Pulling strings

>> The Puppet Project sends a message through
the medium with The Memory Tree

by GENEVIEVE PAIEMENT

The people behind the Puppet Project have no idea what they’re doing. They have no degrees in puppetology, none have studied under any great puppet masters and they freely admit that whatever they’ve learned has come from books or experimentation. But somehow they’ve struck a collective nerve in a public starving for some otherworldly puppet action.

“It’s a medium that’s particularly powerful with adults because they’ve forgotten how to believe in worlds that aren’t real,” says Clea Minaker, Puppet Project member. “People are really receptive to puppets because they can do things that humans can’t.”

Minaker credits having seen puppet genius Ronny Burkett’s award-winning political allegory Tinka’s New Dress with inspiring her and her friends Emily DeCola and Angela Orrego to put on a puppet show. They partly based their style on Japanese Bunraku puppetry where the puppeteers are on stage, dressed in black, the puppets attached to their bodies. And in just six weeks, they produced the show Minnow’s Moon in ’99. “We wanted to move into the realm of theatre with puppets, not puppets for kids, just as a way to tell a story,” Minaker recounts. “We had no idea what it was going to be like, but people loved it.”

Minaker calls their shows “contemporary urban fairytales,” with their current production, The Memory Tree, being an all-out, musical, fantastical play with six puppeteers and live music by the Bell Orchestre (no relation to the phone company). Of course, the real stars of the show are the endearing, and mythical characters themselves, made of foam, latex, duct tape and wire, and outfitted in various dashing costumes. Over 20 volunteers helped sew the puppets, build the sets and make hundreds of “bugs,” which have something to with the memory tree getting infested.

“Something has gone wrong with the memory tree and the puppets are starting to forget things, but they can’t remember what it was that happened to make them forget,” says Minaker, explaining the role of the tree as a collective memory bank. “The obvious thing to do would be to find a scapegoat, so they blame it on the bugs. That’s our first musical number: ‘Blame it on the bugs!’”

The play, though fun-filled, also has a deeper societal significance. “It has to do with the pace that we’re moving at, how globally we’re experiencing cultural amnesia,” Minaker explains. “There’s a trash theme too, about the garbage piling up around the world, including some valuable things we’ve relegated to the trash. The memory tree itself was inspired by the Gingko biloba tree, a prehistoric tree that will probably be able to adapt beyond the time when we will.”

And much like the Muppets did, the Puppet Project works on many levels, so kiddies are welcome too. Of course, that is if they can handle just a touch of ultra-violence. “There might be some decapitation,” Minaker admits cheekily. “But it’s all in good fun!” :

The Memory Tree, at the TNC Theatre,
3485 McTavish, Feb. 6–9, 13–16, 8pm, $6–8