Shelter in Place-Puppet show
Shelter in Place
Puppet Showplace Theater
Online Puppet Slam
May 16, 2020
Puppet Showplace Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts has been hosting Puppet Slams for over 20 years. These are evenings that feature short works of puppetry. Sometimes these are polished pieces and sometimes they are shows that have been created very quickly and playfully to capture the moment.
I have performed in a few Puppet Slams at Puppet Showplace Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts, but I now live in Los Angeles so I was delighted to get an invitation to be a part of their Online Puppet Slam as a response to everyone sheltering in place due to the Novel Coronavirus pandemic.
I am always enthusiastic to be a part of puppet events hosted by Puppet Showplace Theater so I said yes, and began work on a new show.
I thought of several ideas, but the piece that formed in my mind was one based on many conversations I’ve had with my friends who have been dealing with this isolation, and the strange experience of this historic global pandemic. Even though we are all isolated and feeling cut-off, we have all been dealing with the same issues, from finding toilet paper, to trying to connect with our friends and family through our devices.
This new norm has been frustrating and stressful in unique ways, and I wanted to do a quick piece that sort of captured some of those moments we have all found ourselves living.
I spent a week building puppets and thinking about the script in my head. I wrote some dialogue but as I continued to build I had more thoughts and did some rewrites. I chose to pre-record the audio track because there were going to be four different characters and I had to do all of the voices myself, plus I wanted to have some sound effects and I wanted to ensure that my show would be exactly three minutes.
A pre-recorded track is always an interesting choice and one could argue that it minimizes spontaneity but it allowed me to put voice effects on the character voices and it allowed me to rehearse the show and focus on the manipulation of the four characters. This also made things more streamlined since I was working alone.
I got a Zoom Meeting invite from Puppet Showplace Theater to do an initial technical practice of presenting the show online. This was four days before the event and I still had nothing completed, and almost nothing to show, but the folks at Puppet Showplace Theater trusted me and knew I was busy puppet building, but it was still important to just walk through the steps of using the software, checking my camera and my computer settings. It was the first time I had used Zoom for this purpose and even though it is a fairly user friendly bit of software there are specific details that are important to clarify when one is preparing to use the app for a show.
It was good to do a test and shakedown of my computer and camera settings. I added a few more steps to my pre-show checklist to eliminate the chance of anything causing a problem during the brief live broadcast.
One discovery was that the show was set for 8:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, but I’m on the West Coast which put me three hours earlier. This meant the sun would still be up as I was performing, and to have theatrical lighting in my apartment I had to take steps to block out all of the sunlight coming in my windows.
I finished building the set pieces, the costumes, the puppets and setting up a little stage with black curtains by Saturday morning. I rehearsed for four solid hours, made some improvements to the puppets, and then logged onto another Zoom invite for the technical run-through that involved all of the artists.
It was an exciting experience to have my little puppet show set up in my apartment and then see all of these video feeds from puppeteers all over New England and the East Coast doing exactly the same thing. Everyone had converted areas of their living spaces into small broadcast studios.
I continued to work on my show and practice in the background as I listened to the other puppeteers going through their show and coordinating with the Tech Director and the Host of the show. Even though I was isolated and several thousand miles away I felt very close, connected and excited as I saw everyone working together to knit together a whole show.
Finally we got to my scene and I was able to hear the audio playback I had worked on being cued by the Tech Director and I was seeing my camera live, and I switched from tech mode to performance and began to do the beginning of my show.
Then we cut to the end of my show. And moved onto the transition to the next piece. It all went smoothly. And then we were told to take a break, get some food, drink some water, and come back in an hour and a half for the real show.
After working diligently all week I was glad someone told me to take a break, and I followed the advice and got some food and filled up my water bottle. I was really surprised at how this online experience still captured all of the excitement and emotions of a live theater performance. My show was only a three minute trifle, yet I still felt butterflies and the adrenaline rush of knowing I was about to perform for an audience, and share something new. I also felt excited because I had seen all of the other performers and knew that they were experiencing the same thing. Even in our isolation we were living through the same pre-show giddiness and mental and physical preparations.
One of the last things I did was reconfigure the plug on my computer, and tape it to the wall. Even though my computer works just fine every single day, I wasn’t going to take any chances. Then I checked all of the cords to my camera and my lighting equipment just to make sure nothing would come unplugged. Then I at 4:30 Pacific Time I logged onto the Zoom Meeting Puppet Slam site and I immediately heard the buzz of people doing final checks and preparations. We did a role call and checked everyone’s video and audio feed, and then waited.
At 8:00 PM Eastern Standard Time I heard the host Roxie Myhrum call out, “Okay, we are going live!” and then the show started. I couldn’t see an audience, I couldn’t even see numbers indicating how many people were watching, but I still had the nervous back-stage energy when one is doing a live theater show, except that I was in my apartment pacing back and forth.
Roxie Myhrum hosting the Puppet Slam as my puppet characters patiently wait.
My show was second to last in the line-up so I was able to watch most of the pieces. When it got close to my time, I did another quick check of my puppets, then I put my black gloves on and stood behind my set and waited with my hand on my computer mouse hovering over the drop down menu to turn my camera on. Then I got a chat message from the Technical Director, to go with my camera, I turned it on, and waited for my introduction, and then my show went live!
I simply performed the same show I had rehearsed the last two days, but there was something very different, I could feel the energy of knowing this was now a show. I could not hear laughter or reactions of any kind, but I still knew that each little thing my hands were doing with these puppets was now being seen and shared. As a show creator I have to put aside the nervousness I feel of simply hoping that people are enjoying the show. I have an actor ego that worries about my performance, but I also wrote the piece, and made all of the puppets, did the sculpting, the painting, the sewing, the lighting, and conceived the basic ideas. So there is a higher artistic acrobatic act that one is viewing when one watches a puppet show because the puppet artist is presenting many skills and ideas at the same time. Ultimately it’s still just a show, and something that is being genuinely shared with the audience.
Three minutes later, show done, fade out, and onto the next performance.
Huge sigh of relief. Nothing catastrophic happened, no technical malfunctions, it all went well. I am very grateful to the Puppet Showplace Theater for handling the tech and proficiently handling the Zoom app. I did get some text messages from my friends who enjoyed the show and said that they appreciated how smooth it all seemed to go.
This was meant to be an online substitute for a live theatrical event, and from my perspective as a performer I felt it still captured most of the emotional excitement of live theater with the added bonus that the performers and the audience were dispersed all over the world yet could still come together in this moment. I felt grateful to be a part of this event and this community.
After the show, and after the audience “left” we all opened up our cameras and continued to chat and I was treated to something I did not expect. Without any formal prompting each performance group shared a little bit about their show, and showed off their puppets, and their set up, so I was able to see people’s living rooms or kitchens where they had set up, and it was really amazing. People asked me a few questions and I was able to demonstrate my little puppets and how I was operating them and the choices I made in creating them. And even though I am an experienced puppet artist I still learned a lot by seeing other people’s set up and was genuinely thrilled get a behind-the-scenes look at their shows.
I am looking forward to a time when we can have real life community events, but I hope that we have also learned a better way to use the power of these digital tools to create events that can include a global community based on shared interests, and a coming together in time and virtual space.
On a personal note, I have performed in cabaret puppet shows and puppet slams in New York, Atlanta, Vermont, and even in Iceland but this was the first time my mom was able to watch a puppet slam and see me performing with my fellow puppet artist colleagues. I was very glad that through the use of online technology this live event could be shared and that she was able to enjoy the show and show support for a theater thousands of miles away from where she lives. I think the Puppet Showplace Theater does an excellent job of capturing the real magic and true art of puppetry which means reaching beyond geographic boundaries, and I would urge everyone reading this to look at their website and be aware of the great work they do in theater and community building.
Thanks,
Ronald Binion