Features
SEPTEMBER 2021 28
ALIENS JAMMING
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IN
NATCHEZ, THE
TO CHUCK BERRY STARS FALL TO
// 3 2
EARTH
THE
STATE OF THE
P E R FO R M I N G A R TS
PERFORMING
ARTS, PART II
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W
JOHNNY B. GOODE
A Puppeteer’s Perspective
HOW ZIGGY & THE JUNKYARD BAND FULFILLED A CHILDHOOD DREAM Story by Kristen Foster • Photos by Kimberly Meadowlark
I
t is 8 am on a Tuesday, and I am crawling beneath a mound of artistically-arranged junk zip-tied and screwed in to a hollow scaffolding of chicken wire and wood. I scooch across the floor on my side, inch-by-inch, maneuvering around corners and stretching toward a jagged hole cut in the rubble just large enough to thread an arm through. With my body fully eclipsed by trash—a bent bicycle wheel, a burned out toaster—I reach up into a simulated spring afternoon. I witness this surreal effect— my arm blooming through debris— on a small screen carefully balanced between my face and a two-by-four. “Alright!” a voice at once gruff and impish calls out to me from the surface. “You ready?” it asks, while working the foam and felt over my forearm. I answer, “yes!” with the i m me d i a c y born from a
subconscious anticipation that has been coiling, spring-like, for years. “Outstanding!” the voice booms, “Puppets up!” And just like that, my arm becomes the spine, my hand the jaws and eyes, of Pat Riot—a mohawked and safety-pinned punk rock bass player who, along with the rest of the Junkyard Band, has arrived to guide a spaceship-wrecked alien named Ziggy through lessons on arts and empathy in Louisiana Public Broadcasting’s newest original children’s educational program. Growing up, when adults asked me that quintessential question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I’d answer, with a youthful lack of hesitation: “A puppeteer.” Said adults rarely knew what to say next. In fact, it would take decades for me to meet another person who shared an appreciation for this particular art form and understood its impor-
tance. It was then five years after I first met Clay Achee that he became the puckish director guiding my puppeted arm from the opposite side of a garbage pile. In truth, it wasn’t until recently that I even bothered to ask Achee what drew him to puppetry in the first place. It was always something that felt inherently obvious to me, an unspoken understanding we’ve shared since the day I first crashed into his inbox upon hearing there was a “puppet guy” in town. While the contents of that initial missive are long since lost in the digital ephemera, it would be fair to imagine an overall tone of fanatic desperation. There was a puppet show in town, and I wanted in. I needed in. To my great fortune, Achee is one of those people who finds room for everyone, a quality that not only makes him an edifying creative collaborator, but a superlative friend. So, it was no surprise to me that, when I finally did get around to asking, his answer might have been pulled from the pages of my own history: it was The Muppets, Fraggle Rock, Labyrinth, and The Dark Crystal. It was, in short, Jim
Puppets Ziggy, Pat Riot, and River Young from Ziggy’s Arts Adventure.
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Henson’s innumerable enchantments orchestrated using only what could be built, then brought to life, by skillful hands. I remember vividly the first time I got my hands on—or, more accurately, inside of—a puppet. It was a muggy summer in my hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, and my grandfather and I were visiting the country music-themed amusement park, Opryland. A vendor with an array of brightly-colored shaggy puppets festooning his kiosk beckoned to the crowd with the rodded arm of a fuzzy brown monster who was, in a gruff and wild voice, hawking his wares: “Brother for sale! Sister for sale!” I moved closer, mesmerized by the assemblage of costume fur and wire that seemed to live and breathe before my widening eyes. The monster, whose nametag read “Bofleeceus”—a triple-layered word play of Hank Williams Jr.’s nickname—proved to be a world class salesman. Gesturing toward one side of the kiosk made to look like a jail from the Wild West, Bofleeceus leaned in and asked my grandfather if he’d like to, “spring one of these criminals.” “Well, I don’t know. What do you think?” my grandfather asked me in his playfully rhetorical way. I don’t remember answering, but I do remember BeBop, the taffy pink monster with dark aviator sunglasses and a straw cowboy hat who became my constant companion for the rest of that summer and years thereafter. “I’ve always been drawn to practical effects,” Achee explained of his own affinity towards puppetry and performance-based storytelling. “The magic trick of something happening onscreen that I knew wasn’t real, and yet it was actually happening, was just so neat to me as a kid. I remember turning back to my dad and asking, ‘How’d they do that?’” It’s a question that, today, has become an indelible guide to his many creative pursuits.
