family

I haven't written anything on the blog for a while as I'm away from the Boo, staying in Minneapolis, Minnesota. in the USA. I'm visiting home and family - but not people related to me, or the place that I grew up. This is a different type of home - the place that I first fell head over heels with puppetry and the community of artists, organisers, families and eccentrics that gather around a puppet theatre.This family is In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, and I am staying at the house of my lovely puppet-sister Sandy Spieler, director of the theatre and my great mentor. And just like any other type of family, the times that everyone comes together are the same - births, deaths, marriages and milestones. Well this year I missed the miletone - the gigantic, joyful 39th Mayday Parade and Festival. But two other imortant events are happening in this family's life which I wanted to mark - first, the much mourned passing of Jim Koplin - academic, farmer and volunteer for 25 years at in the Heart of the Beast, with whom I passed many, many hours paper macheing and discussing poetry, politics and planting.

Here's a picture of Jim with Sandy, preparing the giant River puppet on one MayDay morning. his puppet family held a beautiful memorial service at the theatrelast Saturday, performing puppets that Jim helped to make, singing songs he would have loved and telling beautiful stories about him.
At the other end of the family celebration spectrum, this coming Saturday I will be attending the wedding of a wonderful young woman who I first met making parade puppets together when she was a beautiful feisty flame-haired 7 year old. And over the many years of the parade that I have been part of, she has also been like an inspirational big sister to my my own feisty red-haired daughter. It should be great fun, not least because it will bring so many people together.

Something funny happened yesterday evening which reminded me that there is also another kind of puppet family, almost like a bloodline that runs through, linking one theatre company with another across continents, joined sometimes by a shared aesthetic, sometimes by social or political motivation, but truly connected by people, puppeteers travelling around, working with different companies, taking ideas, tricks and techniques with them and leaving a puppet trail behind them. And so last night I met Mark Dannenhauer, a photographer and sometime puppeteer that Sandy worked with in the early days of Bread and Puppet Theatre. As I told him about our work at Horse + Bamboo, he told me of a new company, made up of B+P performers, who are touring with a horse and wagon in the Applachian mountain region of North Carolina. They call themselves the Rural Academy Theater. Sure enough, when Mark put me on the phone to Gabriel, one of the founders, he already knew of our work, but even more coincidentally told me that Chez - better known known to us as the less wolfish performer from our own Red Riding Hood, is going to tour with them on their horse-drawn tour this autumn, before coming back to work with us! Which made me think it would be so much fun to make a family tree, showing all the lines of influence, inspiration and relatedness, including Welfare State International and Bread and Puppet, Horse + Bamboo and In the Heart of the Beast, Handmade Parade and Shadowland  http://www.shadowlandtheatre.ca/ along with hundreds and hundreds more links. Although maybe just as well there's the www, as I think it's beyond my powers of genealogical investigation. But a journey to visit them all, now that sounds like lots of fun....

busy boo

I'm writing this from the cold but sunny doorway of the Boo. Today we're a polling station, so I've been here since 6.30 this morning welcoming neighbours into the building to do their civic duty. Of course, lots of people are coming who've never been here, and are really interested to get information about what we've got on. And then, of course, there are the few you'd expect to refuse information, already furious that they have to come into such a degenerate arty space to vote - hmmm...wonder how they'll be voting. Still, it's always fun to irritate people with a smile!

On Sunday we managed to squeeze in 90 people to see Angel Heart Theatre's Mazymeg and the Honeybees. The show was great, and people really loved staying around to look closely at the beautifully made puppets. Before the show the studio was heaving as usual with families making pollination crowns and little toy theatres full of bees and flowers. Long-time puppet enthusiast Dan (pictured above) made a fantastic scene inside a beehive, complete with honeycombs, larvae and a bee clock(!) with a pixie from the show paying a visit.

The space really was bursting at the seams again. Very welcome news, then that we've just got the first part of the funding towards expanding the space (wow - brilliant!). We do need to match-fund all of it (and then more besides), but ultimately it will enable us to seat far more people in shows, allow them to get a better view of the stage, expand the studio space for making activities, and provide access to the garden and the studio from the front of the building so that we can have more happening here.
Speaking of more happening...

On Friday 10th May Senegalese Kora player Doudou Cissoko will be performing here, and we're turning the theatre space into a place for dancing and toe-tapping. Sadly for me it coincides with my exciting  adventure to Ireland with Incredible Edible to look at community gardening in Cork. Then, two days later on May 12th  the whole building will be buzzing with our (sort of) annual Open Day. Lots of drop in activities, storytelling, works-in-progress. Should be a great day, and a brilliant opportunity for people to see all the usually off-limits parts of the building.

And so to news of Moominland Midwinter. Well, after a bit of a bumpy journey, it looks as though we have the go ahead to proceed with the show! WooHoo! So now lots and lots to make. First of all, some changes Moomin Characters ltd want me to make on the puppets already made, and then maybe a giant moomin. That would be cool.