There was a time when I wrote plays, horrible farces, that I tried to produce for festive entertainment at feast and revel. These productions of the Three Hills Free Art Players were, in general, well recieved. At least this was true when the audience had had time to revel in preparation. Unfortunately there were also times when the actors tended to revel a bit before the production, sometimes with comic result as in EL KID, and sometimes with less salutory effect as in the case of ALEXANDER SNOTSKY. Also, the quality of the scripting could make some actors balk at joining in such a dubious performance, for fear of the effect it could have on their reputations. In short, the problems of aquiring, maintaining, rehearsing, and governing a cast for such a show was a director and producer's nightmare. After several tries, a few revolts, and a near mutiny, I gave up further attempts. That is I did until I came up with a new solution. Puppets!

In puppet theatre the actors never talk back to the director, always follow direction, don't forget their lines, and never, oh never, demand equity wages. Puppets are indeed ideal actors. Their lines can be as silly or as bad as the author likes and they will deliver them with gusto. And the most amazing thing is that all of this is perfectly period practice so far as anyone can tell.

The history of puppets and puppet theatre goes as far back as the Greeks of Socrates' time when, according to the SYMPOSIUM of Xenophon, Socrates attended a dinner at the home of a wealthy man named Callias. Callias had hired a man from Syracuse to provide entertainment with dancers, musicians, mime and the like. Following the entertainments Socrates asked the Syracusan which of his entertainers made him most proud and the Syaracusan relied, to Socrates' surprise, "Fools, in faith. For they give me a livelihood by coming to view my puppets." (Speaight 1990) Athenaeus reports that a puppeteer named Potheinos was held in such esteem that he was able to produce his plays on "the very stage on which Euripides and his contemporaries performed their inspired plays." (Speaight 1990) Horace, Philo, and Apuleius all referred to puppets which were described as marionettes. (Speaight 1990)

From 400 to 1200 AD very little documentation exists to indicate the continuation of the classical puppet tradition. In the twelfth century the Archbishop of Thessalonica marvelled that Potheinos had been held in such esteem and he dismissed the puppets of his own time as unworthy of serious attention. (Speaight 1990) The thirteenth cenutry Provencal romance FLAMENCA contains a description of entertainments at a feast given on St. John's Day which includes the line "Here one that made the puppets play" and in 1408 there is an account of one Perrinet Sanson who performed with puppets in a small french village. (Speaight 1990) Chaucer may have referred to puppets on at least two occasions. once in the lines,

. . . let this man have place,
He in the waist is shaped as well as I;
This were a popet in an arm to embrace
For any woman small and fair of face.

and again in the lines,

In all this world, . . .
There was no man so wise, that he could thench
So gay a popolete, or such a wench,

though the references may also have been to dolls, as similar words were used for puppets and dolls.

In August, 1561, Lady Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk left a record in her household accounts of a payment of 6s. 8d. to "Two men which played upon the puppets." (Speaight 1990) These references clearly indicate the existance of travelling puppet theatres in the middle ages, but do not describe the puppets or plays themselves.

Puppets are shown in a few illuminations which indicate the type of puppets used in the middle ages. The twelfth-century Codex of the Herrad von Landsburg shows a boy and girl manipulating a pair of puppet knights by pulling two horizontal strings. (Baird 1965, Speaight 1990) This type of puppet is known as a jiggling puppet, a type which reappears in Italy in the sixteenth century in the form of two dancers, with the string being tied to a post on one side and a travelling musicians leg on the other, allowing the puppets to dance to the music. (Speaight 1990). Another type of puppet, the familiar glove puppet, can be seen in two illuminations from the fourteenth-century Romance 0f Alexander in the Bodleian Library. Both of these illustrations contain a theatre of a type known as a castellet with a stage made of two towers joined by a parapet over which the puppets are visable, the area beneath the parapet being made of a cloth draping. (Baird 1965, Speaight 1990) The existance of marionettes at that time, well known to the Greeks and Romans, might be surmised by a cryptic comment in a Provencal romance of 1318 in which the hero strikes the head off one of a troop of robbers and the head flying through the air strikes another robber in the face killing the second one. The hero cries out, "In the same way do puppets slay each other by knocking together." (Speaight 1990) This is indeed the fashion in which marionettes do battle, by slamming into each other. At least that is true of the more primative ones of that form, which have few strings but are supported by the head with the use of a rod. (Baird 1965, Beaumont1938, Boehmer1969, Currell 1974)

The first named puppet performance appears to have been the Resurrection at Witney which was most probably derived from the religious tradition of moving images used to support religious lessons, was probably presented with marionettes, and was performed by 1500 (Speaight 1990). About this play William Lambarde, a sixteenth century antiquary, wrote:

"In the dayes of ceremonial religion they used at Wytney to set foorthe yearly in maner of a Shew, or Enterlude, the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Chryste, partly of Purpose to draw thyther some Concourse of People that might spend their Money in the Towne, but cheiflie to allure by pleasant Spectacle the common Sort to the Liking of Popishe Maumetrie; for the which Purpose, and the more lyvely thearby to exhibite to the Eye the hole Action of the Resurrection, the Priestes garnished out certein smalle Puppets, representinge the Parson of the Christe, the watchmen, Marie, and others, amongest the which one bare the Parte of a wakinge Watcheman, who (espiinge Christ to arise) made a continual Noyce, like to the Sound that is caused by the Metinge of two styckes, and was therof commonly called, Jack Snacker of Wytney." (Shershow 1995)

By one hundred years later, around 1600, there is more description of the type of performance which could be found. In Henry Chettle and John Day's Blind Beggar of Bednal Green (1600), a charachter named Canaby who has found work as a puppeteer introduces his show as follows:

"You shall likewise see the famous City of Norwitch, and the stabbing of Julius Caesar in the French Capitol by a sort of Dutch Mesapotamians. . . . You shall likewise see the amorous conciets of Love Songs betwixt Captain Pod of Py-corner and Mrs. Rump of Ram-Alley, never described before. . . .Or if it please you shall see a stately combate betwixt Tamberlayn the Great, and the Duke of Guyso the less, perform'd on the Olympick Hills in France." (Shershow 1995)

Here then we can see that the subject matter of the plays is a mixture of fable, legend, and contemporary history all mixed together and handled in the manner of a farce. Mixing of charachters from differing time and place was no obstacle to the puppet stage so long as comic effect could be derived.

Perhaps the best example we have of late period puppet performance can be found in Ben Johnson's BARTHOLOMEW FAIR of 1614. While the dating of this piece is a few years into the seventeenth century there are some hints that the puppet play found within may have been written some fifteen years earlier, this based on the fact that the opening lines parody Marlowe's HERO AND LEANDER of 1598 (Speaight 1990). The setting of this puppet play within a play is at Bartholomew Faire, Smithfield, a site where the earliest evidence of "motions" can befound in 1600 (Speaight 1990). Another site near the same area, on St. John's Street, north of Smithfield, held a puppet performance dated to 1599, and in the same year there was reputed to be a "motion" of the city of Ninevah, with Jonah and the whale, produced at Fleet Bridge on Fleet Street (Speaight 1990).

Johnson's puppet play was based on the tale of Hero and Leander in which the puppets played the parts and a charachter named Leatherhead acted as the interpreter, or frontman, for the puppets. This use of a frontman seems to have been very popular, perhaps because the puppeteer's made the puppets voices with the use of a reed, which made the speech somewhat unintelligable, or because the man interpreting for the puppets in front was well placed to take contributions from the crowd. Well known modern "interpreters" would be Fran, of Kukla Fran and Ollie, Mr. Rogers, or even Captain Kangaroo for Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose.

Johnson's puppet rendition of Marlowe's tale of Hero and Leander is treated in the manner of farce, with rude jokes and dialogue, and then interrupted by Damon and Pythias while all the time Leatherhead, the interpreter, holds a running commentary from the front of the booth and is occassionally assaulted by the puppets. The production is finally interrupted by a puritan who decries the play as profanity causing Leatherhead to put up the puppet figure of King Dionysius to argue the puppet's case. The puritan decries the puppets for masquerading males as females, as was common theatrical practice at the time, and Dionysius proves him wrong by pulling up his costume to show himself as a sexless puppet beneath. (Speaight 1990). And, what type of sexless puppet was he? As he was brought to the performance in a basket and given the puppets slapstick performance including the beating of the showman's head, it is most likely he was a glove puppet (Speaight 1990).

My First experience in producing puppet theatre was ecclesiastical, much like medieval puppet pageants. The youth group in my church was scheduled to take charge of the christmas pageant and we made glove puppets with heads made of styrofoam balls covered with nylons. We added to these a cloth body which we clothed with scraps of fabric we glued on, and we made the faces with fabric scraps and buttons for eyes. Most of the hair was made of yarn, the beards as well. Our theatre was a sheet of wood hung with fabric that we hid behind, working our puppets over the top edge. We also had some set pieces made of cardboard to which we had attached dowels to allow us to hold them up at stage level. We even made the inn door able to open. The production was a success.

When I decided to do puppet theatre in the SCA I felt that the simple glove puppets of my ecclesiastical pageant would not be sufficient. I at first thought of making the heads of the new puppets by carving them out of wood, but I found that I was no woodcarver, and that pine was a difficult medium to work in. Balsa wood would have been easier to work with, but was a new world product, and was quite soft so that I was afraid the heads would not hold up very well. Basswood was also easy to work with, being of fine grain, and light, but was expensive. Finally Master Thaddeus the Brown from Darkblade Crafts offered a suggestion. He had been producing greenman plaques to sell, molded out of plaster, and had made his original master out of a material called sculpey. The original sculpey is like plaster in consistency, and I feared that it also might be too fragile for the puppet heads, but another kind, super sculpey, was of a harder, more ceramic-like consistency and appeared to be an acceptable medium.

I molded my first head, a dragon, out of the material with little difficulty and hardened it by baking it in my oven (one of the advantages of super sculpey is that you need no kiln). I didn't think that I could make a hollow head that would keep shape while baking and so I made a smaller solid head. The head baked well but due to the small size I couldn't make a large enough opening in the base to allow me to make a standard glove puppet. Because of this I made a descision to make my puppets as combination rod and glove puppets with a single rod fixed into the base of the head which could be grasped with the palm and last two or three fingers while the index finger and thumb manipulated the glove body's arms. With the exception of the fact that the puppet could not bend at the waist like a standard glove puppet I was able to achieve a reasonable degree of movement and expression. By rolling the rod between the fingers and palm I could turn the head from side to side, or when working only one puppet I could manipulate the rod with my other hand allowing even greater expression.

After the first puppet I increased my cast by adding some stock charachter types. I made a yeoman puppet of the Robin Hood type, though somewhat older and seedier, then made a devil, who almost molded himself. After I had formed him I looked him over and decided that I was quite captivated by him. I then decided that if I had a devil I should also have a monk and so went to great trouble to make one, and to make him as detailed as possible. He is still probably my favorite, and along with the devil is often seen in company with me, arguing morality back and forth while the devil makes lewd comments to passing ladies and leers at them lecherously. I made the head for a knight, rather stern and proud looking with too tight a helmet and a large bent nose to go along with his proud glare of disdain. Then I read a book on sculpting and made even more detailed eyes on a juvenile who was meant to be a woman but ended up looking far too masculine. This was followed by an old crone and finally by a young girl. While not being the stock cast of the commedia del arte these charachters were still archtypical enough to allow for a broad range of morality tales, myths, and fables.

My first show with the new cast, a show which I stole outright from some other puppeteers, was quickly thrown together to entertain some children at the Feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungary in the Shire of Stormvale. The show was the story of the Princess and the Dragon. Unfortunately the cast was not happy with their parts. The Princess was tired of being a goody goody princess and wanted to play the bad guy while the Dragon wanted to change his image, feeling he was too fearsome. The two arranged to change roles which was a very satisfactory solution for them but turned out to be quite confusing for the rest of the cast. At least the kids kept it sorted out and did their best to help the other puppets understand. I had no theatre so I did the whole show hiding beneath a table and working the puppets over the top. I have repeated this show a few times for other audiences and it is almost always well recieved.

I followed this production with another at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in the Canton of Three Hills using a makeshift theatre. This was an improvisational morality story with the devil and the monk holding the leading roles. Again the children in the audience kept the confused puppets sorted out. The theatre, unfortunately, was neither sturdy nor well maintained. It ended up being thrown out by my wife when she was doing housecleaning because she didn't realize what it was. To her it just looked like a pile of old canvas and some old sections of PVC pipe.

At the Black Tower V event I did the tale of Tristan and Iseult for the kids camping next to me. I hung a piece of cloth from the poles that held up my dining fly and worked from behind that. The Monk told the tale while the Devil heckled him mercilessly.

At the Pennsic War one year the cast appeared at Duke Sir Gavin and Duchess Sedalia's anniversary dinner to examine the question of what it is that a woman most desires. Again I did this while show while hiding beneath a table. The dragon did his best to convince everyone that he was in fact the Baron of Bhakail, Tristan von Halstern. In the end he relented and gave the young man what he wanted so he could go win the lady fair, who it turned out could be a lady fair only half the time and an old hag the other half, then she asked the young man which she should be when. The young man told her that she could have her own way, which was what she desired most, and so she showed the young man that really she was always a lady fair and he had broken the enchantment that made her half a hag. The young man then showed her that he was actually not really a young man but was also enchanted. He was actually a lecherous old yeoman and ended by chasing her off the stage.

The most normal production so far was at the Lakewood Rennaissance Fair in Lakewood, New Jersey. This production was the Reeve's Tale from Chaucer, which the cast attempted to do in Middle English, except the Devil, who was playing the Miller, wasn't as good as he might have been with understanding Middle English and had to keep asking the rest of the cast just what they meant by this or that, forcing them to translate into the modern vulgar speech. There was no theatre and I was quite visible acting as the narrator, or interpereter, for the puppets, many of whom took some time to argue with me in full view of the audience. Still, the play went off quite well.

Of course puppet theatre is much more impressive if you actually have a theatre to play in. My first theatre was a small 4' x 4' booth made with a PVC frame and covered with painter's cavas. About a foot back from the stage opening I hung a scrim of sheer white silk allowing me to see out to follow the puppet's action and gauge the audience's response. This was a fairly minimalist theatre but it was a step ahead of working behind a piece of cloth hung between two poles and probably two steps ahead of working beneath a table. Still, it's not as elaborate as the theatre I had first dreamt of.

My dream theatre, which never left the stage of a dream, would have been hexagonal in shape. I planned on making it have an appearance like the old Globe Theatre that Shakespeare played in The scrim curtain would have been hung halfway back and would have been made of sheer black silk. The back half would be roofed over to keep my working area dark and the front would be open at the top to make the playing area light. At stage right I would have a set piece to make the Jaws of Hell in the shape of a monsterous beast made in the manner of a fan and operated by means of a line that would pull the outer edge up and to the side to open the mouth. The line would be operated by means of a foot pedal beneath which would be a bellows that would be compressed when the jaws were opened and the air flowfrom this bellows would run through tubing that would blow crepe paper flames out of the open mouth. On the other side of the stage I would have another pedal to operate the gates of heaven. on either side in the back working area I would have a rack with sockets to hold the puppets rods making it easy to quickly change puppets and store them. I would also have another socketed rack just beneath the stage front hooked to lines and pulleys and operated by a foot pedal to allow me to put a number of puppets together in the rack and lift them to the playing area as a group with the pedal. That way I could have more than two puppets in a scene at the same time, two main actors and a "chorus" group. I would also have a front curtain to open and close the scenes and allow me to change backdrop scenery. Finally I wanted to have a small flagpole to allow me to raise a flag to signal a performance. This is a wonderful dream theatre which would allow me to do magnificent and complex productions. Unfortunately it would be quite complex and not very portable. Since the art of the medieval puppeteer was a travelling show this would be a problem.

Somewhere between the minimalist theatre and the dream theatre there exists a useful portable theatre that looks good and functions well. Master Thaddeus the Brown and I spent some time planning for such a theatre which could me carried in a duffel bag and put up quickly (or quickly broken down when the arrival of security made travel a priority). On either side there would be a unit that had an upright as long as the distance between the floor and the bottom of the stage area. On the lower end there would be two hinged pieces that would be folded down and pinned in place to make the "feet" for the theatre. On the upper end there would be three hinged pieces two of which would swing out as "arms" going to the front and back and the third would extend upward where a crosspiece would be slotted in to join the two side pieces. This crosspiece would also provide a place from which to hang the scrim. An arm would fit in a slot on either side of the crosspiece to reach backward and forward and an empattled piece would be fitted into slots in the front of the lower arms. An opaque curtain would be hung from one set of lower arms, around the front under the embattled piece, and along the other set of lower arms while another opaque curtain would be hung from one of the upper arms, across the back, and along the other upper arm to enclose the working area. Finally I would hang a shelf made of netting from the front lower arms at the front of the plaing area beneath stage level to hold unused puppets and props where they would be quickly accessible. I even considered hanging lanterns from the forward section of the upper arms to illuminate the playing area at night.

All of these plans are fine and well, but many puppeteers take the simplest approach. They cut a stage opening into a sheet of plywood and hinge two side panels onto it. By folding out the side panels and hanging a scrim curtain from them they have their theatre set up and ready to go. If it worked for Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, it could work for you.

In the end what else can be said but that puppets are fun. They're fun for the audience and fun for the puppeteer, and it doesn't really matter what sort of puppets they are, or what theatre they play in. What matters is the enjoyment that they give. That they have been giving this enjoyment since classical times and all the way through the middle ages and rennaissance in much the same manner that they give this enjoyment now can only add to the appeal. I have found that it certainly appeals to me.

Anderson, Madge, The Heroes of the Puppet Stage, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1923

Baird, Bil, The Art of the Puppet, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1965

Beaumont, Cyril W., Puppets and the Puppet Stage, Studio Publications, New York, 1938

Boehmer, Guenter, Puppets, Macdonald and Company, London, 1971

Currell, David, The Complete Book of Puppetry, Plays, Inc., Boston, 1975

Shershow, Scott Cutler, Puppets and "Popular" Culture, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1995

Speaight, George, The History of the English Puppet Theatre, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 1990