Puppet Manifesto 2
Before pulling the trigger about pulling some strings
Before wielding the rod that might spoil your show
CONSIDER
what you are doing.
Consider also what you want to do, but consider what you are doing and have done before you do more.
But… don’t consider too hard what you have to show for your efforts. More importantly,
Consider your impulse
Consider your intention
And, if you are certain that your impulse is not best expressed as novel, sculpture, or some other non-performing form, then consider:
The dancer,
who can tell stories and share emotions with the human body alone
The mime,
who can do the same thing, but in a weird and not very graceful way
The storyteller,
unencumbered before the audience
The musician,
who can touch dark ancient part of brain with sound
The singer,
Who, through song, combines the complexity word and the primitives of tone
And consider the actor.
There is not another figure on stage that can do what the actor does. Neuroscience confirms what has been known for centuries. When we see a person in the same room as us portray an emotion or state of being, we feel it.
MIRROR NEURONS
Pain, joy, fear, hunger, thirst and so on. We don’t simply recognize it, we don’t merely understand it a larger context of any social, political, cultural information we have gathered. We feel it. The same neurons fire in our brain as if we were having the experience as the actor is portraying. And this does not happen with an actor on film, in two dimensions.
AN ACTOR IN A ROOM IS POWERFUL THING
Then
If you understand that the power an actor brings into a room is not required by your art
or
If you understand that the power an actor brings into a room even prohibited by your art
or
If you need to tell truths that can’t be believed when spoken by a human
or
If you need to arrive at the artwork’s destination only after traveling through the childhood imagination and fascination even when your audience is adult
or
If you need to
If you refuse to allow the writers and readers of words to claim a monopoly on the use of the term “poetry”
or
If you must bend time and space like a film, but in the same room as the audience
or
If you must not be constrained by the physics of a human body, but must tell a human’s story
or if you must tell a universal story with the voice of beings and objects unable to speak
or
If you must make sculpture sing and dance
or
If you find that you need to fit the whole show into your suitcase.
AND
It is apparent that no better solution exists…
CHOOSE
the puppet from,
among all the puppets that exist and
among all the puppets that you can conceive of.
Choose the puppet
that will best serve
and
most fully be your