's history or their significance in politics and puppetry. I really want to just share some videos, pics and highlights from my two weeks there.
The Location
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| Banners outside of B & P |
B & P is located in rural Vermont on a farm owned by the Schumann's who founded the company. Decorated with amazing "cheap art" and prints from visiting guests and their onsite print shop, the farm houses a communal farmhouse where 70ish people (yes, there were a lot of people there) roam the kitchen daily and engage in their share of communal activities (gardening, harvesting, cooking, cleaning, making aioli, recycling, etc.). The apprentices and volunteers all lived in tents of course, and the staff and puppeteers lived in the house or in other nearby shelters (e.g. old B & P school buses). Also on the land were a few gardens and livestock for sustenance, the Paper Mache Cathedral & Dirt Floor Theater (where we rehearsed and performed our Fright night shows), a gift shop, museum, art space, storage space, costume room, print shop, outdoor fields for the Sunday afternoon circus and pageant, miscellaneous living and creating spaces, and outhouses, featuring the ever so amazing (school girl giggle), Clivus composting toilet. As mentioned, there are several old B & P school buses that decorated the land for storage, merchandising, or living spaces.
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| Outside the Puppet Museum & Gift Shop |
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| Dirt Floor Theater and Paper Mache Cathedral |
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| Banner on DF Theater/PM Cathedral |
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| Cheap Art Bus |
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| My Neighborhood, Las Palmas |
The People
I
met so many people from so many places (both states and countries), of
all ages and backgrounds, and with just as much confusion as I had in
the first 24 hours at B & P. Thankfully I learned on my second day
that in a nutshell, "there are really no rules at B & P but someone
is always making a mistake." Given that, information, I could relax in
the fact that I could just be present. I had to drop some of the
inherent control that I have to need to know what is coming next so I
could be prepared and have my mental stuff together. Most were artists,
musicians and actors who illuminated the post-dinner coma with an
eclectic jam session. Oh how I love fiddles and accordions and random
brass instruments being played with such joy on the porch of an old
farmhouse. The juxtaposition of this life versus my typical daily grind
was memorizing and exhausting, but definitely amazingly beautiful on a
hot summer night in the hills of Vermont.
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| Circus Act at B&P...look at all the instruments! |
The Puppets and Politics
I'd like to save the stories of what we worked on for another blog, and how different aspects influences my thinking. Instead, I'd like to just shared a few photos and a video of what I was working on. When I find my fellow apprentices with their library of documented performances, I'll share those parts. For now, here's the magnitude and aesthetic of what I was working with. Perhaps if will inspire you more to read about Bread and Puppet.
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| Backstage at the Circus |
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| Lion Costumes |
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| So you can see how big some of these puppets are compared to me! |
Some Interesting Thought and Highlights
- The Importance of Music: On Tuesday evenings, the community comes for shape note singing. I attended one week and while I couldn't follow along with reading music, let alone music that was coded with shapes and Fa, La, So, Me's, I was in awe of the beauty of singing old hymns and rounds. We even sang the "Rose Rose Rose Rose.. Will I ever see thee wed?" song that I so fondly recall learning from my mom and my Aunt Bobbie, Joanie, Susie, and perhaps Kathy and Mary were there? We sang that song in a round one night on the balcony of our shared condo in Maine. I was so swept away with that family memory resurfacing at B & P that I thought about how important it is that I keep music alive with my immediate and future families.
- Getting Higher: I did face a fear of mine. I walked on stilts. I will never forget Anli, the German woman who so forcefully strapped me into those stilts and relentlessly supported me in succeeding. I was thankful it was sunny and that I had sunglasses on to mask the tears and panic I had on my face the whole time. Heck, I even kept crying when I was walking independently on those stilts, after I had accomplished this fear. I really had thought about quitting before I even stood up for the first time, but I practiced what I have been working on for years. I thought, "Monica, what kind of 1st world problem is this? What kind of story are you going to make this? The story of you quitting and feeling bad about not following through when there is no reason not to, or will this be the story of you saying 'to heck with it' and just doing it and living to tell about it." I am happy with my choice. Due to rain, I didn't have time to get on stilts again but I'm thinking about seeking out an opportunity to continue with this training. Tip: The secret is to keep moving. Being paralyzed by fear is not helpful when stilt-walking or anything, so just march to the beat of your own drum and you'll figure it out.
That's all for now...more to come, including the new show I'm working on that is less than political and doesn't involve big puppets.
Lastly, here's a short video clip of the big puppet during a technical rehearsal.
