What is a Puppeteer?

What is a Puppeteer?
Proposed by Mark Down

People who came:
Irena Stratieva
Oleg Shulev
Adrian Kohler
Lie Chen
Phelim McDermot
Kristin Fredrickson
Maria Andrews

What got written:
Who decides who is a puppeteer?
A person who has skill
But also goes deeper
Children / adult
Marginalisation
Revival = end of puppet adult/ child thing

Bulgaria
Building based work
Training as a puppeteer = acting + puppetry
4 years study
Puppeteers more famous than actors

chorus
Puppet /_ directing
- scenography
- writers

You become an actor first – 4 years.
You would not get employed.

No one proposed a discussion group for puppet scenography, direction writing

Is acting and puppeteering different?
Acting has depth of performance? Puppeteering all in the image?
Or puppetry goes very deep instantly – the challenge is staying with it.

Why replace an actor with a puppet? Must justify choice eg. tearing an arm off
But tricks only sustain a short time

How to go deep and stay there

Is object theatre puppetry?

Being a puppeteer means - “Having a puppet ear”

When dancers dance they become objects

Is film animation puppetry?

Do we need a union?

Audiences need training because of film and psychological acting

Why is “puppet making” not a separate thing? Taught separately?

In Bulgaria if a puppeteer does not have acting they cannot be a puppeteer.

Now when you have all the skills – can act, sing, direct, manipulate… then are you a puppeteer? There is something more.
A need to make and do puppets.
Trapped by this need.
What is it? Is this what a puppeteer is? Addiction?
It’s good to be a little bit addicted to something.

Why this urge to give life to objects? - uncanny/ tickle the unconscious.

Puppeteers overcome death.

It’s all about what you can’t do with an orange

Puppetry is like playing an instrument – a piano, a violin. You collaborate with the instrument to make music.

Why is a puppeteer?
- show an idea
- Talking through an object – releases the voice
- T o do violent things – transgress

A puppeteer is someone who disappears on stage.
Perhaps this is why he/ she is so difficult to pin down?