25 Random *Puppet* Things about me...

Facebook is often a place where really old getting-to-know-you emails resurface as notes, because like email, you can tag people and they’ll get an email telling them about the note. The difference being that the info about you will be on display to all of your friends not just the tagged folks.

This one started out as “25 Random Things about me...” and many friends have tagged me. But it didn’t inspire me at first until I thought…why not see if I can come up with 25 puppet things?

So here goes…

1. I can’t answer the question “When did you get into puppets?” Because I don’t really remember myself…I remember asking Santa for puppets…that’s my first memory.
2. My first puppet stage was a refrigerator box painted baby pink that I used to perform for my cousins in. It had a black scarf taped up inside that made a good scrim.
3. I still remember my first laugh-line too…my cousins always loved it when this little scrappy character of mine would say “Poo on you!”
4. I am a Swazzle-using Punch Professor…but I’ve never swallowed one. Came real close though. Actually, I tend to spit them out.
   
5. I love to start building a new show and I love to perform a show…it’s the middle part I hate. I distract myself with movies I’ve watched a thousand times.
6. My first public show was “The Bremen Town Musicians” at the Grandview Public Library.
7. In middle school, the librarian was my aunt. She photocopied my favorite book for me when I left because it was out of print. It was about making marionettes. The copy is in a blue binder on my shelf.
8. My Great Uncle Ted helped me build my first marionette stage straight out of the above book
9. My Paternal Grandmother helped me make my first marionette also from the above book
10. My first public marionette show was “Jack and his Magic Trashcan” a modern take on “Jack and the Beanstalk”
11. I joined the Puppeteers of Puget Sound in 2000.
12. I performed Punch and Judy for the first time during a Thistle Theatre Variety show called “Puppets, Puppets, Puppets” before that I’d just directed it and bottled it at Greenwood Faire.
    
13. I used the smaller toy Punch and Judy puppets I got on my trip to England when I was in High School in “Puppets, Puppets, Puppets”
14. Each puppet in my current Punch set was carved by a different person.
15. When I was first learning to Swazzle, I sat in the bath tub with a piece of plastic wrap covering my Greenwood song book and sang all the songs through the swazzle until I could do it without spitting the darn thing out.
16. My Punch is psychotic.
17. In high school, I taught the second half of my Children’s Theater course at the request of Mr. Fouhy. I taught how to make a rod puppet I learned to make from the Carter Family Marionettes during a brief tour of their class at the U of W.
18. I used to sell pop-up puppets at the Pike Street Market for “Planet of the Puppets”
    
19. In college, I volunteered with the Art Château in Butte Montana over the summer. We did marionette shows in the ballroom on the top floor.
20. I have been to the bunraku theater in Osaka…saw a Romeo and Juliet story there. Seppuku was involved.
21. I fall asleep in artsy heavily symbolic puppet shows that I see only at puppetry conventions. Man, do I hate those things!
22. I saw Jeff Dunham in a place so large that a camera and big screen was used so we could see him. Ventriloquist puppeteers get all the luck
23. I’m afraid of performing for other puppeteers. Should you see how they behave in the audience of a puppet potpourri, you would understand!
24. I want to build a marionette clank from Girl Genius.
25. In the future, I will own my own puppet theater some where and I’ll have tons of shows and broadcast them on the web…this dream of mine is always evolving.

Whew! Now the directions tell me to identify 25 people I’d like to know 25 random things about. So in keeping with my puppet theme, I tag: Beau Bond, Deborah Allen, Marty Richmond, Phillip Huber, Sherry Johns, Tim Giugni, Jeanine Bartelt, Beau Bond, Liza Burke, Robert Burns, Stephen Carter, Rob D'Arc, Shannon L R Dunham, Jean Enticknap, Cheryl Hadley, Joan King, Tatsuki Kobayashi, Brian Kooser, Dan Luce, Clay Martin, Annett Mateo, Dmitri Carter, Troy McFarland, Peter Orr, Mylinda Sneed, and Erin Snow…wait…I still have more…but rules is rules. You’ll add 25 names if you do it too, right?

If you don’t have a blog, feel free to leave your 25 things as comments here. If you do have a blog, leave me a comment as well…with the link to your 25 things blog article.