New Beginnings: Puppetry as Resistance and Reflection - Puppets in the Green Mountains

Shall we? >> Okay. Oh, great. >> All right. Um, thank you all for being here. This is our final panel of the festival and I love that you turned down in the rain to listen to these amazing people speak about their work and um relationship in the world. Uh so we've had three panel discussions and we're really it's been an amazing journey to be on in all these conversations. If you missed any of them, here is your reminder that all of these panel discussions are being livereamed and archived by the wonderful Howl Round Theater uh comments. So, you can look it up online and watch any of them again as well as so many other things that How Round also shares. So, check it out. Welcome to those joining online and um welcome to those of you in the room. A big thank you also to Fact TV for making it possible for us to bring to connect 118 Elliot with Hal Round. Uh and thank you also to 118 Elliot for hosting all these panel discussions. You have a 118 Elliot member on the panel. >> Uh there's only well there's two more shows of the festival. two more chances to see a puppet show. So, at 2:00 p.m. An Amalia up at Hilltop and then our big final celebratory event, one show only at the Latches Theater at 4:30 is human. So, please be there for our very final show because we won't see you or we won't see us in this form for another two years. So, but we'll have puppets in paradise. Anyway, so enough from me. I'm going to turn this over to our wonderful moderator, McKenzie Doss. Hello. Welcome everyone to our final panel, New Beginnings: Puppetry as Resistance and Reflection. This forum series, access through the arts, is a beautiful way to extend the conversations begun in the performances of this festival and in our events and bring them to you, the community and giving you a chance to also ask questions of our panelists at the end of today. So, we will begin discussion, but keep those questions in mind. At the end, I will reach out to the audience and come to you with a mic if you like, if you raise your hand. And now I would love to have my wonderful panelists introduce themselves and speak a bit about their work that they do in this community or that they're bringing to our festival in their own words. We'll start with Lisa. Okay. Hi everybody. Thanks for being here today. Um my name is Lisa Weinman and I am a partner here at 118 Elliot and we've been doing this space which we consider a community space um for 11 years now. uh and we feel often just like stewards of the space in terms of allowing and not really curating so much but creating the space for things in the community that want to flower here. So art flowers here, improvisational music flowers here, puppetry from time to time flowers here and that's 118. It's become I think a really u beloved and indispensable third place in our community. Um, and uh, I have been an activist most of my life. I'm a writer and a producer uh, and a project director. U, most recently I led a storytelling project um, in community with hundreds of community members to tell stories about places and people important in the history of words, the Brattleboroough Words Project, which is featured at the Amtrak station, a big exhibit that I worked with um, Cynthia Parker H. putting on to design the exhibit and um so that was um one piece of work but I've also been very active in um different political uh issues uh mainly with Cuba trying to uh communicate what is interesting and special about Cuba and the United States and why our long-term policy of embargo has uh really hurt our interests as Americans. So that was another decade of work that I did um and worked on films and other projects relating to that. Um and also locally I sit on the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Decommissioning Panel. Nuclear waste, nuclear energy policies are also something that I've been very um involved with during my time here in Bradleboroough. So, uh, I see puppetry as a really important part of bringing these issues to a the people in a way that is so somewhat non-threatening and magical. So, I I look forward to hearing what my fellow panelists think about all that. >> Thanks, Lisa. I'm Lana. I'm from Sandlass Theater and in this festival, I'm I've performed my show Puppet Crimes. Uh I at Sandlass I am the youth program coordinator. So I oversee um all the all of our children's repertoire and touring that. I also help to produce the winter sunshine series which brings family audience which brings shows for family audiences to our theater in the in February in the winter months. And um I help to coordinate the school shows. So if a company comes um like this year we have human uh the show human which is performing at the latches. I helped to get all the school kids from local schools to come see this show. Um so thanks. >> Yes. Um and uh we tour our own work for family audiences. Sometimes we get to tour our work for adult audiences. It's not as common. So, I'm really happy I got to present Puppet Crimes at the festival. And what else was I supposed to say? >> Talk about anything you want about your work. >> Oh, anything I want to say about my work. So, yeah, again, um I'm I'm really excited. I inherited um some of my mother's children's pieces that I've been touring with for the past 12 years. And that has been a great joy. and that has really given me uh the chops to be in front of an audience um in that capacity. I also really really enjoy performing my uh show for adult audiences and again we don't get as much of an opportunities to perform that work. So, I've had a really good response to puppet crimes this weekend. And puppet crimes has political issues and I'm, you know, I I do consider myself an activist, but I'm not um like a street activist or, you know, um in that capacity. So, I'm really excited that in my work in this show, Puppet Crimes, I can talk to some of the things that do concern me a lot as a human and I can bring those issues out through my puppets. I myself in my social world, I I just like to have things nice. I don't like conflict. So, I I often don't choose to get involved in discussions. It's hard for me to kind of openly state my opinions. So, but my puppets can do it. And so, I feel this work is really important and it's a really great way for me to be in in the world and to be able to talk to those issues. Well, let my puppets talk to those issues. So I am Sophia Cole from Denmark and I was attending the festival with the show the house and uh I am the directing leader of our theater. I've been in that for 23 years I think now and we have like four different shows that you're touring and a new one coming up now a premiere and uh well I I do a lot of artistic work in the theater all the puppets uh the story um yeah a lot of things creative things in the theater >> yeah thank Um hello uh my name is Anu Rupa Roy. I am from New Delhi, India and I'm one of the co-founders of the Katka Puppet Arts Trust and we are here with the show about Ram. Uh about Ram is one of our many uh touring performances. uh we choose to play the epics, the Ramaya, the Mahabharat, some of the other meta narratives like uh the 101 Arabian Knights and subsequently in the last I would say decade and a half as our country has uh shifted a lot politically has become more and more rightwing uh we have become more political we have no choice um and uh puppets being at the very margin of the art forms puppet ry in India being uh you know one of the lower arts rather than the higher arts like classical music and classical dance um I think it's it's obvious that uh we are a little bit of the outsider the renegades the rebels uh so of late a lot of our performances what you saw uh here at the festival about Ram is about 20 years old and uh like it or not Today the Ramayana is at the center of the big polit political situation in India. So every time we perform we are making a political statement. Uh in 2017 more consciously we made the Mahabharata really to ask very political questions. Um so yes I I now have to consider myself an activist. Well, on tense, >> McKenzie, your >> your mic is not on. >> Can you can you hear me? >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Yeah, that's back. >> Excellent. Thank you. >> All right. Uh well, you all came to the first question. Do you consider yourself an activist? >> Um I I guess I'd like to extrapolate on that a little bit and ask where you where you think your craft meets the political. Um, a lot of this panel is discussing how satire, exaggeration, metaphor, and magical realism can challenge political, social, and cultural authority. And I know that um quite a few of our panel members already have uh political or sociopolitical leanings in their work. Uh Sophie, I know your work, The House, is more of a comedy, a horror comedy. It was it was quite um it's quite visceral in a way. I really enjoyed it. For those of you who haven't seen the house, highly recommend it. Um, but I'm curious of where if I could uh land this question, what elements of your work do you think um surprise social expectations or personal expectations? Where do they feel um subversive or even transformative? I'm not sure if I understand your question, but the surprising element you were talking about. Um, well, when I make the characters for my show, I always try to find something personal for me. So if I look back somewhere at my maybe my friends or somebody I know and then I try to put it into a character and the house is about testament and about money and then it's about murder and then the surprise element in all shows and now it's a spoiler. It's a there's a murder and then the soul goes out of the puppet and jumps into a dog and through this dog the soul which is like the old lady of the of the funeral home. Uh she tries she tries to give her her body to the correct ones and not the evil FA who was taking over. Yeah. So that I think that's the surprise of of our show if that was what you were looking for. >> I I open the question to to anyone else. >> I I Yeah, please. >> I was actually interested in what you said that when you performed the Ramayana, it's become very political and perhaps you could explain to us a little bit more about why. Um so the Ramayana is very popular in India even today. And when I say popular, it means uh not only would people see hear uh the Ramaya being performed and listen to the story uh use idioms in everyday life. Uh but uh 15 years ago, 12 years ago, the party that came to power used the Ramayana as a political vehicle uh using the metaphors within the uh Ramayana, especially the idea of Ram, the archetype. Um the idea of Sitha, the archetype, the the the demon king as the archetype. And one of the things with the Ramayana is that we have uh on record 300 written, oral and performed versions. And now uh there is this this political desire to have one version. And what that means is that you um completely ignore the narrative rights of 299 other communities and sets of people most of whom are marginalized most of whom insert their own um socopolitical protest within the uh Ramayan. to say I will only have a upper class upper cast Ramayan is completely denying uh this diversity that is India. You know we have uh 22 official languages, nine official religions. to say uh that the only only acceptable way to be is upperccast Hindu is a denial of human rights and to do it through a meta narrative like this is very clever and a little bit evil and for us to to play the Ramay where we actually celebrate nine versions and we bring in uh the main narrative of the lower cast which is the most popular 90% of India knows this and it's uh the protest is inbuilt because you this author is questioning Ram who abandons his wife who's pregnant with his children um and asks what is duty is it duty to the state or to your wife >> and uh I think the epics are meant to ask questions they're not supposed to tell you what to do but to really debate and if we take that way we're taking the basic power of a narrative like this. >> Um so today when we perform this version which if you saw the play it ends with the abandonment of Sitha is really asking a very big question about is Ram then uh he's called Marada Purusham the perfect man is he really then the perfect man >> right >> and is he really then god >> so yeah Um, when I was doing the research for my show, I researched 400 years of European hand puppetry of this particular character in Germany. He's Casper. He had all these um cousins in all the other European countries. And but of the German Casper, I learned that before World War II, there were 40 traveling public companies on the road with this character. And then the Third Reich uh shut down. All these companies and only companies that performed scripts that were written by the government were still allowed to be on the road. Everybody else was shuttered. And so we um I was really interested in this type of censorship of material that had been handed down through folk practices through the market places. Um, and basically this Casper character who was like very rough in the early marketplaces and spoke to the politics and to the authority actually got completely cleaned up um during World War II. And now, I mean, I don't know how it is now in Germany cuz I don't live there anymore. But when I was in school in first grade, >> truly Casper came into our classroom just to tell us how to how do we behave in traffic. So he only not only did he get like physically completely cleaned up, he would used to be rough and humpish and meanl looking and he actually became Aryan. And so became this sort of plasticky character to this day. And so in my show I am fascinated with what made this puppet survive. And sadly sometimes it could only survive because it had to perform whatever was prescribed from above and yet it survived. So now we can still use this character to come back to presenting political >> work again. Um we um we recently here used puppetry to um harness some community participation around the America 250 birthday. Um and we decided to create a puppet of the Statue of Liberty. Um, and it was really interesting people's views about the Statue of Liberty and we sort of felt it felt like a little controversial actually because she's been sidelined, you know, and uh, she's a a woman and she's got, you know, something to read, a book and a light and um, and it seems at odds with what's happening, you know, in our country. And it was such an interesting process to focus on her and to build her. So the process of building the puppet became almost an act of resistance as well and it was led by um Yuriel Najgera here in um lives in Guilford but has been part of bread and puppet theater for so many years. Um so we we tried to sort of tap into that bread and puppet ethos and we brought her into the Fourth of July parade and it it what seemed like just sort of an innocuous thing building you know a Statue of Liberty. She's an iconographic symbol for us. Um, by the way, the her pedestal was designed by an architect from Brattleboro, um, Richard Mars Hunt. So that we had that also that connection. But it was um it was really remarkable um that it became an activist statement to to actually do um we lift our light uh together and to take with a puppet, you know, as a symbol of something that we all felt. Um so I just wanted to add that thought. I I think it's so fascinating how hearing this throughine of the challenge in work or art of who gets to tell this story, who has that right and through what means and to take images that are either uh revered or iconic and to use them in in challenge and even in uh even in more fun ways. There's like a sense of Sophie just thinking of your your puppets. I believe they're made out of um is it silicone? >> Yeah, >> they they they're so flexible. There's almost a grotesquenness to them. And Jana, you talking about uh your hand puppets and how they can be kind of rough. I'm curious to ask um how how does the materiality of your work uh change what you're saying? And how might it challenge um asking that question of who gets to tell this story? Sorry, I made it real heavy. Mhm. Um, we've come across this a lot with the Brattleboro Words Trail because it's a the community created audio stories um about people and places here in our community. And the whole point was to get voices up and out there, you know, and sometimes very controversial um in term that we didn't really thought think was controversial was controversial like talking about Roger Kipling, you know, Kipling is widely considered to be, you know, an imperialist or but of course he's a human being and an amazing writer much more complicated than that. And so when we dealt with the story, we had to deal with those those issues. We did a piece on Packer's Corner um which was an early commune and we had to you know hear from the community about some abuses that might have taken place there in the past and that we should withdraw the story but no it's like if you have another point of view you should offer it on our platform was kind of how we dealt with that. Um, so I I think that the material that you're working with and how how people receive it, you know, um, can get very complicated really fast. Um, anyway, I would like to hear what others think about that. I had a thought is that uh, my all my puppet heads are handcarved in my show. They are made out of wood and a little bit rough. They're not polished because that's how I like it. But then um in the end of my show, we bring out that traffic Casper. So the one that he's been turned into, and he's made out of plastic. He is literally just a factory-made >> character, but that character. So he really completely sticks out in my show. He's a completely foreign object basically among my other puppets. But he in his because he's made of plastic, he speaks right to that problem of having been censored. >> Yeah. Uh well in the house in the beginning when we uh were making the house me and David um uh David wanted us to play with the hand puppets and I never done the hand puppets before and he wanted me to make this hand puppets and uh I played with a with a traditional punch and duty show in Spain uh which like they are really heavy and or it's hurting the fingers and I'm so a comfortable person. So, so that's why I wanted to like renew this old stiff puppets. Sorry. And and so that's why I uh I made them in silicone and I I put a mouth in into them so they lose the mouth and uh yeah, make them actually really realistic in a cartoonish style. So yeah, I love small details. So I could >> yeah that's my method details details details yeah um in in about particularly we had to do a lot of research on material because we were consciously uh paying an homage to the many Ramayans. So you have uh the green Hanuman which is not from India. It's from the Thai Ramaki. Uh the demon who captures Hanuman is from the Baron tradition of Bali. Um if you follow the music very closely there's a lot of ketchup in there. The Balines ketchup sounds. Uh we had the Vidangum which is from uh Tamil Nadu from the Kambar Ramayan. Uh if you see the the animation projections, they are from the leather shadow puppet traditions uh which are 3,000 years old. This is some of the oldest performed Ramayan in our country and extremely political. The clowns are really funny, very uh body uh they make these uh and they're allowed to make these sexual jokes inside the temple. Um and I I I find them absolutely fantastic. Um and the this is really from that tradition and we worked with a master puppeteer who built all the puppets which were then uh made in little parts scanned and animated in a computer program back in 2005 when animation was really fiddly and horrible. Um and if you see our Ram, he is uh more Southeast Asian and East Indian than the very traditional North Indian uh uh Ram. So all of all of the iconography and design is very conscious about including as many versions of the 300 uh versions as we could. A lot of it comes from uh also the material. For example, the the bamboo curtain um if you look at the costume uh comes from certain parts of the country where the Ramayan is more folk uh more of the people rather than being told in the temple. Um and the narrative is nine different versions. So we have to be really true to that narrative that musical instrument which is used in the telling. uh but in terms of other material I think we use few now we use a lot more uh accessible material like cardboard because uh in a protest uh you don't have the luxury of building a beautiful puppet overnight you just take your cardboard you build it on site and almost as an act of protest we started building puppet lamps and hanging it on the street lamps uh because then the government would pay for the protest So I think that's also a part of how you protest. >> Can you explain that again? I didn't make the connection why the government would pay for the lamps. >> Sorry. >> Because the street lamps the street electricity is paid for by uh >> Oh lit up there. >> Yeah. So we would hang them around. They would be shut puppet lamps. along to the street lamps. >> That's great. >> Take notes. >> Some of you are Thank you. Some of you are working with uh traditional puppet forms and some of you are not. I guess I a simpler question. Do you consider any aspect of your work to be inherently traditional? Should I go? Fantastic. I it is always this fine line with um this character, this Casper character that I work with is that of course um I think if you adhere to the tradition only, it's going to become boring or just people are going to sign off after a while because you see the same thing over and over. But then if you completely let go of these traditions then they are gone. So where can you find that that middle road? In my show we try to use the traditional characters but speak to the modern issues. >> And um so in one part of my show we uh have a little wooden head Trump head. and he eventually gets flushed down the toilet. And sadly, this was already current in 2019 when we first performed this show. And it's even more current now >> and we feel this kind of catharsis when he gets flushed. Usually the audience gives an applause, you know, >> and everybody kind of is excited that for once we got to flush this guy and really laugh about it all together. >> So, um I don't know where I'm going, but that's what I have to say. I think uh or puppets, hand puppets in silicone. Uh we uh we um we performed at this show for 17 years and we we played so many places and also in many puppet theater schools where the young people uh learn the traditional uh traditional hand puppet with the wood puppet and and it's for them it's like are so far away from many of them but when we introduce them to this silicone puppets it's like they have a new life and the young people say ah it's so exciting with the hand puppets. So, I'm hoping that that this also will keep up the tradition because it is a really beautiful book with all the hand hand puppets and I love the punch and duty show and and also in in Europe now what's happening is that you many places you're not allowed to play the punch and duty show because you can't hit the crocodile and you can't make the kids into sausages and all these kind of things like so yeah so I'm hoping that it will survive So yeah, >> uh tradition is complicated uh for me because we have a very old tradition in India. It's a living tradition. Most traditional puppeteers I meet it's like I've been doing this for 12 generations and >> my parents are not puppeteers. So uh but uh I think it's it's very much a part of our DNA to go back to the traditional forms but very surprisingly um most people in India don't know how many traditions we have. We have 26 living traditional forms >> of puppetry. >> Of puppetry >> alone. And I've been researching some of them since 20 2006 and I've just got through 10 >> and I feel like I have to keep going back and you know I have to get to know so much more. >> Uh there are so many and as we speak some of them are going away. uh between last year and this year we lost the last of the living masters from three traditions. >> Uh we have now only photographs and some puppets but not the performer anymore. So it's complicated for us and how tradition works. >> Interestingly some of it is still so watchable that I would change nothing about it because change is inherent in tradition. So, you know, now you have the clown walking in with a mobile phone on a westbeter would do this, is allowed to do this. It's not like, oh, you can't change the script because it's a thousand years old and it must be upheld. No, it's it's really not like that. However, we also have sometimes a not so good interference from well-meaning uh government researchers or even philanthropists who say we must preserve this look or these puppets are so crude we should really beautify them and that's been disastrous. Um so for me a very big question is how do I keep this exchange with the tradition because the Ramayan is very traditional. >> What do I tweak? What do I change and where can I dip into tradition with the ethics of borrowing being in the right place >> where I can really learn from the master credit the master. So in the Mahabharat for example we work with a seventh generation puppet master. He's on stage. He is the drama turge for the show. >> Um, so these are ongoing questions and kind of complicated. >> Yeah. >> And kind of their own resistance in a way of coming back and and and questioning does something need to be beautiful um and and how do you best preserve it? You're you're lending you're continuing its life through that is is what I'm hearing. It's incredible. >> And who does the preservation? I mean who has the right to say this is ugly, this is beautiful, >> right? >> Uh >> if not the puppeteer because it seems that many agencies want to say oh we can't represent India like this. This naked puppet makes us look so bad. >> It's 3,000 years old. You can't suddenly decide to put clothes on it because now you feel it's a misrepresentation or something like that. So yeah, it's uh it's complicated. Actually, I have a question for you, um, Rupa, about that. Um, I know some people in the audiences had a reaction to the performers in your show being naked from the upper within their upper body. And so I I wasn't sure is that um a traditional piece or where how where does that land? Uh many of uh the traditional performers perform barebodied the men especially uh for example the Kerala leather shadow puppeteers a because it's really hot in India and you've got those oil lamps so it's really practical uh but I think also because uh in a lot of our dance forms and masks mask forms the uh there is a need to see the angle of the body uh there is uh uh uh there is a language and a geometry >> in the movement itself. >> U so we do see many barebodied performers. >> Here of course the idea was also to use the face and the skin of the puppeteer to show that the faces are extensions of the puppeteers. >> Interesting. So >> thank you. >> Uh one more question then we'll open it up to our audience. Um there's there's so much reflection happening here. Reflecting upon traditional forms, reflect reflecting, excuse me, upon materials being used and the questions being asked and the stories being chosen. You know that reflection. What kind of a mirror do you feel like your work is holding up whether for yourself or your audience or your community? Um I too have done some puppetry. Um, so I'm just going to put on that hat for a minute. Um, because uh, the show that I, um, produced and created was about the writer Henry Miller. And Henry is again a very controversial figure for people. Um, but I wanted to sort of explore his lyrical side and give people a different feeling. But I I found like working with the puppets and I'm curious what my fellow panelists say it there is this this um separation between the puppet and the puppeteer and obviously when you're working with puppets they do tend to take on a little bit of a life of their own. And I'm just wondering how how you all feel because sometimes when I get into the Henry puppet um he's do he's kind of saying what he wants to sometimes, you know, and it it comes through like like creating a work of fiction or something something's flowing through you. But do you all find like you know in reference to your question but even beyond like that the puppet itself has a license that we don't have and that the audience also affords us by virtue of that. I don't know. >> Sorry I I didn't mean to step on your question. >> We're building we're building. Well, I'm not sure if this is what you're asking for, but uh when we make our shows, uh we start with an idea uh that I normally have an idea for the show. Uh then for the house uh it was an idea of the house telling a story. Then we builded the house and then uh I wanted to be something dark. So we made it into a funeral home. I started to mold Flora, which is the mean person in the in the show. And then after that uh we started you know to play along with the puppets. So we didn't have the story at all. We just had the basic idea and then the puppets were like telling us the story. So >> yeah I think it's real. >> Yeah. >> Um I think for me more and more I I love this idea that the audience throughout knows this is dead believes it is alive >> and it's happening simultaneously at all times. And it's a it's uh at one level this magic realism, the suspension of disbelief, but at another level it's also this question and this is what makes audiences very uncomfortable I think is what do you know to be true and what would you believe >> simultaneously and for me that's the politics of puppetry really. Uh it it's um it's a moment. It's that breant moment where you can pull the carpet from under your audience's feet. I I enjoy that very much. >> Incredible. Thank you so much. >> I would like to Did you want to >> No, I was just concerned that she's >> I keep wondering why is also there. Okay, they're signaling me for time. >> Oh, okay. Um, I'd like to open this up to our audience. If you have questions, please raise your hand and I will come to you. >> Hi, I'm Fox. I'm part of the youth committee over there. >> Great. >> Hi guys. >> Yeah. Um, so when you are puppeting, do you find yourself like becoming the puppet or in some form? Yeah, if that makes sense. >> The best moments for me are when I watch my puppets doing what they're doing and they have taken on a life of their own. It's not it doesn't always happen. Um but those that's when I know ah something good is happening. So again sometimes you know you work harder to bring the energy into the puppet and sometimes they can they can really take on a life of their own and I love those moments. Well, in my case, uh I think that when I do my puppets, when I mold them, I try to put a little bit of myself in them. And when we do play, I must say, they do take over. So, uh David and I have been together for 22 years, and every time we play in the house, I kill him. He's not here. >> Um, yeah, I have to agree. The the puppet does take over. Uh, but I think uh speaking very technically, sometimes you have to co-act with the puppet and I I really love those moments where you switch. You're the puppeteer, now you're the actor, now you're something in between. And those are also very interesting uh switches. >> Uh and what is the training for that is something I'm asking uh now. How how can we train puppeteers or actors to do both? Uh to be behind, in front, somewhere in the middle. >> Sometimes in a moment when something goes wrong in my show or something drops, in that moment the puppets have to figure out what they're doing. And that's not me. That's my puppet. And so those moments before a show, I think, "Oh, I hope nothing's going to go wrong." But now I can be assured if it does, my puppets will take care of it. And it's a good feeling for something always goes wrong. >> Any more questions? >> Hi. I love it. I love the allwoman panel. Love that. Um, I'm really interested in the cockroach movement in India and I was wondering if your group has done work with that movement and if so in what ways? >> I'm not sure I can I should speak about that. But >> what is it? It's the big student protest that uh >> that started about 3 months ago and there were thousands and thousands of students on the streets of New Delhi. >> It started because the uh the uh uh the the Supreme Court called all young people a burden on the system especially students. They did nothing and hence they were like cockroaches. >> And the next day a students movement began which called itself the cockroach party >> and it became instantaneously viral. >> Wow. >> And we had thousands of students protesting on the streets. Uh they were protesting a particular incident of the the medical exam papers being leaked >> um which had led to several students selfharming >> and so because you spend years studying for this exam and it really undermines uh all of this work. uh at which point they started a protest in several cities and it grew and grew and grew and then there was a brutal attack on the students by the police forces and many were injured and after that it became overnight 800,000 people on the streets >> of New Delhi and they started to walk towards the parliament and it led to the resignation of the education minister. So, >> um, off the record, if you see our Instagram page, it has a series of protest videos supporting the CJP, >> the cockroach party. >> YEAH. Thank you so much. One more question. So the the idea of of um censorship has come up a couple times during this conversation and I think uh like just within myself I think about how much self censorship I do and how many like there's so much change going on and there's so much sensitivity around the change like specifically like in my life like there's a lot of like gender gender stuff going on but like you have to be so careful how you talk about it so you're not um like hurting people, you know, and and so it becomes sort of this this clam up like where you can't um you you can't just kind of be in the conversation because you have to be so careful as you're doing it. And so I'm thinking about that and so I have a question around that or just some reflection on that. And the other thing is like within myself like I'm doing a lot of spiritual questioning and and um and when I saw the the show that you did like you have all these figures and I thought oh wow like it's it's almost like I'm a I'm the puppet and like this spiritual sort of essence of me and other essences are are kind of moving are using me to express in in um in the world. And so those are my two thoughts that I wanted to to ask for any reflection on. >> Did you always have something to say? Lisa always has something to say. >> No, I'm thinking um there's a lot of taboo. There's a lot of selfcensorship I think going on, you know, now with this administration. You have to fear for your funding, right? you say the wrong thing, you don't get your your funding. Um, and there's a lot coming from both sides of the political spectrum in that regard. You know, you can't talk about societies that something like Cuba is. It's, you know, it's it's very difficult to talk about without being labeled um a communist or somebody who's part of this left-wing conspiracy, ter leftwing terrorism they're actually calling it now in our country. I really believe we're entering a new McCarthy era um here in the United States and it's quite frightening and and it definitely has a dampening effect on creativity. I feel that sometimes in my writings and um at the same time sometimes it's like a a flame that you can feed and you you you need to go there, right? You need to go there because you need to break it down. Um and again even when it comes to things like uh politics, you know, should Graeme Platner have been just bounced out of the main campaign for Senate because of an accusation from years, you know, the these are very very hot issues, you know. Um, but I think as artists, as people who are activists that we really need to fight that impulse for self selfcensorship and I think that the puppetry really gives us an opportunity to go into places with a layer of separation between us and the and the performer, which is really useful in this context. I think sometimes what wants to dampen down my work it's >> it's related to self censorship but it's more like just that doomful feeling that you know in 6 months everything is going to end >> because of the AI or it's always something that's going to cause our final doom >> and that sometimes makes it extremely hard to feel any purpose in what what Why are we doing this? Why are we doing anything at all? And then um you have to bring it back down to well, if you don't know what to do, do what you know and just follow the little steps. And that's for me always my creative steps. And then again, I'm really lucky to be in the puppet world because I feel like puppetry is just a wonderful way to be able to speak to people and to speak your truth or to work uh to put those other voices aside, the d the doomful voices. We must continue with this work. >> Mhm. and have an have a a a local impact and hopefully it can ripple out. >> Yeah. I I just wanted to say for us now censorship is a real thing. Uh we our scripts go through the police. >> Our uh Shows are recorded. Um, if somebody finds something objectionable, shows will be attacked. Art galleries are attacked. Artists are in jail. One of the musicians we work work with very often was arrested uh for singing a song. It's real. Um, so yes, we are self-censoring, but we are also we want to say things we want to say, but we want to escape this kind of censorship. So very often we make non-verbal shows uh because then the sensor boat is like what is this puppet moves left turns one falls down what is this um two policemen record my show and then one of them was you know he thought I wouldn't hear him I was downstage saying what is this woman doing she's shaking a fabric I don't think we need to record this. So, it's it works. Our new show is oranges and uh we play with orange heads. Um and it's it also has political meanings in India the color orange. Uh but these are fruit. So when we say fruit puppet performance, nobody really wants to censor it. So, we've just learned to be very clever, >> right? >> But we are self censoring a lot. >> Yes. >> Wow. >> Question. >> Um, what do you guys think like your most powerful piece or scene from your shows are? >> The powerful things. >> The most powerful. Well, uh I think maybe in the house we have a scene where uh somebody's dying and I think he here we really try to use the the power of the puppetry what puppetry can do. So we show like how the soul gets out of the body and in a hilarious way go into the dog. So and then we also have some opening down to health scene. >> Yeah. Actually, mine is related is that in my show um which is mostly funny and ridiculous, but uh the Gretle actually gets shot >> and dies as much you know a puppet without a hand in it dies >> and um so that's a really heavy part of our show and we bring it back around into a humorful situation. Um, but I would say that is the one. >> Mhm. >> It's not my show, but I saw um lunch with Sonia >> and I was really impressed with the way um I think Federico Restco, is that his name? Um the director um the woman is has a party and she's dying. She's invited everybody because she's going to have an assisted death. And the the emotions that were captured in this party were just amazing. And at one point he comes out with this uh group of teenagers who are puppets and he's shaking them and the teenagers just bust everything wide open. And I thought it was so powerful like just the range of feelings from, you know, nothing's really happening. Oh yeah, she's dying later, but you know, can you please pass me the, you know, cookies? Um to, you know, downright despair all caught within the scene. I thought it was just brilliant and powerful. >> Um maybe the last scene where Ram is absolutely alone. >> Yes, >> he made a choice. >> Yes. And uh in the uh one of the poems that inspired this play, it says Ram ruled alone for uh 10,000 years alone all alone. >> I felt that felt that >> um this is deep, but I was just wondering what your first like connections or um introductions to puppetry were. >> Can you say that again? >> Like what your first um introductions or connections to puppetry were? first introductions to puppetry. >> Mhm. >> You have the microphone. >> My my mother bought me a puppet when I was six. That was it. >> Uh well, my first puppet was uh because I had to do something I didn't want to do. So, I was making a sock, sewing a sock, and I got a little angry and I threw it on the floor and it just looked like a hair. And I have never done any property. I just took it up and I lived a place where there was a lot of girls having a party and I thought I'm going to go to the party. Excuse excuse and I put the sock on and I had a hat hanging on my lamp and I put it on and there he was senior gumness. So that was the first thing I did and he stuck his head into the girls and I had a party the whole night with the girls and since that day I didn't do anything else. I don't remember what my first puppet. Anyway, I was born into a puppet family and that's when it all started. Um, I remember going to a place called Puppet Works in Brooklyn where they had all of these amazing marionets hanging and I just felt like I had entered a new world. But the thing that really brought puppetry to life for me is when I came to Bradboro from New York and met Finn Campman um who worked at the Hilltop, I think still does at the Hilltop Montasauri School and he used puppetry to enhance education and I just never saw such exquisite brilliant work. So I I think Finn was my my introduction to I want to do puppetry kind of thought. Yeah. >> Yeah. Hi folks, thanks for being part of this excellent panel and this excellent festival. Um, one of the things that I've seen publicly do really well is satire of like iconography or historical circumstances or political figures. But there's another element to resistance and activism, which I think is about envisioning the world that we want to see. And so I'm wondering about examples or strategies where puppets can be used to humanize or co-create the world that we want to see. >> That is the big challenge now, right? Is to counter all of the doom and gloom with an alternative vision. Um I don't know. I I I don't know what to say to that. I'm struggling with that every day. Um, I definitely think there is a place. I I don't I don't know necessarily where it is occurring. I inherited a show from my mother. It's called Isidor's Cheek. It's a children's show and uh the puppet is miniature and it moves on a miniature set that revolves around the performer and the puppet goes through an entire world uh just in miniature. And when I perform this show, the kids are so um just so alive. They come so alive in this piece and it's almost like I'm playing with toys in front of them because everything is so small, but I'm animating everything. And a therapist saw this show and he said, "You are really showing the kids how to play." >> And it's so sad that we have to do this now. Um but I do feel um that's where an important part of the work is in my adult work. I don't know where I how I would do this but in the work with the kids is it's as simple as bringing this little uh good world alive for them to help that vision. Yeah, I'm not sure. >> It's a really interesting question. I I I think uh we do a lot of uh community based work in India uh in New Delhi outside across the country with students with villages and uh one of the things um that uh I think people are very very uh good at doing is is dreaming about an alternative possibility uh when they have puppets and material in their hands >> and it's difficult in your everyday life uh it you know it's it's tough the struggle is real but when you enter the space and make a contract which says anything is possible in the space >> and they start to make that impossible >> uh image uh I think something alters in people and they really start to believe it's possible >> uh we see that happen a lot in the work we do with especially young people uh also adults uh who were very cynical, really think this is rubbish. I don't know what this is. What are you making me do? Play with dolls. Uh but they will go away 5 days later having uh looked at the world with other possibilities >> and I think the puppet really lets you do that. >> Uh you can forget the mundane becomes quite magical when the puppet the puppets are around. So and not even real puppets just objects and material can do it. you don't always have to uh construct the doll or the figure. Um yeah, I I do believe that they have the the possibility to to trigger this. >> We have time for one more question. Well, mine is actually puppet therapy related, which you've all been touching on, and that's how I've used puppets with with children that don't know how to get along with other children. And um the the I often play the puppet that is having the that everybody hates. And I say to the kids who have the puppet on their hand, how can you help me? I don't have any friends. And I'm speaking for a voice that the children have inside them. And they solve that problem. And so I'm wondering, and I you've touched on it so much and it touches me deeply, how you see puppets as therapy. >> I I I work with therapists and I support them with puppets. So I see it at work. I'm not an expert. uh but I think like I said uh they do have the power to present alternate ways of looking at the world and other possibilities. Um, and that's a vague answer, but but yeah, I I think uh for a moment you can suspend disbelief and really not have uh the real problems and imagine that they're gone and what would the world look like? And I think that's the beginning of uh some sort of some sort of change. But the real actual therapeutic work, I don't think I'm qualified to speak about it. You think you are? >> I think she does it all the time. >> Well, we do not work that well as well, but we do I do always work from something from myself and bring it into our shows. But yes, yeah, I think that's all I can say. What comes to my mind is um Sunglasses show Babylon uh which is was about is about refugees and um each there is a character from representing refugees from different countries Burundi uh um Syria Mexico and um it it became clear that the audience could relate better and have more compassion for a puppet >> than if a real Bundi actor had been on the stage. So, I'm not sure that that's therapy, but I think it is. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I think anytime you put that that layer between like I was touching on before that that the the poet the um puppet rather might have more license you know it's that it's that ability to take what you've got inside and put it outside a little bit and I think that is inherently therapeutic >> project >> and that is our time for today I'd like to thank the panel for your humor your strength Thank the questions you're asking and the possibilities you've presented us with. And I'd like to thank the audience for coming today, for bringing us your your curiosity, your attention, and your questions. This is our final panel, and thank you so much for being here.