Puppets and Protagonists

That's right! Two rehearsals for the Great Puppet Musical in one week! We're crazy.



We did some long form starts in rehearsal last night. In my continuing struggle with the protagonist role, I managed to deflect being the protagonist in the first one, but take it in the second one.

In the first one, I was a human. I got a little in my head and deflected the protagonist role on to the puppet largely on purpose. Somehow I thought the puppet should be the protagonist. As Mandy pointed out later, in actuality, we may find it easier for a human to be the protagonist. With the exception of some of the more experienced puppeteers in the cast (Amber), we’re all better actors as human’s then puppets. You kind of need to be a good actor to be the protagonist.

So of course, I went right out in the next long form start and grabbed the protagonist role as a puppet. I was using Amber’s old Plumkin puppet. He’s very expressive, in a wide-eyed way. Mandy gave me the positive note afterwards that I have a way of using the entire puppet when the puppet speaks, instead of just the mouth. Yay me! Except now I need to forget that note because that was not something I was doing consciously. Otherwise the next time I pick up a puppet I’ll be unable to do anything but move the mouth.