2 minute read
Program Highlight
HOW PUPPETRY BREATHES LIFE INTO SCROOGE’S STORY
STORY BY Amanda Watkins
Imust admit it – growing up I didn’t know much about the exquisite artistry behind the puppets in my life. I just took for granted that Kermit could strum a guitar while singing “Rainbow Connection.” While watching reruns of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’s “The Neighborhood of Make-Believe,” I didn’t understand that there were human hands behind Lady Elaine Fairchilde. I just knew she was sassy and instilled in me a belief in my own self-empowerment. I was perplexed by Pinocchio wanting to “become a real live boy” because I assumed he already was just that – with a beating heart, deep blue eyes, and a joyous honest soul.
The art form of puppetry has been engaging audiences since the earliest of times, enhancing our willing suspensions of disbelief as we watch stories unfold onstage. One of the many ways in which the Alliance Theatre is breathing new life into A Christmas Carol is found in the puppetry created by Tom Lee and Blair Thomas, co-founders of the Chicago Puppet Studio. I recently spoke with Tom about his history with this art form, and his and director Leora Morris’ decision to enhance this adaption with puppetry.
“I grew up immersing myself in Asian Theatre traditions,” said Lee. “When I began my career at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in NYC, one of the artists there planted the seed for my interest in puppetry because of its unique combination of design and performance. One of the most crucial things to ask is, ‘How is it going to move?’ The puppet figure itself can be fueled with life and breathe and exist on its own more effectively in telling a story than just purely being representative of a character. The performers inside the puppets make them live and are in service of making the connection between bodies and breath so that the puppet is energized and engaged.”
The Result is Exaltation
“A Christmas Carol is a morality tale everybody knows,” Lee continues. “Leora and I charged ourselves (both literally and figuratively) with using the puppetry to take the production into a different place and to embody a holiday lesson that obliterates the trappings of the story. We wanted to get more to the primal and real, and to embed a life force that brings Scrooge to a reckoning. That goes to the core of why we sit in the audience!”
Inside the mind of Ebenezer Scrooge, what is real and what is not real become so intertwined that Scrooge questions if he is going mad as the ghosts expose the truth of his greedy past and give warning towards his future. In the words of Lee, “Scrooge’s lesson is a painful one, and there is gravity with this, but the result is exaltation.”
And exalted we feel at the end of A Christmas Carol, when Scrooge is given another chance to get it right. Sometimes it takes a bad dream of otherworldly events to shock us into our senses. Or, a magical puppet to force us to our knees and feel the life force of good we have inside.
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