HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR PUPPET MASTER TODAY?

My friend Amy (right) has three degrees but works with her hands. And sweats at her job. I envy that.

I think the world can be divided into people who shower before work and people who shower after. I'm the former (except when I'm running late, like today, and don't shower at all). The only time I ever break a sweat at work is when the air-conditioning coils on the roof get clogged up with cottonwood seeds. That happens once a year like clockwork (The state tree of Kansas is not the utilitarian cottonwood for nothing). The temperature soars to 85 degrees, and we all get a pat on the back for laboring in "hellish" conditions. Just once I'd like to finish my day with a genuine, well-earned need for a good scrubbing and a cold beer.

The other thing about Amy's job — puppetry — is that it's damn fun and it makes people laugh. How much better can it get? My job is damn stressful and it makes people cuss. Like this: Goddamn it! Or this: Son of a bitch!

I'm sure the world of puppetry gives rise to many a profanity, but I imagine it's delivered with a lot of panache. For instance, in Amy's green room (right) I heard a puppeteer say "Fuck! fuck! fuck!" while searching for a lost article of clothing. But it was sing-songy and airy, not guttural and homicidal.

I saw my first puppet show a week and a half ago, in Atlanta, at the Center for Puppetry Arts. It was amazing. I saw the show first from the audience — a sea of kids — which was awesome, and then from behind the stage, which was double awesome. Triple awesome. That fuzzy little monkey that seems to glide magically through the rain forest has as many as four people moving it — running with it, jumping with it — in a highly coordinated ballet. And to complicate the task further, the puppeteers are working in the dark, behind a burqa-style black hood (left), on a narrow ramp, with a minuscule margin for error.

This behind-the-scenes stuff taught me something about my imagination: It's lacking. Now I liked "Sesame Street" OK when I was a kid, but I was never a big fan of the Muppets, and I think it's because I couldn't really appreciate them at face value. They just seemed like stuffed animals who talked. And that seemed unremarkable. What I needed to see, to fire my imagination, was HOW they talked and HOW they moved — what went into them.

I had a similar deal with magicians. When they revealed how they did a magic trick, it always seemed MORE magical to me, not less. The magic was in the process, not the illusion.


Same thing with life on earth, if I may generalize a tad. How can the mechanics of evolution — the mystery, the eons, the intricacy — inspire anything but religious feelings? The notion that it's all emanating, instead, from some dude in the sky — a talking stuffed animal with nothing behind him — leaves me unimpressed.

But that's just me.

Anyway, another thing about puppeteers: They're like actors, but their vanity is different. They don't want to be seen. They're beautiful and talented. They can sing and dance and put on a show — just like any Broadway performer — but they don't want to be seen. And that — having no use for mirrors — strikes me as damn unique and wonderful, if slightly batty.

The Center for Puppetry Arts
Amy's blog