These Are Not Your Childhood Puppets (February 2002)

Toronto artist builds on a subversive tradition
By Michael Boughn

When it comes to questions of art, puppets have something of a bad rap in North America. Ask most North Americans what the word "puppet" means to them and, depending on their age, they'll mention Howdy Doody or Kermit the Frog. With the exception of vaudeville and the ventriloquist acts that were briefly in vogue a generation ago, puppetry has long been seen as rather lightweight entertainment for children.

Ask Toronto artist David Anderson about puppets, however, and he'll give you a different story. The founder and artistic director of Clay & Paper Theatre, Anderson begins a three-week residency and workshop at the Art Gallery of Ontario Feb. 26. "I don't do muppets," he says, laughing. Anderson produces plays using puppets that range in height from 25 centimetres to six metres. Drawing on ancient traditions of puppetry and popular theatre, his productions confront audiences with a range of themes that extend from mythic grandeur to slapstick to biting satire.

Consider one recent production called Lilith Unfair, the story of Adam's first wife who is banned from the Garden of Eden for insisting on making love on top. Based on an ancient Jewish Biblical interpretation. Lilith Unfair featured puppets of various sizes , as well as human actors, all interacting with one another. The show's climax occurred when a six-metre-tall figure of Lilith, operated by three puppeteers, swept out of the darkened trees in Toronto's Dufferin Grove Park, where the play was staged, transfixing audiences with a wild and ecstatic dance.

Anderson, a former philosophy student turned theatre activist, points out that his art has connections to a long tradition. In England, puppets are part of a culture of popular resistance that goes back at least to the 17th century. When the Puritans shut down the theatres in England in 1643, the English adopted the Italian puppet Pulcinella, renamed him Punch, and made him a centre of political resistance to Puritan repression. Raunchy and mischievous, the little hand puppet gave voice to the thoughts of a people who weren't allowed to speak them for themselves. In France, in the early 18th century, the marionette Guignol took on a similar role, commenting on the events of the day, and the political developments in whatever city he was in. And though puppetry was considerably toned down after it reached New World, Charlie McCarthy could say things Edgar Bregen couldn't get away with, publicly trading sexual innuendoes, for instance, with the queen of virtuous cowgirls, Dale Evans.

Shadow puppets have long been a central cultural fact throughout China and South Asia. Vietnam has a tradition of water puppets. Puppets more than 2,500 years old have been found in India associated with mythic figures and religious rituals.

All of this is grist for Anderson's mill. "I'm always discovering connections," he says. " I just discovered a tradition of Portugese pageant puppetry, for instance. There are so many different kinds of Western puppet traditions - Sicilian metal fighters operated from above by rods, clanging at each other and sending off showers of sparks - I've stolen ideas from that tradition."

Anderson has built on the subversive tradition of puppetry, but pushed it toward a contemporary concern - building community in the midst of urban spaces that are often alienating and alienated. Each summer, he holds daily open workshops at Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto's west end, where he lives. People from the community are invited participate in making characters for that year's production. The productions themselves are mounted free of charge in various parks across the city.

Many of Anderson's plays popularize traditional mythic tales that once bound communities together in a web of common stories. Gilgamesh, a play about friendship, death, and the quest for eternal life, is based on the 4,000-year-old Sumerian story, the oldest written epic we know. The Return of the Green Man is based on medieval English mummer's plays. Like all mummer's plays, it tells the story of the battle between the forces of life and the forces of death, and ends with a resurrection. The Lost City of Wagadu is based on a 100-year-old African story about the loss of the perfect city due to human pride.

"These myths still speak to us now," Anderson says. "Across time, across cultures. They make us aware of the human community that transcends the boundaries that separate us."

For almost half his life, Anderson, who's 60, has acted, danced, directed, sung and played myriad instruments, from accordions to giant marimbas, with various theatre companies in Canada. In 1995, after working with such groups as the Vancouver Street Theatre and the Bread Baker's Puppet Theatre in Vancouver, he founded Clay & Paper Theatre in Toronto. Through Clay & Paper, he has produced nearly a dozen plays, performed in that city and occasionally elsewhere. His work received rave reviews in Vermont at the Bread and Puppet Festival. He has also taken his troupe to Kingston, Ottawa and Montreal.

All of Anderson's plays are designed to be performed outdoors, where they are available to people who might otherwise never see a theatrical performance. A typical show draws a cross-section of the community including young people, children, the elderly, students, even the homeless. The plays, designed to hold people's attention in the midst of various urban distractions, avoid dialogue, relying heavily on music gesture.

Anderson's most ambitious project to date is the Night of Dread. It's an annual event, in the fall, in which people from across the community create masks, costumes and puppets to represent their fears, and then parade them through the streets of Toronto. For months before the event, Anderson recruits people from schools and other community venues to participate in the workshops to create the props. At the close of the parade, the marchers gather in Dufferin Grove Park and confront and ridicule the images of their fear in a grand pageant. Two Nights of Dread have been successfully organized so far. The Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation has provided a $90,000 grant for the work, which has also received support from the Laidlaw Foundation, and hundreds of volunteers.

At the Art Gallery of Ontario, Anderson will work alongside the Linares family, world-renowned papier mâché artists from Mexico City. During his residency, he plans to lead students and other artists in creating a giant "death's head" mask constructed on the stripped-down carcass of a car he obtained from a wrecking yard.

Why a death's head? Anderson laughs. "What could be more fitting for the Night of Dread," he says, suggesting that the mask will have an active life beyond its time in the AGO. "And besides, I wanted to acknowledge the other work that's currently in the gallery." The AGO's main exhibit, which runs concurrently with Anderson's workshop, is called Ultrabaroque: Aspects of Post-Latin American Art. "What they're calling Ultrabaroque," Anderson says, "is largely determined by irony." The picture the AGO is using to promote the exhibit, for instance, is a portrait of Bart Simpson in a sombrero, an image that embodies conflicting responses to the dominance of U.S. popular culture. "I thought that creating a death's head on a car," says Anderson, "given the utter infatuation of the North Americans with their cars...what could be more ironic?"

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