The Problem With Puppets
Alan's adventures in Un-Scripted's The Great Puppet Musical continue...
The problem with puppets is that they’re too interesting. As Mandy said last night in rehearsal (and I’m paraphrasing badly) “the puppets haven’t become boring enough to be interesting again”.
What does that mean? As improvisors, we’re too excited to be puppets. This has made us all rather focused on ourselves and the fun things we want to do with the puppets, thus making us horrible improvisors.
This made for some painful moments in rehearsal last night, at least for me, but also led to one of my personal highlights from rehearsal last night. While watching from the sidelines a scene between a mess of puppets devolve into an ever downward spiral of confusing offers while each puppet fought for control of the scene and the validity of THEIR offers, I was able to come in (as a person, not a puppet) and tag the scene with a one-liner that suddenly made all the mess that had preceded it make sense. And it was a tag that would NOT have worked had I come in as a puppet.
I’m not one to toot my own horn, but it was a very satisfying moment. I hadn’t “tagged” a scene that well in years.
Then we arrived at the odd truth of the matter: The puppets need to learn how to improvise. I’m suddenly starting to understand how puppets become imbued with so much life of their own. Sometimes this has seemed odd to me, the way puppeteers will refer to puppets as separate entities when in truth the puppeteer is controlling the puppet. But the fact of the matter is: the puppet is a very separate thing. The puppet takes on a sub-identity within the puppeteer.
And our puppet selves need to learn how to improvise.
So we worked on some basic improv exercises. We played a raise-the-stakes exercise and then moved onto New Choice. Suddenly the puppets started being able to do somewhat passable scenes.
Then we played a game were in the improvisors (puppet and human) had to pause 10 seconds after speaking before someone else could speak. Eureka! We did an actual scene! Thus revealing another truth: Puppets are more interesting when they’re not talking. The have incredible emotive powers. Letting them slow down and emote is far more interesting to watch.
The problem with puppets is that they’re too interesting. As Mandy said last night in rehearsal (and I’m paraphrasing badly) “the puppets haven’t become boring enough to be interesting again”.
What does that mean? As improvisors, we’re too excited to be puppets. This has made us all rather focused on ourselves and the fun things we want to do with the puppets, thus making us horrible improvisors.
This made for some painful moments in rehearsal last night, at least for me, but also led to one of my personal highlights from rehearsal last night. While watching from the sidelines a scene between a mess of puppets devolve into an ever downward spiral of confusing offers while each puppet fought for control of the scene and the validity of THEIR offers, I was able to come in (as a person, not a puppet) and tag the scene with a one-liner that suddenly made all the mess that had preceded it make sense. And it was a tag that would NOT have worked had I come in as a puppet.
I’m not one to toot my own horn, but it was a very satisfying moment. I hadn’t “tagged” a scene that well in years.
Then we arrived at the odd truth of the matter: The puppets need to learn how to improvise. I’m suddenly starting to understand how puppets become imbued with so much life of their own. Sometimes this has seemed odd to me, the way puppeteers will refer to puppets as separate entities when in truth the puppeteer is controlling the puppet. But the fact of the matter is: the puppet is a very separate thing. The puppet takes on a sub-identity within the puppeteer.
And our puppet selves need to learn how to improvise.
So we worked on some basic improv exercises. We played a raise-the-stakes exercise and then moved onto New Choice. Suddenly the puppets started being able to do somewhat passable scenes.
Then we played a game were in the improvisors (puppet and human) had to pause 10 seconds after speaking before someone else could speak. Eureka! We did an actual scene! Thus revealing another truth: Puppets are more interesting when they’re not talking. The have incredible emotive powers. Letting them slow down and emote is far more interesting to watch.
posted by Alan Goy at
11:30 AM
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