I loathe watching these half filled masks, give me the puppet, it's true at least.
I can take the husk of body and wire and the face that's pure surface.
Right here, I'm out in front.
What if I choose to wait in front of the puppet stage?
No, to stare with so much force that finally to counteract my look, an angel will arrive
as puppeteer and jerk life into these hard passes.
Angel and puppet, at last the play begins.
Fascination leads to compulsion, which leads to obsession, which leads to mania,
and finally metamorphosis.
And such is the tale you're about to hear now.
This is a story about stories and the storytellers who tell them.
And the storytellers tool of choice is, well, the puppet.
Whether it be simple or complex, the effect remains the same.
My name is Ben, and I'd like to tell you a story.
One day, Ben and his dad set out on a hike up a tall mountain.
He was five years old, and to him, this hike felt like an endless quest to a non-existent summit.
Ben was not happy.
The two hadn't gotten very far when they stopped to rest under a small tree.
Ben's father began to weave a tale to encourage Ben to keep moving.
In the story, there was a castle in a faraway land and a fire-breathing dragon,
and the hero of the story was a small boy who set out on fantastic adventures
and met many interesting characters.
The story willed Ben to move his weary legs,
for with each step, more of the story was revealed.
Finally, the story was done, and Ben and his dad had reached the top of the mountain.
I had the fascination, but I lacked the medium.
So then my mother gave me a book.
This tiny book of shadows really opened up a new world for me.
By merely holding up my hands in a certain way, I could create people or animals
and really bring my stories to life.
I decided I should go find others who were like me and had a passion for puppets.
As the years went by, Ben forgot about puppets and stories,
until one night not too long ago when the fates intervened,
and Ben met someone who would change his life forever.
The man's name was John Bromberg.
He appeared like a wizard, his face hidden by a mask,
a procession of followers trailing behind him.
With a wave of his hand, he quieted the crowd and everyone took a seat.
His mask gone, he produced from his magic case, a small puppet.
Hello! My name is Laszlo.
I come to you especially tonight from Puppet Central up in Lakewood,
where I live with my good friend John.
He's the guy who stands behind me here. See him up there?
Oh, hi guys.
Thank you John!
All John needed was a puppet and a story.
Once again, Ben was awestruck by how this mysterious man
could breathe life into something so simple.
Ben sought the wisdom of a friend, hoping to understand...
Wait, wait, wait. I got this.
So later on that night, I was listening to my friend Nate play his guitar.
Now Nate's a pretty smart fella, and for a moment,
I saw the path I was on and the strange journey I was about to take.
The puppet is given life by this very organic process
like the puppeteer designing the puppet, creating the puppet,
and the ideas behind it become more crystallized.
The puppet materializes as this sort of thing outside of you
that also contains part of you, and it's a very accessible art.
You can make a puppet out of anything.
You can make it out of wood, out of paper mache,
you can make it out of scraps of metal, you can make it out of a sock.
It really doesn't matter.
It can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be,
but it always, always has part of you in it.
To create something that moves with your body movements,
it speaks with your voice, that tells a story of your creation.
It's an absolutely phenomenal feeling.
Puppets!
Making sock puppets is easy.
All you need are socks.
Markers for making doodly faces.
Head stuffing.
A loose bundle of yarn works great.
Safety pins used to help keep your puppet in shape
and helps attach accessories.
How about a hat or glasses?
A bow tie.
Use your imagination.
Let's begin.
Hope your socks are clean.
A smelly sock makes for a smelly puppet.
Place your hand in the sock with the stuffing over the knuckles,
then invert the toe segment into the pocket formed by your fingers,
using your other hand to help form the mouth cavity.
Now you're ready for facial features.
Markers out and get coloring.
Let's take a moment to learn some basic hand techniques.
Hold your thumb and forefinger in a relaxed mouth formation.
A common mistake among amateur sock puppeteers is to flap the top fingers erratically to make the puppet talk.
This looks awkward, making it appear that the top of the head is moving
while the lower jaw remains stationary.
Instead, imagine there is a string attached to your palm pulling it straight outward.
This maintains the illusion that the lower jaw is moving
while keeping the top of the head stationary.
Now you are ready to experiment with your puppet.
Just a little hand motion goes a long way.
It is amazing what you can do.
Wow!
Desperate to learn more.
Then hits the road.
In search of others like him.
Ah! You're back! That's great!
Good to see you, man.
Wow! Yeah!
So we're really going to do this, huh?
Absolutely.
This is fabulous.
Alright, I'm going to reflect on your last visit a little bit, you know?
But I'm going to change it around a lot, alright?
You don't mind, do you?
Not at all.
I mean, you'll be able to follow, won't you?
Totally.
Great!
Alright, so we're going to start at the anger box.
You remember the anger box, don't you?
Absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah, but what's got to happen out here is that you see it's only me today, you know, and you.
So I'm going to have to do all the parts and you're going to have to edit it so that it
looks like it goes on all at the same time, alright?
Okay, so here's the first part.
This is the, oh, wait a minute.
I could even get the jackal head.
See, this is the part of the jackal.
I'll get the jackal head if you shut down for a minute and I'll get the jackal head and we'll do it right.
Okay, so here's the first part.
This is a picture of me.
This is a picture of me.
It is my birthday.
I am six years old.
We are about to take that memorable birthday snapshot.
I am terrified.
There's this guy crouching down in front of me with this little black box.
I have no idea what he's about.
I have no idea what's on his mind.
I must have been trembling because my mother who stands behind me soothes me with her hand on my cheek
and I grab her finger tightly.
And, but it is my grandmother who stands to the left of my mother who is about to reach into our handbag
to find for me a special gift that she has saved for this kind of crisis.
It is my first puppet.
It is a hand puppet and I call the puppet earth.
So this landed here about a year ago.
I was really, it has a door on it right here,
but I was very dubious whether I should open it or not.
And so finally my neighbor came over who was a Russian and he had more courage than I did.
So he opened the door and when he opened it, opened the door,
Lozlo was in here, hanging by his feet.
And what my friend Julius said is, oh, cosmonaut!
He came to earth last year and he's been developing a voice.
He's decided to join the puppet company and he's been developing a voice ever since.
Okay, when my grandmother gave me the puppet and I called it earth,
I started doing shows for my friends and parents and found that it was a marvelous way of storytelling
that it opened up an avenue for me because I was quite timid at the time.
But by hiding behind the puppet, I could tell these stories that I always wanted to tell,
but just didn't have the wherewithal to do it because I'm just not made like that.
Where I could just, without a puppet, tell the kind of stories that I would like to tell.
Unbelievable! This is the top of the world!
Feeling moved by John's passion, Ben decides to return to his puppet mentor,
Nancy Andrews.
Lucky I don't have my shotgun.
Do you exist in this film?
I do exist.
Okay.
My fifth grade was a great year. We moved to California for one year and I had a fifth grade classroom teacher
who must have been associated with Hollywood.
One of the things he did was make puppets of Larry from the Three Stooges.
And then Larry came and I have a picture of me and Larry.
We all had little Larry puppets, so that was an important year for me because I think in life,
you know, you go through kind of finding things that you recognize and you go,
yeah, that's it, yeah, that, that, I like that.
The Frogtown Mountain puppeteers have been performing for over 10 years.
They shine a light on the finer points of puppet presentation.
There's nothing like family.
It is a pleasure to work every day with you.
Oh, thank you.
There's a lot of people out there that say they couldn't work with family at all.
And we get along really well, but I mean, you definitely get annoyed by your siblings
in ways that other people don't annoy you.
So that's one thing.
I'd say if we, anything, we get annoyed with each other.
I can take them.
We grew up actually being tormented by Neil Diamond at first,
and then we all loved Neil Diamond.
We went to this church camp as kids and the pastor would wake everyone up
by blasting Neil Diamond in the morning.
Oh, yes.
I like the sound of that.
But Brian had the idea.
So we wanted to go see a Neil Diamond concert and he was playing in Portland.
So Brian thought if we made a Neil Diamond puppet and set it up, it was sold out.
Of course.
Yes.
And then we set up on this little stage out front on the steps
and started lip syncing Neil Diamond songs.
And sure enough, through the course of the night,
the songs like, here's a mic.
Like when I sing one of them.
Sweet Caroline.
Good times never seem so good.
That's right.
Neil Diamond's in the house.
So we did that for an hour or so before.
And then the Neil Diamond security guards started to come out
and they were videotaping us because they wanted to show it to Neil Diamond.
And then they came out later and said,
Neil, someone Neil's family didn't show up.
So if you guys want tickets, we'll get you in.
We ended up getting like, I don't know, like 5th row or something like that.
They walked us into it.
Yeah, like 5th row, like front, front and center.
But they wouldn't, Brian still had the puppet in his hand.
So as we were going across to security, he's like,
that thing can't come in.
So we had to go put the puppet back in the car.
You like this moustache?
I will do a dance and a dance over here.
Then I stroke my sketchy moustache.
We started doing a couple of workshops with kids
teaching them how to make the puppets.
And I don't know, it's always kind of been important to us
to show instead of being exclusive like,
show's over now, stay behind our curtain,
like to get out there and kind of let the kids play with them
and learn that they could do it on their own.
And some of the kids are, if they were frightened of the puppets before,
like to see kind of how they're worked.
Most of them probably, still after the show,
I don't think they even realized their puppets
because they will talk to that thing on your hand
and they never look at you.
And I don't think they even think we're connected in any way.
And sometimes they'll give the puppet a hug and say goodbye to you.
We often have to trade voices off,
but sometimes near the end,
depending on what character you have walking in at what time,
I'll be stuck without having him on my hand.
So Brian will have to put on one eye,
and he's gotten really good at it,
like if I was going to start talking to this one eye like,
I'm up higher, I'm going to come and take that camera,
it looks expensive, I'm going to sell it on the black market.
So he can kind of follow my words.
And so we, it's really, that's the great thing about puppets is,
being behind that curtain,
there's a lot of things you can't do,
that you can do, you can't do in normal theater.
You still follow me.
You can't stop, is that good?
There's even been times when, I mean,
he's good at learning my actual lines,
but there's been some times when,
especially when things go wrong,
you end up kind of going with whatever's going on.
He somehow knows how to keep me up.
I have no idea what's coming next.
Yeah, but he'll be lip-synced right on.
So it's handy.
On the final point in Ben's road trip,
he stops at the Puppet Kitchen,
where a group of artists have gotten together
to make puppet magic.
Oh, hello.
Is this going to be online?
Am I on the internet yet?
Am I on the inner tubes?
Hey, hey, Michael.
Yes, yes, Grandma.
Hey, how does this all work?
Well, they put this into the camera,
they record the sound in the video of what's going on,
and then they'll digitize it,
and it'll be available for anyone to watch you in all your glory.
No thanks, I already had some.
Okay.
Have you taken your pills?
Yeah?
Yes, I take them with apricots.
Oh, good.
Makes them slide on down.
Oh, yeah.
That's graphic.
Good.
Here at the Puppet Kitchen,
we try to build in a variety of styles.
We're not limited to any particular influence.
In fact, we really work on being well-rounded
and studying everything from marionettes
to shadows to...
Anyway.
I went again.
This was for a show at the Kessleton Opera Festival.
This is one of the things that I like about the Puppet Kitchen
is it's a very traditional design.
It's designed to look like a traditional,
broad wooden puppet,
but we use state-of-the-art casting materials
and lightweight foams,
and so this thing is actually much more expressive
and much more durable than perhaps
the original would be back in the day.
So it's a nice blending of old beans new.
Watching you.
You?
Have you seen my keys?
They have a little plush octopus on them.
Okay.
Everybody, got them.
To me, a puppet is really a...
It's a distillation of character.
A puppet is only built to be that character and nothing else.
It's only built to move in a way that that character needs to move.
And there's literally nothing else to the puppet except the character,
which is one of the great things about puppetry
is when you're watching a puppet show,
you're watching the character,
and you as an audience member are investing.
The audience member is giving life to this character
as much as the puppeteer is,
because the audience is believing this is real,
he's got thoughts, he's got emotions.
This thing that I know is not alive is alive and thinking.
So in a lot of ways, I feel like a puppet is supposed to do less
than a person can do.
But in that, it offers a clearer picture about...
In doing only a certain number of things,
you pay attention to what those certain things are.
You know what I really think would help Ben?
Ultimately, in the exploration of this documentary,
is if he were to become a puppet himself.
That would probably be the best way to explore the medium.
You have to be fuzzy from the inside out.
Yeah.
Or whatever material he's wanting to use.
Let's do it.
We can do that, right?
Can we use this popsicle stick?
It's a start.
It's a start.
Ben begins to see puppets, where there were no puppets before.
Every object transforms into a thing, and their thingness imbues them with life.
Ben realizes that everything and anything can become a puppet.
You're everywhere.
Our hero approaches the mysterious beast,
knowing that at any moment it could strike.
And then it does.
Ben's new mania leads him to the International Puppet Conference.
Somehow, Ben manages to convince a few friends to join him in his mad quest.
I'm John Bell, and we're going to have the first International Puppet Research Conference
to be held in the United States.
And it's going to be here at the University of Connecticut.
Scholars from across the United States and from around the world.
Performances by Red End Puppet Theater and a puppet cabaret
with a lot of interesting performers.
It'll bring together puppeteers and people who write about puppets.
And it seems to me anyway that one of the interesting challenges of puppet theater
in terms of scholarly pursuits is that there are so many different ways
to think about puppets from a theater history angle
or sort of straight puppet theater history, which is a pretty narrow field,
but also anthropology, which has looked at the global aspects of puppetry
since the mid-19th century and semiotics and phenomenology
and a couple of other ways of looking at the manipulation of objects as performance.
So I'm excited that we'll kind of see what other people are doing.
And puppeteers are kind of fun anyway, so we'll have a good time.
The thing is we try out movements with puppets and sound,
and then we couple that with words and we just kind of smash them together.
We are not using performing objects. The performing objects use us.
You know, they want to speak the truth, and we are just handlers of these objects.
We are just doing like the job of a maintenance man for these objects.
So we're moving them accordingly, hopefully correctly.
Any questions, Greg?
They share this language of working with objects and puppets,
so I think they can work together efficiently and make it work.
So he's making it up.
A lot of traditional theater, they write down the cues and then they execute them.
He's making it up now in the moment, and then they're going to do it.
This is the story of private first class Bradley Manning,
who for the last 10 months has lived in the bridge in Virginia.
Some people see the puppet as just an object, which in a real sense is what it is.
The job of the puppeteer is to trick the viewer into seeing a human character.
Normal people, when they look at a face, they use a part of their brain called the foosy form gyrus,
which is oddly sophisticated piece of brain software that allows humans to distinguish them among literally thousands of faces that we know.
But when we look at a chair, however, we use a different and less powerful part of our brain.
It's called the interior temporal gyrus.
It takes a talented artist or a collection of artists to trick people into seeing a face when they really know that it's an object.
When this trick is achieved, honestly, rather than with too many gimmicks and gadgets,
which tend to draw the brain away from the human face and the human emotion,
the emotional impact of the message can be very important.
Anything is possible in the world of puppets.
Ben awakens to find himself not as he was the night before.
Everything is different now.
And now an angel has become my puppeteer, and I have become real.
Everything is different now.
You
