Puppetry, why.

"What brings you here?" 

Oliver, the Puppetry Course teacher, is asking the question to each of us, 15 people in a room.

I got fascinated by "The Dance of Reality" book, Alejandro Jodorowsky's autobiography. He ran away from his dysfunctional family at 17yrs, and ended up living with two artists, two sisters who were making puppets shows. He started himself making puppets, and used for representing himself in conversation with his dad. He said "they" spoke as never before. He was able to contact and "guess" feelings (his own and his dad's ones) he was mostly unaware of.  This makes me think that puppets help us to express beyond our known capacities, allowing some sort of healing (*).

In Non violent communication, the inventor Marshall Rosenberg often uses puppets to show conflict resolution dynamics and how to speak empathically. Again, using a fictional character help to detach enough from the situation and see better.

But more than anything, I am in a Puppetry course because of a dream and an encounter.

In the dream, I was maneuvering a string marionette on a staircase, while a guy was teaching me how to make it walk. I woke up with a sort of excitement. I had to look more into this.

Then I went to meet Lesley Butler, artist and puppet shop's owner in London. She opens the shop only on request. She asked me straight away the same question "what brings you here?"

I said "I had a dream". She widened her eyes

"Oh that's how I started....        What do you do in life?"

I said "I am a photographer" 

"oh, I have been a photoreporter too, before this! What else you can tell me of yourself? Tell me more"

I mumble, "mmm I have been studying classics for a long time, you know, Greek, Latin..." 

"Me too!!!"

"Let's stop here for now" I say, laughing (afraid to have a spoiler on my life). "Would you show me which puppets you have here....??"

So the idea to explore puppetry has been there for a while... And I can  already see in this course I'll find even more reasons.

For sure the magic of it, from the making to the acting.

This video about puppets and perception makes a point on how it can increase IQ and emotional intelligence, to function better in groups, in leadership, to make decisions.

It also highlights how we function as human beings, in general. How much reactive are we? or meneuverable by different parts of our brain? It makes me think to Collodi's story of Pinocchio... It's like... we need to learn, in this life, how to come to life.

"A puppet is a dead objects that strives to live" (quoted video)

So that's my why, for now. 

Two lessons and we have already made breathing common things: a shoe, a stick, a music stand, a mop-pad...

Let's see what comes next...

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* "To be born into a family, Jodorowsky says, is to be possessed. To peer back into our past is equivalent to digging into our own souls. If we can dig deep enough, beyond familial projections, we shall find an inner light--a light that can help us through life’s most difficult tests".