To: puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:54:00 -0500
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Kudos to Bobby Box and the Center for Puppetry Arts


Wow, I wish they would bring it to the Holocaust Museum!!!

Mary

"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
-Walter Bagehot

"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the
choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape
ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make
are ultimately our own responsibility."-----Eleanor Roosevelt

"Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are
dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do
it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many
tomorrows.

-Michael Landon

www.gentleteaching.com

We can't become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
 
--Oprah Winfrey
 




> [Original Message]
> From: Robert Smythe <robertsmythe-AT-mumpuppet.org>
> To: Puppet List <puptcrit-driftline.org-AT-lists.driftline.org>
> Date: 1/25/2006 12:56:17 PM
> Subject: [Puptcrit] Kudos to Bobby Box and the Center for Puppetry Arts
>
> If you don't read the NY Times you might not have seen this great article
> about puppetry that _isn't_ happening in New York!
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/theater/newsandfeatures/25pupp.html?_r=1
>
> There is also a slide show with photos from the show.
>
> Here's the text of the article if you don't have the time to follow the
> links.
>
> Puppet Show With Dark Tale to Tell: Anne Frank's
>
> By BRENDA GOODMAN
>
> Published: January 25, 2006
>
>
> ATLANTA, Jan. 24 - The idea of turning Anne Frank's diary into a puppet
show
> for adults sounds at first blush like someone's idea of a bad joke.
>
> After all, her story is a classic. Her diary has sold more than 30 million
> copies in 50 languages, making it the most popular secular book in
history.
> The warren of secret rooms in Amsterdam where the Frank family and four
> others hid from the Nazis from 1942 to 1944 is one of the most frequently
> visited places in the world. (Last year it had almost a million
visitors.) A
> 1955 play based on the diary has been endlessly produced, challenged and
> updated.
>
> But Bobby Box, the creator of "Anne Frank: Within & Without" believed that
> puppets could bring new depth and perspective to the wartime memoir.
> Theatergoers apparently agree. Mr. Box's new version, which opened last
week
> at the Center for Puppetry Arts here and runs through Sunday, has been
> playing to sold-out crowds. The show has been so successful that the
center
> is considering touring the production.
>
> "Puppetry has had a bad rap," said Jon Ludwig, associate artistic director
> of the center, which has collaborated with the Muppets' creator Jim Henson
> and with Julie Taymor, who directed "The Lion King" on Broadway. "We
always
> think it's only for children and that it's like watching a bad birthday
> party clown. And you think, 'How are they going to do something serious
like
> Anne Frank or Shakespeare with puppets?' "
>
> But puppets have long been used to tell serious stories. When the Puritans
> controlled England in 1642, they locked playhouses to prevent the spread
of
> subversive material. For the next 18 years, the only theater in England
was
> a traveling puppet show in which the workaday everyman Punch took swings
> with a wooden club at Mother England's stand-in, Judy.
>
> More recently, puppets have found a political voice in productions like
the
> acidly satirical movie "Team America: World Police" and the ribald Tony
> Award-winning musical "Avenue Q." But part of the success of these works
was
> their tongue-in-cheek execution. A story with a backdrop like the
Holocaust
> could scarcely be approached so lightly.
>
> Mr. Box tackles his subject by having two actresses manipulate the
doll-like
> puppets, which look like pose-able mannequins. The actresses, pin-curled
and
> identically costumed in prim knee-length gray wool skirts, white blouses,
> gray cardigans and Mary Janes, are both introduced to the audience as
Anne.
> Sometimes they seem to be personifications of Anne's memory or different
> aspects of her personality. Sometimes they seem like ghostly grown-up
> versions of an Anne Frank who has been allowed, in death, to age and
return
> to tell her story.
>
> The two performers move the puppets in and around a giant cutaway
dollhouse,
> an exact replica of the annex rooms where Anne and her family hid.
Watching
> grown women play with dolls this way turns out to be surprisingly macabre.
>
> There are examples of the tender-turned-terrible throughout the show,
> including a cradle that later becomes the cattle car carrying the
residents
> of the annex to their deaths.
>
> It was Mr. Box's intention, he said, to take "the feelings that we have
> toward certain objects and plug those objects into a place where they're
not
> supposed to go and see what happens."
>
> The somber mood is also created by several impressionistic moments,
> particularly dream sequences in which Anne puppets (of different sizes)
> ice-skate or are rocked to sleep in the branches of a chestnut tree.
>
> After a recent performance, a few audience members walked out of the
theater
> dabbing their eyes.
>
> Rita Klein, 63, of Atlanta, who came to see the show with her husband, a
> Holocaust survivor, pulled out the Kleenex early on. "It was very, very
> moving and very disturbing," she said.
>
> Andre Kessler, 65, who was also cloistered in an apartment as a child
hiding
> from the Nazis, said he thought it was an inventive way to revisit Anne
> Frank's story.
>
> As Mr. Ludwig sees it, the production succeeds because puppets, by their
> very woodenness, force the audience to fill in movements, expressions and
> interior lives.
>
> "When it's a puppet, you're really invoking that spirit," he said. "You're
> supplying half the work. You're going within. I feel like it's very
> powerful."
>
>
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