I attended a teaching artist workshop a number of years ago and told the leader, I learned more about teaching in a few hours than I ever learned in all my education courses at Saint Louis University. One of her exercises was to look at pictures and see patterns. It is fundamental human nature. That is how we see the Man in the Moon, the face on Mars, images of gods in the constellation, faces on rock outcroppings, the Piasa Bird, etc.

For many years I performed a little dance routine with rod puppet shoes. Hardly puppets, they were children’s shoes that I bought and had stuck a wooden dowel into the heal. There was no other animation, no facial features, just shoes on a stick. The a few years ago it hit me. . . . By the end of the routine, I had the audience assigning different personalities to “shoes on a stick.” That is an amazing power.

This Christmas marks the 39th anniversary of the rod puppet version of my Christmas Fantasy show. (It originated years earlier as a marionette show.) The elf that sings Chim Chim Cherree has a litte chimney sweep broom that is simple an 8 inch wooden dowel with a yarn sweep glued to it. For the past 38 years the broom goes out of control for 10 seconds as a comedy bit. For some reason, this year I wondered what would happen it had a mind of its own for the whole routine. I did it, and it worked. The children went wild over it. They were screaming and laughing over the antics of a wooden dowel with a few pieces of yarn glued to it.  That is a fantastic power.

It makes up for doing a puppet show for my kitten. . . . But that is another story.

The show is a joy for all ages. Children are entranced by the constant action, poetry, and classical music. Adults appreciate subtle humor and childhood emotions depicted in the poems and combined with the great classical music. The production includes musical selections from Rimsky Korsakov’s Le Coq d’ Or, Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances, Prokofieff’s The Love of Three Oranges March, Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Gounod’s The Funeral March of a Marionette, and Joplin’s The Entertainer. Tom Bonham gives a solo puppet performance animating the many characters simultaneously.

Larger than the traditional “Punch & Judy booth,” the production is presented in a 12 foot wide stage which allows easy viewing from the entire auditorium. While lighting effects are not essential to the enjoyment of the program, the show is presented with lighting effects in areas where the room may be darkened which further enhance the dreamy atmosphere of the production.

Tom Bonham also presents his popular Know the Vocabulary presentation before the show demonstrating numerous ways to make quick, easy puppets actually creating half a dozen puppet characters from scratch in the brief 10 minute presentation.

Puppet Potpourri 2005 at an elementary school

Halloween Potpourri

Tom Bonham’s popular Puppet Potpourri has been modified into Halloween Potpourri with puppets suggesting Halloween themes. The gentle song and dance routines are designed for fun and not to scare. The show features many of the same acts, as Puppet Potpourri. It does include the bouncing teddy bear, stacking pumpkins, the changing creature, and the come-apart skeleton. Special for this show are the dancing skeleton legs, the slinky bouncers, and Zsa Zsu the witch.

The production is presented in Tom Bonham’s arena staging, where the audience sits on the floor around the perimeter of the stage area. Depending on the room layout the stage is a six by twelve foot rectangle, a twelve foot square, or an eighteen foot diamond allowing for 18-40 feet of front row seating.

Halloween Potpourri 2010 at Faust Park
Saint Louis Carousel Building

On a more serious note, that is the number one reporter interview question. “How did you start being a puppeteer? Why did you want to become a puppeteer?” The number two question is “Do you make your own puppets?” A number of years ago a puppeteer at a national festival who was also a concert pianist said he was always asked “Do you make your own puppets?” But, he had never been asked “Do you make your own pianos?”

But back to point. WHY? Why does anyone chose a hobby or voacation? I asked my barber once “Why did you become a barber?” There are no barber clubs in high school. The reasons people choose their careers and hobbies seem quite varied. The great Russian puppeteer Sergi Obratsov said that he was a stiff actor in opera. The director told him to get a puppet, have the puppet act and singe the part, then mimic the puppet. Fortunately Obratsov gave up being an opera star. George Latshaw made references to it being therapy for him. Some claims it is the tool of the shy actor, however most actors when interviewed alway seem to be shy and introverted, even if they are not puppeteers.

A few years ago Piers Morgan chided a little cheerleader’s mother as being a stage mother pushing a child. It was clear from the routine that the child walked through trick after trick like a trained pony with no flow. Pier’s mistake was to criticize the mother in front of the child. In years of training assistant puppeteers I have seen trainable assistants, and assistants who are natural. The trainable assistant, you give careful direction and explain every move and they perform as directed, while others instinctively add to the instructions to bring their characters to life.

My brother would sometimes help me. He was the instinctive-type puppeteer. But his heart was not in it. He performed to help me and for the money. He never had any desire to go beyond that. So the instinctive puppeteer does not necessarily become the puppeteer.

A small group of American puppeteers were fortunate one summer to go to Germany and take a “master class” with Albrecht Roser, an exceptional German puppeteer. The class came back and demonstrated what they had learned. They all came back and with one exception did the same thing. (For those of you who have seen the “production” the bathtub scene was not the different one.) They came back trained, but largely uninspired to grow, to take it one step further and be the instinctive puppeteer.

Jerry Halliday performed at two national puppet festivals and was quite bad. Then many years later I heard he was coming to Saint Louis to perform. Knowing the caliber of his performances in the past, I planned on missing it. However, he called me and told me he was performing and asked me to come. for some reason, I felt guilty in not going to see him after he had called me. I was pleasantly surprised, he changed format, found a style, and it was one of the best puppet performances I have seen.

That leads to an interesting question; “What is a puppeteer and What is pupppetry.”

next – What is a puppeteer and What is pupppetry

The other night Jay Leno caught himself dialing when he was making reference to calling someone on the phone.

I remember when growing up going into a neighbor’s garage where they had a wind up Victrola and the 1/4″ thick 78 rpm records. No hundred of those records can be stored and played back on a device no bigger than a pack of paper matches, and about twice as wide.

When my grandmother got married, she and my grandfather put everything they had into a wagon drawn by an ox and built a house out of dirt. . . in Nebraska.

And before that, people lived in caves.

But to backtrack a bit the re-birth of theatre in the middle ages brought back the story-tellers with the little moving statues. While popular tradition says “marionettes” are the little Mary figures used by those story tellers, the mariole (instrument) players who entertained people is probably a source for the word with the instrument player become more synonymous with entertainer.

There is historical literature referencing puppeteers in colonial America but it is not until the 1900′s that most American puppetry seems to have spread.

It was the puppetry pioneers who took puppetry to the pre-television heartland of America: The Steven’s, the Coleman’s, the Cole’s, the Rose’s, the Proctor’s, and many others. And where did they market? The schools. I have attended festivals where accomplished puppeteers fondly remember their inspiration from members of this group. (I saw the Cole’s.)

In pre-television America glimpses of culture and entertainments outside the movie theater (if the town was big enough to have one) were rare. I toured an historic home in New Orleans and a display case had a doll of a 5 year old dressed in her “going to the opera” clothing. Some members of the group marveled a a five year old going to the opera! But, I pointed out that there was no music on demand at the turn of the 1900′s. Going to the opera was a rare chance to hear an orchestra and beautifully trained voices, and costumese, and lights. That would be a grand experience for a five year old.

The world changes.

We have entertainment on demand. Schools are no longer the social and cultural centers they once were. Puppeteers no longer go into schools to inspire children with their artistry.

next – where do puppeteers come from

Children are delighted by the familiar antics of the troll and the goats. The characters and scenery are colorful and joyful. While is a show to be enjoyed by the younger set, the show is a joy for the family audience. Tom Bonham has been performing this show for more than 25 years, fine tuning it into one of his masterpiece performances. Tom does all but one of the character voices in the production, and does solo manipulation of all the puppets with the quick fast-paced action of the story.

Over 10,000 YouTube viewings of the show since Feb11, 2007

click here to view the show on YouTube