The Animacy of the More-Than-Human World - Puppets in the Green Mountains

Cool. All right, we're going to get started. Um, welcome everyone. It's so beautiful to see this full room and um I love that you're here for for what extends beyond the performances in this festival. Um, I'd also like to welcome our online audience and thank FACT TV and Hell Round for making it possible for us to extend this discussion out into the world. So, if you're really excited and want to remember something that you heard at one point and go back, it'll all be available on how round. That's an online theater platform um to to watch later and archive there. So, or if you want to send it on to someone you know. Uh I just want to make you aware in case you're not aware that there's an entire puppet festival going on this week. [laughter] What? Um so for those online, there are two more panel discussions on tomorrow and the next day, Saturday and Sunday. And uh those of you that are actually here in Granleboro with us, there are so many performances to take in tomorrow and the next day and tonight. So, I hope you will make sure you see as much as possible, support the festival, buy our merch. Uh, and I don't want to say too much more other than to thank you all for for being curious and for uh continuing to understand that the art and life are not really siloed things. They always inter mesh and belong together. So as we experience these shows, the conversation continues here. Uh other than that, I would like to refer you to all the sponsors and funders. Just take a look at who's supporting this. I'm not going to list them now so we can get straight to the conversation. Uh and I want to say a big thank you to 118 Elliot specifically FOR [applause] [applause] take some time to in the gallery. attending. So without further ado, I'm going to pass the mic to McKenzie Doss who will be our host and facilitator throughout this festival for these panel discussions. Thank you very much. [applause] Wonderful to see everyone today. I'd like to welcome you all to St. Glass Theat's access to the arts panels. These are open public forums that are a way for us to continue conversations started at a lot of these performances and events and bring them out into the community and a great way to introduce you all a little more intimately with our artists and to be in conversation with them. Uh today's panel is called the animacy of the more than human world and we are welcoming local community member Rich Holshu, visiting artist Hopey Ford and visiting artist TOM LEE. [applause] AND MY very first question is that I would love for you all to introduce yourselves and the work you do or the performance you're bringing to us in your own words. Greetings everyone. U we go down naman from uh speak to you in a Beni language. It's the language of the land here. It's what has been spoken here for a very very long time and it continues. Um stories do not go away. They're still floating around us. Um my name is Rich. Um I've been a resident in this area for 44 years. That's a long time. That means I'm of a certain age. Um I'm still learning. Uh that's a lifetime journey. Uh I operate a found a nonprofit called Atui. Uh a t o wi that is an abeni word that means together in space and time and kind of describes everything in a nutshell. Uh at is devoted to um research uh raising awareness of culture area um providing a voice and capacity for uh voices that have not been heard for a very long time and that's what I do at this point. I'm a carpenter by trade though. But I had to hang out my hammer cuz I'm sick and tired of being on top of roof in the middle of winter. >> [laughter] >> you'll understand our process. >> Just for um Is there someone doing sound? Because we're getting little feedback. >> If we could turn the mics down a little bit. I think everyone >> Yeah. >> Yes. That's be Is that Is that good? >> Yes, >> that's better. Okay. Yeah. Great. My name's Hobie Ford. I'm not a sound man. [laughter] Um I live in Western North Carolina. I grew up in in southern Connecticut about an hour outside of New York City, little town called Rouaitan, Connecticut. And uh I got into puppetry when I was 18 years old at Sunumi Purchase. And I was going to be an artist and art just became so abstract that I decided I needed to think of something else to do that I could relate to. And when I closed my eyes on New Year's Eve, puppetry popped into my head and I said, "Okay, who would bother doing that? [laughter] There won't be a lot of competition and it would be a lot of fun." And I was a big lover of the lonely goat herd scene in The Sound of Music. >> And in the fifth grade, uh, David Cerodiac, the Serodiac, uh, I forget that Serodiac Marionettes, uh, came to my school and I was the helper. And I'll never forget that. And so, uh, I moved to North Carolina where I live now. And I, uh, came there to study little tiny puppet making, very small puppets that, uh, a guy named Clyde Holoffield was showing me how to make those. And, uh, um, lived in a little town called Pleasant Gardens between Old Fort and Marian. And we lived up against the mountains. and we uh we had [snorts] an outhouse and no running water until we put a pipe up the creek because we were up against the national forest and and uh so that's where I started working on my puppetry and uh um I've been puppeteering now for 50 years and uh I love my work and I think it's important work for society to have a I think especially now there's a lot of anxiety and tension and I think what we do is really a powerful medicine for the rest of the world. [applause] Hi everybody. Uh my name is Tom Lee. I'm so happy to be sitting up here um and speaking uh in community with you and and with the other guests. Um I am a puppeteer and even at this stage in my life that seems remarkable to say. Yes, I am a puppeteer, a puppet designer, a puppet director, a maker of objects, and um I live right now in in Chicago, but I grew up in Asia and also in Hawaii. And um uh my work often combines uh a kind of um traditional puppet forms with technology. And the piece that I'm presenting here at the festival is called Tonte. And that is um a Swedish story about a gnome which many of may may you may may know. Um it's a story that I actually read to my daughters um when they were small um um because they are part Swedish and we just love this this little story. Um and um I would say that um just as as Hobie mentioned, puppetry for me has been one of the most uh beautiful things to happen in my life. It has shown me something. It was something that I never imagined I would do as a young person, but now which I feels is so central to my identity as an artist and as a person. um in part because it is a incredible vehicle for empathy and compassion. And this comes in the way that we as puppeteers and artists are able to give the audience the chance to project and care about something outside themselves. And that's a powerful thing to have in this world um at this moment. and it's what really really drives me to continue to try to give performances to meet people and to be in fellowship with others. So that's all I've got to say for now. [applause] >> Thank you so much for your introductions everyone. Uh to start with the title of our panel, excuse me. Thank you so much. To start with the title of our panel, we use the word animacy, which I feel relate strongly to the work that you're doing, the stories you're telling, and the personal relationships you have with the world around you. But for our audience, uh, could I ask your understanding of the term animacy or what is the animate? >> That's a big question. And in in my way of looking at things, it is the only question. Um, animacy is everything and everyone and everything is in everyone. Um, Tom mentioned the idea that um, publicry provides an opportunity for people to um, care and have compassion for something outside themselves and I think that is a good definition of what animacy is. Everyone matters. uh every in in the way I look at it uh I look at through through a the idea of relationship or kinship everyone is a relative all family uh I don't want to look at the human and and more than human dichotomy because it is a dichotomy if you say human and more than human you've already split the world and the world is not split all the same and we belong to each other and [clears throat] it's a way to go through the world. Um I am in a process of relearning or unforgetting, it's a good word, unforgetting. Um how people have been in relationship with this place because place matters completely. Um uh traditionally speaking, those understandings are not easy to come by these days because of all the layers that have been put on top of them. Um, but they're here and I think we can learn that by going out and talking to the relatives as we call it, meet with the family and learn from our mother, mother of all. And um, it's kind of it in a nutshell for me. It's everything and everyone. And when I walk in the forest, I am with family and I am comfortable. Actually, more comfortable there than on the sidewalks. You might find some residence there. I'll pass this on. >> So, um I've been thinking about that word for a long time. Uh the word comes from a Latin word anima which came from a Greek word psyche and which means the soul. And so the anima in like yungian terms is is really um it's our soul. It's uh um in yungian they say for woman and animus for man. Um I like to think of justma and how it's also the word for butterfly which I love. >> And that that relates to the show I'll be doing uh on Sunday. It's all was inspired by walking up and seeing a butterfly, a uh actually a caterpillar forming the letter J beneath a milkweed plant. My mom was really into nature and she showed my kids. uh we'd come to visit and she'd always have a jar with a little with a little milkweed leaf in it and a little caterpillar and over the the period of a week or two, we would we would wake up in the morning and come down and see this transformation. And the butterflies that used to be in our field full of a milkweed called butterfly weed, we don't see them there anymore. And that's such a shame. Last year, the the population that came to to Mexico where they m where they're migrating to um increased almost by 50%. And I think that's due to folks planting milkweed and planting butterfly gardens and pollinator gardens. And today I was thrilled. I saw three monarch butterflies down at the youth theater in the little milkweed patch and flower patch and I just I was just taken with that and moved by that. Um the natural world has a soul too and as we experience the natural world uh and have a relationship with that um for instance I would not be here today if over 150 years ago my great greatgrandfather hadn't met a man named Asa Gray who invited him. He had been asked Gray had been asked to travel down to where I live uh in the mountains of western North Carolina to look for the plant called Shordia or Aone Bells and he asked my great great-grandfather to join him and they searched for three months up in the mountain higher mountains up near Grandfather Mountain and didn't find any. And then they finished and they came down to little place about a half mile from where I lived in Pleasant Gardens. And they spent the night before parting ways and going back to where they were. And Shiao was found 30 years later about a mile from where they came down from, a mile from where I lived along the Kataba River. And then uh when it was found uh my Asa Gray said, "I want to introduce my favorite student. He's he's studying entomology and insects and butterflies and I'd like to introduce him to your daughter Caroline." And Caroline and Ned fell in love and were married. And my great greatgrandfather died before the wedding. And I have my great great grandmother's diaries and she tells about how Asa Gray walked her down the aisle to marry her husband. And uh my greatgrandfather Ned would go on to write one of the first books about honored butterflies. And I only found that out about u a half a year ago and I was thrilled. So if if it weren't for that plan, I would not be here. >> [laughter] >> So that's that's a long story, but here we go. >> Oh, I love it. Um, I guess in a sense almost all puppeteers are animists. We believe in the object uh containing some kind of energy or force or spirit. And [clears throat] when we think about puppetry, at least when I think about puppetry and how what an ancient type of form it is in our world, that really pulls me into this idea. Puppetry exists on in almost every place around this world. Uh it is an ancient ancient form which is descended from our human um uh desire to uh to touch what is inside objects. And I believe that the native peoples knew this very very well and much clearly that we than we know now in our highly mediated environment. Um my teacher is from Japan and he describes um puppets as vessels vessels of spiritual power that have occupied a long long period particularly in Japanese culture but in many cultures around the world. as an example, he he would say that some of the earliest Japanese puppets were figures of child of children that were sculpted and placed into rooms um where there was an actual newborn child. And why was this done? Because child mortality was so high and a child could get sick and die. So it was very very common in that time. Uh this uh puppet figure was placed so it could receive any ill will or or bad health that might come and that would avoid the human child. So that's just one example of so many around this this world in which an object is serving as a as a a placeholder as a holder for some kind of energy. And even though like I do like you're about to see my show tomorrow show it's it's really crazy but even when I do those that show or show any show that I do I still feel there is a ritual about working with puppets that captures that idea of um the power inside something which we might see just as still unmoving or not alive. And certainly in terms of the discussion that we just talked about, place, places, mountains, landscapes, water, those are clearly filled with with power and with meaning. Um, and I think I think the connection is really really important and strong. So, yeah. >> Thank you. um hearing all your stories whether talking about the power of an object um to engender a sense of uh connection or protection or understanding. Uh to me this all suggests a certain amount of of stewardship whether we're stewarding people or environments around us. And I'm I'm curious if you all see that as well and how you might see that um an animate understanding in genders uh stewardship whether of people or place and I guess rather than just saying people um connections to other living beings around us. >> Uh yes. [laughter] Um, I'm going to get into to semantics a little bit here again. Um, because I think words matter as well place and places matter. Um, as a matter of fact, in the Aven language, the word for uh where something happens. So he would ask where and the way and the word for how how it happens which is the intrinsic nature of that. action. They're the same word. >> So if you don't know where something happens, you don't know how it happened. The place matters. And and we've kind of forgotten that often as I think as as Americans in this these this day and age, we're very plugandplay in terms of place. How often do people move? How often do they change houses? How often do they go somewhere else instead of staying home? place has not doesn't matter quite as much anymore, but I think it does matter um because that is where you are in relationship if if you're paying attention. So um that that idea of stewardship, you can approach that in different ways. Um English has limitations baked into it. These are the words we have and we lack other words. So we we don't really have a way to say it well. So stewardship is what we fall back on. But even the idea of stewardship, if you look it up in a dictionary, it it it is defined as you taking care of something for someone else. So it has the idea of ownership baked into it, which is not an animate concept. We don't own anything. We're related to everything. Um matter of fact, the larger entities such as our mother earth, she owns us. We don't own her. And so you have to kind of dig into what what are we actually saying when we use these words. Stewardship works. We can kind of approach that through our through our our western way of thinking. But it does suggest ownership and separation. And when you've already separated things, you're already out the door, you know, out of the barn. >> Pass it. You're going to mix it up. >> Oh, we're mixing it up. Well, those were um those really fascinating words, Rich. And I I would just say that um it when I I I don't know exactly how to define this this word stewardship stewardship in my practice but I knew I do know that when I am working with people as a puppeteer or working in front of an audience as a puppeteer or even when I'm working with students that one of the really really important things that is happening there is I'm trying to get a human connection, right? And that might seem strange to say, I want a human connection as somebody who works with dolls and objects. But actually, if you think about it, puppetry and puppeteers are all about this human interaction. I, as a puppeteer, try to fill an object with life, with a character, with song, with breath. And if I do that well, audience imagines and sees the life in something outside of themselves. And my um one of my teachers Dan Hurland said that in a in this way a puppet is like a mirror. It's a mirror for the emotion of the audience. So for example, I did this show about horses called Warhorse. And in that show, um people would weep and cry and lose themselves completely to see a figure represented as a horse in peril and in death. And they would say, "Oh my god, the horse is in such pain and in such terrible straits. Maybe they would even provide a they would say it was sad." The horses were made out of cane and metal and tyveck and materials. They don't actually feel anything. I mean as objects but because of the way they are moved because of the breath that is brought into them they can inhabit that for somebody and an audience can can become so emotionally attached and in some ways even more emotionally attached in a theater than with an actor who they know at the end of the day is going to walk off the stage and go home. Right. Um, I hope this is going in the right direction, but when a when a puppet dies on stage or is let go and is not being touched anymore and I release my hand, it's really dead. It's gone. The life force that I've let it is not there. And so it can die in in almost a full kind of way. That doesn't mean it doesn't still have an energy or an aura to it, but that is something about the process of puppetry which is so fascinating. Um, and I know it seems kind of um uh very spiritual and and and it is in a way it's kind of intense that it happens. It happens whether it's with Kermit or whether it's with Joey from Warhorse or any other puppet that transforms before your eyes. And I think this is why it's such a fascinating form and I want to pass it to Kobe. [laughter] >> You were in the New York City production of Warhorse. >> Yes, I was. [clears throat] >> Wow. >> It was so moving. And I I got there um the afternoon before the performance and [clears throat] I had a someone got me in to backstage and let me come in and meet the horse and it was just stunning. It was stunning as were those puppets last night. Those lantern puppets that we went into that room and saw that owl. >> That was so powerful, you know. And so that that's a that it is a gift that we give to our audiences. And um and we're just not the ones creating it. What's so powerful about it is that those children or adults or everyone in the room, we're all putting life into that puppet. It wouldn't really happen without the audience in a way. you know, it takes it takes we observe it, but but they're putting their imagination and heart into that character, it's a very powerful [clears throat] thing. And um very often I feel like for a lot of the elders who come and see a show, that's part of the show is just watching that child believe so deeply in the puppet and and its life and and through our animation of that. It's a powerful thing and and it's sort of a stewardship that we all have that when we go out and do this work, you know, it's really it's sort of a communion. And again, I'll say it, we need that kind of joy in our lives right now, but all the time, you know, I I listen to the news, but I also try to go down the road and look out the window and breathe that in. Um, when I was around 18, I happened into a Native American commune in Nevada. And every morning we would go and we would greet the rising sun and everyone would say what was in their heart. And it was like the sun really became something more alive through through doing that. And and so I think we do it in our lives every day. But but as puppeteers, I think it's just very important work, especially now. >> Well, can I just Yes. I just just to pick up on what you're saying, Hobie, is and maybe the stewardish stewardship that we're talking about is about the the continuation of human connection, right? And once again, it is so easy in our world right now with everything that is happening, with all the technology that is available to us, with every distraction that we [clears throat] have to not be in a room in a space together with each other or to to hear each other, right? And I I really think maybe you're on to something, Hobie, that this stewardship maybe is about us remaining human and remaining part of a community together and um and making sure that things that happen right here, right here in front of your eyes in a room together um still matter, right? Um, and I don't know, of course you, you know, I have children and I see them on their phones and I'm like, "No, I mean to a degree I know you need to do, but but still and one thing I love about poetry is that it's also it comes from our hands, you know, and this is another thing that is very powerful um about it. And I feel like as as we have lost our connection with place and with with um with nature, we've also lost the connection with things that we can do with our hands and make with our hands. And that's another thing I hope that as a puppeteer I can encourage and steward people towards thinking about and doing. Um so thanks for that. >> Yeah. >> Wow. [laughter] Um what's incredible is you've uh answered the next two questions that I have [laughter] but I really I I I want to highlight that um more than stewardship and and thank you Rich for this discussion of language words matter what I'm hearing is this idea of relationship which for me is is so much of theater of puppetry of being you cannot leave but be in relationship ship and there's an energy generated there. And in in theater, it's so much that it's not theater isn't something you go to or see on a stage. It's what happens between the audience and the performer or the ritual you're witnessing or even when you're in connection with your community. And I think that for me that energy is where I take meaning uh in understanding, excuse me, is where I take understanding in the word animy. It's it's it's a relationship that is generating an energy where I placed my focus, that relationship expands. And it's so incredible to hear in in different ways how that plays out in our lives in with specific um moments, placements, or objects. And I guess I want to ask um since we've talked about how performance helps us perceive and and honor these connections, how what do you personally believe um humans can learn from this type of connection, this animate understanding of the world? And and Tom, I think you were kind of getting into that very beautifully. [laughter] Gosh. Well, I think you know we are we're so small this planet if you think about it tiny speck Carl Sean called us this little blue dot up in the middle of nowhere. There's no there's no place there's for hundreds of light years around there's no place like this little speck that we have here >> like home like home right and and think about it on this crazy speck with all our human life and the different journeys that have taken different peoples to this moment in time we practice this this form called puppetry Right. And um it's kind of remarkable if you think about it that that is one way that we express ourselves and it's really connected it's connected deeply to the past. you know, it's something that pulls us pulls us. And um I just say that I feel like it's important to remember, yes, we have cell phones and electric cars and all the stuff, but we are also human animals on this planet. And um I don't know, being in connection with that kind of life and that history is really really important. I don't know if I'm being clear right now. Um, I'm going to pass it to to [laughter] made sense to me. >> Okay. >> I think one of our our other stewardships are when we go into a classroom and teach children how to do puppetry themselves. One of the things I do is I teach shadow puppetry because it's something that even a preschooler can do on a manila file folder. If even if it's drawing a picture with a magic marker and cutting a circle around it, uh they can see that image on on the on the screen on the outside of the transparency of that image. And every day I go into a classroom, I'll see a student touch something and discover something about themselves that that their hands are their genius, that that that child has got it and they got it. They they witnessed it themselves, what their what their potential is. or it might be how they tell a story or uh it can be so many things. But but as we work with them um we're we're giving them an opportunity to discover what their own gifts are. >> Thank you. Um I' I'd like to explore the idea of puppetry as storytelling. What it is for storytelling. Um, I am not a I I don't story tell in that way myself. I'm not a puppeteer, but I'm on the receiving end, the participation end of it because it is an exchange. >> Yeah. >> There's going on. There's a relationship there. Um, a quote I came across recently was um that has been appealing to me is we do not live in the world as it is. We live in the world as we are. Um, it it's not a world of of of facts of everything is nailed down and I see this and you see that and this is the way it is and there's one reality and we can all agree on that cuz we know that we cannot agree on that. Um, we live in the world as we are. So, it's mediated through through us that experience. And what what I experience when I'm um witnessing a puppet performance is a story being told that pulls me in. I recognize the spirit that is imbued in those. These these ones that have been brought to us by the puppeteer, there are some ones as well. And I see spirit in that. And the spirit in me wants to reach out and touch that be involved with it with that exchange of spirit which is what intimacy is all about participating in that exchange. Um spirit is always moving whether it's coming from a puppet or it's coming from a cardinal or a butterfly and we we want to have that connection. We have become very separated from those connections these days because of everything uh because of the the data [snorts] centered world. >> Yeah. >> The world as it is as we're told it is rather than the world that we are. I think of things in terms of verbs. Everything is a verb. Data is nouns. It's it's it's cut and dry. We are separated from it. It is different from us. So when you think of the world in terms of verbs, we are participants all the time in everything that's happening. It it enliven the world and and it makes it relevant to us 100%. Because we are that. >> Can I follow up on that, please? So it's so fascinating and wonderful to hear about the storytelling element. And I will say that from my experience, the closest thing that I've experienced as a 21st century person to the idea of um a shaman, if I can use that word, is watching a Japanese puppet master behind a puppet. And I remember experiencing a scene in which the master was puppeteering a figure in extreme distress in in peril and the puppet was so full of energy and life and the master was completely still in their face and in their affect and I couldn't understand how that was happening and how so much like emot emotion could be generated from such um still stillness and power. And all I could think of it is he's like a shaman conjuring this energy into this figure. And um and wow that somebody can do that and that I can be moved by that and then also witness his face and the face of the puppet and see two completely different things happening at the same time and fall so deeply into the story, you know. Um, anyway, so I I love those words, uh, Rich, and I just wanted to share that. >> Thank you so much for sharing that. I even I have to admit, I can't tell you how many times I've seen a wooden puppet on stage and would swear that its expression had changed, that it was smiling and suddenly it was crying or that it was grimacing. There's a real shift that I have seen in puppetry and things that were not meant to move. And it's it has a very strong energy to it. >> Yeah. >> Um Rich, I believe you mentioned the um referring to this panel as the more than human world already creates a dichotomy and a boundary and we've been talking about connections and relationship. Uh, I did have a question about is there any value in this perceivably humanmade boundary, but I think a more question is how do we move past that idea of separation and boundary? And I guess I've sent this question to you all, but I'd like to start with Rich of it seems like a lot of storytelling is to break down this boundary. Would you agree with that? >> I would agree with that. Um, it kind of goes back to that word I used earlier, unforgetting. Uh, I think all of that potential is there. Uh, it has never left. It's always been here. It's not going anywhere. It changes. Change is a constant. Um, but it's always there and available for us. And it takes time. It takes attention. It takes awareness. Um, it takes learning from our elders, from our storytellers. from each other um and from uh all of our relatives that are around us, surrounding us, including those we can't see, ancestors, they can teach us, >> me. Oh gosh. >> If you'd like to feel free to respond, otherwise I'd be more than happy to to move this to audience questions. >> Yeah, let's have them ask questions. >> All right. If any of you have any burning questions you'd like to ask, please raise your hand and I will come out to to you with the microphone. >> Well, I was going to ask how I think you answered this already, but how deeply the relationship between puppet master and do they still call them puppet masters? No. There you go. the puppeteer and the puppet is how how do you surrender you know how deeply does the puppet career surrender to the puppet and maybe vice versa you want to answer puppet master hobie [laughter] like um how how how deeply does a puppeteer surrender to what the puppet is doing >> okay yeah um I was always told to look at the puppet and and to focus on the puppet. And it's sort of like if I go like this, everyone is going to look over there. and and uh um one of the most powerful examples of of that of not getting in between the audience and the puppet to me was I have an eagle puppet and I fly it out into the audience and [snorts] after a show in a theater an adult came up to me and said all of a sudden I noticed that you were there [laughter] that I I was completely I completely forgot that you were there and and just that the puppet the eagle soaring it was like we become in invisible in a way that's what we want. We want we want to become invisible and let that puppet have all that life and uh and in a way I think when that puppet master just had no expression at all that that's what they were that's what they were doing in a way. >> I am not a puppet master. [laughter] I will just I'll just mention this too that like that word puppet master right that is a complicated word because mastery implies something finished or complete >> or a power over something actually when I think of my teacher he is indisputably a puppet master right but the thing that he is doing is not finished. What makes him a master or makes him such a good puppeteer is that he's continuing to explore what is possible. I think that's what all good puppeteers, what all good people do. You don't stop because you quote unquote mastered. It's a continual search, right? And in a way, as a puppeteer, like I'm I'm never perfect. I never hit all of it. I always want in a performance to get there, but I can never get fully there. Even when I think I did a good job, right? [clears throat] Um, and even my teacher has said this because sometimes when people regard you as a master, then it's hard for for you to not know something. And even my teacher who knows a lot says, "Sometimes I don't know." But people expect me to, right? So that's a really good question about semantics, right? I feel like, not that you shouldn't use the word or anything, but just know that any artist, it's a search and the search is only going to end when when at the natural end for all of us, right? It it strikes me that uh the person who describes themsel as a master is not a master and no master would do that. >> Absolutely true. Yeah. >> So the master is the nonmaster. >> My question is for you. >> Okay. that started with tiny little puppets. And I want to know who was the audience that could see these tiny little puppets. When I was living in Nevada, um there was a puppeteer who arrived in our community and there was no electricity and we just sit around the wood stove and we would sometimes they'd sing native songs. Sometimes someone would bring out a guitar. Well, this fellow had a little shaving bag and he would later be my my my teacher and uh he would take these little puppets out and just entertain it. Maybe just entertaining a few people around around the wood stove and it was so compelling. I moved from Nevada to North Carolina to learn how to make that little kind of puppet. Um last night I had a little mouse in my pocket. I don't know if anyone got to see the mouse, but a lot of times I just keep that puppet with me so that maybe I'm sitting in a in a on a bus or something like that and there's a child there. That's my audience. It's for those moments of intimate of intimate audience participation. I also had a little fairy that big that I I used to use in my one of my first shows and I'd bring out into the audience where it was it would you'd never see it on the stage, but it would come come around you you would see it. So, but mostly that is just for a one-on-one kind of of [clears throat] interaction. >> And how big are your puppets now? >> Come to my show tomorrow. [laughter] >> Sunday. >> Sunday. Sunday. >> Sunday. Yeah, that's right. The biggest puppet I ever made is a 30foot dragon for a university production of The Hobbit. And it was operated by four students. And it it was so fun to sit in the audience and watch them do it. Thank you. Uh, thank you also for all of this great insight and I especially appreciate it when not puppeteers jam with puppeteers because the overlap and similarity is universal in a lot of people's opinions and I just love hearing your perspective. So, I'm going to start with you. Uh, but I I would love uh because the universality of the space that we're in defining who we are and what our work is. Um, I just wanted you to go a little bit more uh into ways that you find that or ways that you try to hone or honor that in your own work. If that's not too big of a question, like where does it appear? The the place that you're in, how it's super significant to to what you want to communicate and to how you believe the world should be represented. >> Okay. Start with me. [laughter] >> Okay. But you did um uh play enters into everything that I do. Um, matter of fact, my my favorite way to be with folks when we're exchanging ideas and um talking about these sort of things is to be in place. I I like to go for walk and talks [snorts] and respond in the moment to whoever else is there. And when I mean everyone else, I mean everyone else. Um, it's always different. It's um, it's spontaneous. So it's very real and relevant in the moment. Um so place matters completely in my book. Um I I didn't grow up with all of these understandings. I am a preachers's kid. I grew up as a Pentecostal preachers's kid. Um and it's been a long journey since then. Um and I [clears throat] found to my consternation at at some point in my adult life that I had lived in this area for decades and I didn't know it. [clears throat] I was just working, paying the bills, putting food on the table. And I realize that was a serious lack in my life. And now I realize that it's really the only way to be in the world as far as I'm concerned. And I want to share that understanding with others. And I love to do it in place. U being with the family as I call it. >> Wow. Um I love this theme about ancestors and those who have come before. Um I feel like for me personally that is something that is really meaningful. Um particularly because when I was uh a young person, my father would often take me to one of the most important rituals that that he thought we should do um for his for our um our ancestors. And this in Hawaii is a it's a ritual called chingming, which is also known as grave sweeping. And it happens at a particular time in the year where you visit um your ancestors graves, in this case my grandfather and grandmother. And then you prepare like a ritual meal for them which includes tea and some alcohol and then um chicken, fish, and some other meat, fruit, candies, and um you of course light incense for them. but then also tore the alcohol on the grave and then embed some a little bit of yourself. And when I was a kid, I was like, I guess we're going to go to the graveyard again. I didn't really understand. But that ritual has become so meaningful me for for me personally that now every time I come back to see my family even if it's not particularly the time ofqing I bring I take everything and we go visit my father's grave or the graves of the other ones and once again it's I think Rich is saying this too it's not just those ancestors it's everybody who is in this land right and You're also speaking of your ancestors who whose crazy coincidence allowed you to become a puppeteer in a way. And this ritual for me is not and it's not even connected with puppetry but whatever. Um but it's not really about like praying to anybody or making anybody um it's really I think at its heart thanking those who came before and especially for all their hard work so you could do what you do. For me to be a puppeteer, that's crazy. But that is the result of generations of people who did the work and who lived and and were there. So, I don't know. That's something that I think about. That's [clears throat] so um I'm going to include the uh the word place. Like when we go to perform at a place, it's really not the place that's important in a way. It's like the audience. Who is the audience? And sometimes I'll perform in a senior citizen home. And that'll be different than when I perform for a a bunch of preschoolers or something like that. Um so the place becomes how am I going to do this performance? and I'll look around the room and I'll and and and see how they re how they react and and that informs the whole performance in a way. Um, in exploring my own ancestors uh to finish the story after Caroline and Ned were married, Asa Gray wrote a letter of introduction cuz they were going to go to England on their honeymoon. And so um they wrote a letter of introduction to Charles Darwin and I found in the journals, the diaries the little story of the day they spent at Charles Darwin's house and just what an effect even she talked about the the smell of the air that day as they rode in the horse and buggy out to that place and and the flowers and the garden where they all sat with with Darwin. and and uh it it it it's so moving to me to have those those words and and to experience the place that they were in. Um and then lastly is um I have to mention that we all the three butterflies that I saw this morning, they're headed to Mexico. [clears throat] They're headed to a place they've never been to before, but a place where their great great great great grandparent butterflies began the journey in the spring. And when they arrive, they're not just butterflies. They arrive at Day of the Dead and all the people, they look up at those butterflies, those little animals, and those are their ancestors. They are their ancestors returning to them each year. We have time for one more question. >> I have a strategy question for you, gentlemen. Um, I am wondering if you have any recommendations on how we can get more high school art teachers to teach design and building of puppets and theater teachers to teach how to bring puppets alive through performance. Again, [laughter] I I would say it's going to come down to the taxpayer [laughter] who you're voting for. That's way too profound. >> Wow. Well, that's a great question. I gosh, we are in a situation right now where um yeah, it seems like uh the value of art is negligible to the value of the transaction. But I refuse to live my life in a transactional way. And um all I can say is that first of all, we have seen very very clearly that there are benefits to technologies, but there are also serious drawbacks. And one of the biggest drawbacks is once again people not being able to make things with their hands or even to use their hands for simple things. And it really pains me when I am in a teaching situation and I realize, oh wow, these guys don't really know how to use a pair of scissors. That's bad. [laughter] bad. And and um not just because they can't make things because that's directly connected with our learning, right? Our learning can't just be just mediated through a screen and we learn I feel human beings we learn through our hands as children through touching things as babies through touching parents and and objects. Puppetry is about that. It's about tactile relationships with human beings. And oh my god, we got to end. But I would just say I don't know how to encourage it, but I would just say speaking about that and speaking about the importance of us to continue to use our hands as a way of maintaining our intelligence, our problem solving skills, our compassion, our ability to to not have everything done for us. Those are serious skills, puppetry or not, which all people, I think, on all parts of the political spectrum even can agree about, you know. Anyway, that's what I >> hope you'll indulge me. We actually have a young member of our audience who would like to ask one more question. >> Okay. >> Honorable youth panel. >> Okay. This is a this is a lot more like less deep than the other questions, but like what were your um favorite puppets and why? >> Favorite puppets and why? Favorite puppets and why. I'm going to get you started. [laughter] >> Wow. There's so many so many favorite puppets. But I'll tell you what's really exciting. You know, actually puppeteers can make almost anything come alive. Almost anything. And I remember this one puppet. It was nothing. It was my friend Chris Green sitting at a table at a dinner and he pulled a he pulled a tissue out of the out of the um the tissue holder. And then he made that little tissue just fly around the table kind of like your little mouse in your pocket and become alive and dance and kind of breathe and fall asleep and wake up. And it was the stupidest, simplest, amazing thing, but it it made me feel like just a kid. And it was that kind of like thing where you're like, "Wow, the puppeteer is just they've got magic in their hand." You know? I know that's a dumb example cuz there's also some amazingly crafted puppets, but I would say that is something that sticks out to me as a time I was like, he can make anything alive, you know? >> [snorts] >> I really don't have a favorite. I love my favorite thing is watching really powerful puppetry and and one of my very favorite puppeteers is sitting in the audience. Eric Bass, [applause] I'm going to jump on that train. I I come to puppetry very late in life. I I knew nothing about puppetry till very recently. And it's through the Bass family, Eric Shoi, and and others um that have been introduced. Um so all the puppets I see now are my most favorite. [laughter] They're all amazing. It's a whole new world. And um I'm glad to be a part of this >> with these folks. And to your horn, >> [applause] >> And with that, I'm going to close our panel. Thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you all personally. It has been such a humbling and invigorating experience to be able to share this space with you and to hear your stories and perspectives. And for you all as well. Thank you for your questions, your presence, your energy. And I do hope that you will join us tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. for our second panel in our access through the arts series. Uh talking about endings with Berico Stribo, Denise Greyber of Loco 7 Dance Public Company, Abigail Manukin, and Nephri. Thank you so much.