Next Shows

This blog post will be forever updating and moving forward in time--so don't be surprised to see it over and over again.

Issunboshi at  at the Aki Matsuri at Bellevue College
Date & Times: Sat 9/10/2011 at 12:30pm or 2:45pm at the Carlson Theater,
Sun 9/11/2011 at 1:45pm or 4:00pm in Room E129
Please Note the times and locations are not the same both days

Punch and Judy at Glastonbury Faire
Toledo, OR
Date: May 12th and 13th, 2012

Punch and Judy at Ye Merrie Greenwood Faire
Richland, WA
Date: June 30th and July 1st, 2012

Dawn and I made a Meetup Group

Click here to check out
The Pacific Northwest Puppetry Group!

The Puppet Box

The Puppeteers of Puget Sound have a brand new forum created by our new President, Tony.

It's called The Puppet Box
The link is :
http://tonydefilipps.com/phpBB3/index.php

The purpose, as I understand it, is to facilitate the planning of the 2010 Regional Festival which we are going to host.

Yay!

Pictures up

Here's a link to my pictures from Yesterday at the Day of Puppetry for Puppeteers.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elly_leaverton/sets/72157618249819185/
It was a great event and everyone performed so well! I was so pleased.

Day of Puppetry for Puppeteers

I’m very excited by the up coming Day of Puppetry for Puppeteers because we will be performing Momotaro for them. This is the first time for Mylinda and Beckett, both long-time guild members, to perform for the guild and so several other guild members have told me they are looking forward to the show merely on that account. There is "gee wiz" about our show that would excite fellow puppeteers…it is a well known folk tale done with a singularly un-mystical form of puppetry—glove puppetry. So the charm would be seeing some of our new members go from interested guild member to performing guild members and that, you must admit, is a truly wonderful thing.
Interested in coming? Here's the details:
On May 16, 2009, the Puppeteers of Puget Sound [http://www.geocities.com/pofps/] will be hosting a Day of Puppetry for Puppeteers in Ballard. The event itself will occur at the Sunset Hill Community Club [http://www.sunsethillcommunity.com/ ] .
Our show will be from 11:30 to 12:15
Momotaro and the Island of the Oni
Puppeteers:Elly Leaverton, Mandy Leaverton, Mylinda Sneed, Beckett Arnold
Also, if you are a friend of my sister, Mandy, keep in mind that she is moving back to Boise this summer. This is very likely the last time you will get to see her perform. She is a very good puppeteer.
Send me an email if you want to attend.

Event Annoucement--Day of Puppetry for Puppeteers in Ballard

On May 16, 2009, the Puppeteers of Puget Sound [http://www.geocities.com/pofps/] will be hosting a Day of Puppetry for Puppeteers in Ballard.

This is a day dedicated to showcasing the work of local puppeteers. Showcase performers will be announced on the website [http://www.geocities.com/pofps/] May 1, 2009.

The event itself will occur at the Sunset Hill Community Club
[http://www.sunsethillcommunity.com/ ] on May 16 with daytime showcase performance times to be announced. There will be a social hour to show off your favorite puppet, a short meeting of the Puppeteers of Puget Sound and a special evening preview of Kyle Loven's Dear Lewis, recipient of a 2009 Jim Henson Foundation Seed Grant.

Please register by RSVPing to the Evite if you got one. If you need an Evite or cannot use Evite send an email to the webmaster at elly_leaverton@yahoo.com. This event is free to Puppeteers of Puget Sound and prospective members. Puppeteers of Puget Sound members who attend the Day of Puppetry will receive a free ticket to Thistle Theatre's 3:00pm performance of the Goblin and the Poet on the day of Puppetry.

We are the [Fill in the Blank] Puppeteers

It is time.
My Japanese folktale puppet group is getting more and more shows. I’ve been asked several times what my group is called. Heh.
Right now we are called: Aki Matsuri Volunteers in association with Puppeteers of Puget Sound, a guild of the Puppeteers of America. What a mouth full! When we got to the Aki Matsuri, the schedule read “Momotaro by Elly”
So I have been thinking for some time now about a name for our group. I don’t want to go with a name in Japanese because that might be to limiting but I wouldn’t mind a name that works in both languages. For the longest time I was thinking of “The Umbrella Town Puppeteers” which has a cute sound in Japanese “Kasa Machi Puppeteers” but when I ran it by a Japanese person, she told me it sounds like the Puppeteers are waiting for umbrellas rather than a name.
*Small Sigh*
I love the name “Seattle Puppetory Theater” so I called up Joan, one of the members of that theater to ask her how they came up with such a great name. We got to brainstorming names. She had lots of ideas. Some of which included names from Shakespeare like Rosamund, Rosaline or Puck Puppet theater. She said she saw a puppet company in Japan that had a name similar to Puck…it was Pouk or Pook Puppet Theater. That’s rather cute. Starting with a “P” is good for alliteration. Trips off the tongue…which is an element that Joan says a good name should have. If we are considering cute “P” words in Japanese, I like the sound of the famous candy “Pocky”…the y at the end makes that one, and I’m not sure Pooky or Pucky would do as well. Horse-Pucky happens, you know. With Pocky you must pronounce it with the oc forming the English A: Pah-key and not the Japanese way: Poh-key…that’s too slow a word: Pokey Puppets. Doop-de-do.
At the Aki Matsuri meeting, I put forth this question to them and the only suggestion I got was to name it after a famous deceased person. This is difficult to do with performers of any type because they have groups and foundation and estates. You just don’t tribute name a group of performers with the name of performers. If you think about that, it’s true.
Last night Wes and Frank weighed in. They thought I should go with something like “Small Spirit” in Japanese. I’m not sure exactly what that would be. Chibi Gami? The word for puppet in French is Marionette, which means “Little Mary” so small spirit would fit. But it sounds a bit like an anime.
*Deep Sigh*
Maybe Jean and Joan will let me join their theater and be an affiliate: Eastside Puppetory Theater.

Coralline Show and Tell

At the second guild meeting of the year, Tony Defillips showed us his souvenirs from his work on the stop-motion animation movie “Coralline”. I unfortunately only had my cell phone camera with me so, the pictures aren’t the best. But if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll probably recognize a few things:

The circus mice spelling her name.

One of the dogs in theater chairs. One of the circus mice in a gift to all the workers on the show.

A running Coralline.

One of Coralline's many faces.

One of Coralline's Other Mother's faces.

Hands, Coralline's are the small pale ones with blue nails.

Rob holding the dog on the theater chair. There were hundreds of dogs in the theater.

New Officers for the Puppeteers of Puget Sound 2009!

Slate of Officers:

President
Tony DeFilipps
tonydefilipps@comcast.net
cell 206- 940-0889

Vice- President of Programs
Jean Enticknap
jme@bigplanet.com
cell 239-8866 work 206 524-3388

Vice- President of Membership
Alyssa McFarland
alyssamcfarland@gmail.com
206.789.8079

Secretary
Mary Shaver
lacopine@comcast.net
cell 360-259-4419 home 425-458-6558

Treasurer
Cheryl Handley
chalice@comcast.net
home 425-556-9761

Newsletter Editor
Joan King
jking4441@comcast.net
206 244-4825

Webmaster
Elly Leaverton
Elly_leaverton@yahoo.com
206 940-6234

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.

Puppet Guild Website Updated

I've been helping out with the Greenwood Faire website and the webmaster there found an excellent feed reader widget that I had to add to the PofPS guild website!

Tell me what you think:
http://www.geocities.com/pofps/

I got the code here:
http://www.springwidgets.com

Well…We Partied!

I was mentioning to one of my non-puppeteer friends that I needed to post the pictures from the After-Christmas Christmas party and she told she was pleased to hear the party has come and gone because now I’ll update my blog! My blog…which is only about puppets…has followers that are not puppeteers. This comes as a bit of a surprise to me. I’ve oft been told by my dear mother that my blog was uninteresting to her and that I need to have another blog in which I journal the story of my life. See Mom, other non-puppeteers don’t mind that I blog just about puppets!
At the party, the subject of my blog came up, and to my delight Rob D’Arc announced that he liked my blog. However, when I stated that I had not posted in a while, he assured me that my *not* posting was one of the things he liked. Once you read my blog, you’ve read it and now it’s over. Not sure how to take that one…
Speaking of the party…which I meant to do this blog post…I got a book about finger puppets! There was actually a bit of a theme towards finger puppets for the whole event. Both my sister and Becket got actual finger puppets. The puppet that Becket made was finger puppet sized and I think the item that Mylinda got was on the smaller size as well. It looked like a toy theatre story. I made a glove puppet…a Christmas Punch! See:

The food hit of the potluck was Joan King’s fabulous baked beans. I took deviled eggs myself…which is usually a liked dish. It’s the first thing I ever learned how to make as a kid. Mom once told me I used to make a real mess of it too. She’d find little shells every where.

Rob told the best humor story of the evening…he regaled us with the adventure that was performing his “Flea Circus” show in Galveston this last December 2008. FEMA, being the snappy organization they seem to always be lately, had not yet recovered Galveston from the hurricane. But the show must go on! Kudos to Rob for donating his performance fees back to the town. “What was the story,” you ask? Alas, I cannot do it justice. You’d best ask him to tell you. But make sure he doesn’t leave out the part about the Texas Suite.

An After-Christmas Christmas Party?

“What the heck is that?” you ask.
Well you see, most professional puppeteers are pretty busy around the holidays what with all the holiday events, engagements and parties to perform at. Thistle Theatre and the Northwest Puppetry Center are both doing Christmas shows. Folks have told me of gigs in past years which included being a walking mountain with pop-up puppet inhabitants, running and voicing mechanical mall puppets and of course the kids room show at business Christmas parties. It all adds up to very little December free time.
So we have our Christmas Party in January. Our host for as long as I have been in the guild is Jean Matson, who opens her home to host about 12 to 20 puppeteers from the guild on average.
It’s always a potluck and there is always a gift exchange with the following rules: you can spend no more than $7 on the materials of the gift. You must decorate it creatively…that’s not a rule, just a suggestion because we do a judge a package by it’s cover exchange. We choose and steal before opening them. I tend to wrap mine in cool monster fur…so even if they don’t like it, there’s still something they can use. Some people wrap it to make you think it’s something other than what it is. That can be rather funny. I got these green mice last year:

(Last year our party was so late, we made it a St. Patty's Day party. Jean Mattson couldn't host one in January. But anyway...that's why I was dressed like that.)

At the party, the new slate of officers for the coming year is announced. Or, more often than not, just plain decided there on the spot…that’s not the best practice in my opinion, because we never are able to fill all the offices with only the 16 or so folks who can make the party. This year we’ve formed the nominating committee like the By-Laws says we are supposed to. All should be well I hope.

Douglas N. Paasch will be missed

The Seattle Puppetry Community was struck a horrible blow on Saturday with the unexpected death of Douglas N. Paasch by heart attack. He will be missed. Here's a picture I took of him giving a Q&A at a guild meeting. He's holding his Bunnicula puppet.

I recieved this in an email from another guild member:

In Memorium: Douglas Paasch
By Deb Fialkow

Douglas N. Paasch had over 25 years of experience in professional puppetry, with extensive credits as a puppet performer, designer, builder, director, and consultant. For the past 16 years he had been the resident puppet master for Seattle Children's Theatre (SCT). He also worked with local and regional theatre companies including: Intiman, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare Co., Book-It Repertory Theatre, Strawberry Theatre Workshop, South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa, CA), and Childsplay Theatre Company (Tempe, Arizona), Mr Paasch has performed internationaly in Bulgaria, Serbia and China. Douglas is also a theatre technician, with special expertise in theatrical effects. Douglas was an instructor or guest artist at CalArts, UW, Cornish, Seattle University, University of Puget Sound, the Art Institute of Seattle and the SCT Drama School. Douglas was a member of Actor's Equity Association and IATSE. Most recent projects included: 'Night of the Living Dead'and 'The Wizard of Oz'@ Seattle Children's Theatre (just opened last night!); doing the puppetry design, direction and construction. Other recent project included: 'The Mary Shelly Project' with Greg Loughridge, 'The Never Ending Story' at SCT.

Doug passed away Saturday, November 22nd, 2008. He suffered an unexpected, massive heart attack.

Doug was a sweet, generous man of extraordinary talent and imagination. His loss to his friends, the Seattle Theater Community, the theater and puppetry industries will be felt profoundly.

Cards, flowers, photos, remembrances may be sent to :
Doug's parents (Leanore and Norm Paasch): 17811 5th Ave SW, Seattle, WA 98166
Lisa's address is 2109 N Anderson St, Tacoma, WA 98406

SCT will be holding a memorial, details will be posted as soon as they are known.

Update:
I have just heard that Lisa and Doug's family would indeed like to have a memorial for Douglas here at SCT on Monday, Dec. 8, starting at 7 pm. I do not know if anyone is preparing a formal e-announcement about it, so I ask that staff start to spread the word: better that people hear about it more than once than get left out.

Mangetout will be donating food. Witney Williams is coordinating details of programming with me. I do not yet have information about preferences for donations.

What the guild is up to…

This is a question I probably should address on this blog more often considering that the focus of this blog is puppets in Seattle and the local Renaissance fairs.
Since the Pumpkin Puppet carving party, we have had one other event. Brian Kooser invited us all on a back stage tour of his wacky and weird puppet play “UFO the Puppet Show”. Mylinda and I were both in attendance as the officer representation because our dear president is a tad young for the subject matter. It was that to be sure or as Brian himself described it “Very Naughty”. To say I liked the whole thing would be a lie…I have yet to see an adult puppet show I liked 100% of. I’d just rather not go there with puppets or any other medium for that matter. That's not entirely true...I don't mind puppet sex scenes, if they are not just tossed in and do nothing for the plot. That sort of thing gets boring really quick. But that’s just me. Maybe it's a woman thing...most of us seem to prefer romance novels to pornographic movies. Don't we?
As I watched, I focused on the parts I do like in any show…manipulation and puppet look, design and costume. Brian has a very unique style which I tend to feel is very scary or horrific. Of course, since my creation of the Oni for Momotaro, I shouldn’t be pointing any fingers. He is the fellow to which I credit the style of puppets I make with the combination of Papier-mâché and Japanese Paper Clay. The puppets I enjoyed the most were the two robotic characters (one just a head of one of his giant puppets) and the Aliens. I mean…is this not cool:

Or this:

As for the manipulation, at one point the character of Michael Jackson does his signature dance. This was exceedingly well done with a bunraku style puppet. At that point there were 3 puppeteers involved in the motion of the dance. I like bunraku puppets best when they have the full 3 puppeteers. This was no exception and it showed the care and research that went into creating the dance.
In other guild news, we have assembled the nominating committee for next year’s slate of officers. If you are in the guild, you may get a call from one of them looking for puppeteers to fill the officers for next year. I hope by forming an official committee, that no seats will be vacant this coming year. The new slate will be presented at the After-Christmas Christmas Party, which I have confirmed with Jean Mattson for the 3rd Thursday in January.

On Pumpkins and stuff

This last weekend, Mandy and I hosted a pumpkin carving party. I invited puppeteers, she invited teachers and the two crowds seemed to get on well. Actually I think it sparked a bit of an interest in puppets in some of the teachers present. Among the puppeteers, we ended up with two moving pumpkins:







(I took both of the above with my camera phone.)

We also had one pumpkin that could be used as a puppet:

Also, one that made great use of shadows:

Fun, huh?

Untangling

I have been invited...and I'm rather honored...to join the PofA web advisory committee. It actually went something like this:
Steve asks, "Would you be willing to serve as member of the PofA web advisory committee?"
Elly replies, "I would love to. Thank you for thinking of me. Can you send me some more details?" Yes...that's the order I used. Why? Because I pretty much knew that no matter what the details he'd send me were...websites and web programs is my contribution to the puppetry guild. You see, I've got a very useful disconnect in my head. I get excited when a computer challenges me. What I mean is...say I wanted to create a database that did X, Y and Z. First, I'd read the help...and if the help is helpful, I would do it and not think about it further. But if instead the help is not helpful, I would begin to experiment ways to make the data base do X, Y, and Z. If I found out the way easily, I would do it, curse the writer of the help section and not think about it further. But if it was difficult to figure out...then, at that moment when a normal person become frustrated, I become excited, happy and a tad obsessive. Time looses all meaning to me. At work, this is the number one reason I stay past 5pm. Of course there are other reasons like deadlines that are more likely to cause me to stay, but the difference is...a deadline would still leave me conscious of time. A glitch can magically erase whole hours from my life.
This love of glitches serves me well in the physical world as well. Some people give up marionettes because of the frustration of the tangle. Not me...and I strangely consider untying to be failure. A master untangler never unties the strings! If it got that way without untying, it can be undone without untying! Just...give me a few seconds, wouldja? Wait...wait...I've almost got it...let's see...there! Here you go.
Heh...
Speaking of being honored. I was so honored that my puppets made it into the last Puppetry Journal. It's a major first for me. Check it out:

IMHO...A Success

The Rolling Regional Festival (RRF) is over. In all, I can’t say whether everyone would consider it a success or not. I suppose it wasn’t compared to a normal regional festival which is attended by more puppeteers. However, it was unquestionably successful in sharing puppetry with the public.

I am, however, often reminded that sharing puppetry with the public is not what a puppetry festival is for. Puppetry festivals are about puppeteers, for puppeteers and attended by puppeteers, or so they say. By ‘they’ I refer to the nay sayers of the RRF. They are right…I do remember those long ugly debates as to whether or not a puppetry performance at a festival should be open to the public at all or only for festival attendees. To these people I would say…without puppeteers, how can we have festivals at all? I do know that guilds should be doing what we did without the frame work of something like the RRF. That is true, but not easy for all locations. In fact, without the rolling RRF, two of the guilds would not have done anything. Both are small…one is ‘inactive’ due to less than 10 official members and the other is tottering on the brink of ‘inactive’. So there is something we must count as a resounding success…for you see, not only would nothing have been done in these locations with out the RRF, but also no regional festivals are even possible in those places due to low numbers of members. If in these locations, we can attract new interest in puppetry, then a regional festival there becomes possible.

Here are the facts as I know them: one Montana guild member attended Portland’s day; one Seattle guild member attended Montana’s day; Family members of Portland folks attended Seattle’s day and both Montana and Seattle guild members attended Victoria’s day. This may not sound so wonderful for a festival, but look at the pictures. Look at the children not only enjoying a puppet show, but also trying their hands at making and using puppets. Shall I add numbers to your opinion of the RRF? Try this: since the August Day of Puppetry in Seattle, there have been about 60 hits on the guild website which is 3 times more than normal. Most of those hits came on the week after the DoP. Plus, they were effort hits…people given a flier that had to type in the URL. That shows true interest, wouldn’t you agree?

Now I honestly don’t remember when it was I wanted to become a puppeteer. My earliest memory having to do with puppets was asking for them from Santa Claus. I have a vague memory of a puppet show at the Seattle Center involving a snow monster and a memory of a marionette princess I saw some where on a vacation. What if it was a Day of Puppetry some where that set me on my path? Who’s to say one of those happy little faces you see trying out my marionette dogs, won’t some day say the same thing?

Market Memories

This last Sunday, the puppeteers of Momotaro were out at the Day of Puppetry at the Pike Place Market. Everyone used their main puppet to interact with the passers-by. You see below my sister Mandy, who plays the Gold Oni who ended up getting a long lecture by this girl on how to be scary...

This young lady was not talking to Mandy at all. She addressed and lectured the Gold Oni. Mandy was a bit smiley, but the Gold Oni was taking notes the whole time saying "Ah I see" or "Really? Maybe I should try that!" So cute!
We also handed out a flier for our show at the Aki Matsuri. If you would like to print one and help us, here it is:

If you click on the picture, it should show you the complete 8.5" by 11" page. You can print it landscape, then cut it into three and PRESTO! you have three of our fliers to hand out. Thanks in advance!
In other news, Punch and Judy was presented by yours truly at the Market again this year and what do you see in this picture below?



Look carefully now...












Give up?

Okay, I'll tell you...it is in fact the very green bag full of Swazzles I was lamenting in my previous post! Frank found it not 24 hours after my post--in his car in fact. Three cheers for Frank! Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray!

Puppetry Book Club

I can’t speak for the rest of the USA, but here in Seattle, the latest rage is book clubs. They meet once a month at someone’s house for a potluck and discuss which ever book they all decided to tackle the previous meeting. From what I hear about my mom’s club and ENSR’s club (my work), they are usually stuff like “Three Cups of Tea” or other critically acclaimed books at the time. Usually it’s fiction although I was pretty impressed to hear that ENSR’s club read the 9/11 reports. Also, I know for a fact that when it is my mom’s turn to pick a book…she goes for biographies.

Reading books is a great excuse to get together socially for both my work set and my mother’s set…so I thought, why not the puppetry set? There are several advantages to a puppetry book club. First of all, libraries are usually very well stocked with books on puppets. Puppet shows and libraries go hand-in-hand you see. Hopefully, the starving artists of our set wouldn’t find money the prohibitive factor.

Second, they would be non-fiction books for the most part, so even if you only read half of it, you could still come to the potluck—because it’s not like anyone is going to give away the ending. Even if you skimmed it…you could join in the conversation on what you gleaned.

Third, there might be things you’ve tried in the books we choose, so you could share insights with others that you probably wouldn’t think of if the conversation didn’t turn that way naturally. In addition, people might discover that you are an expert on some skill or other and they might call you if they need help. A subject you take for granted might be a huge help to someone else.

Fourth, this would set up regular hassle-free meetings—no performance to beg up, no workshop to put together, or event to plan. It would be just a comfortable gathering of friends to discuss a book on their mutual favorite subject.

Fifth, I think newbies would find it a less intimidating meeting to join in with. Reading and thinking being the only implied skills needed. They would probably benefit greatly by the discussion or examples people might bring. It’s a forum in which all level of skill in puppetry could feel comfortable. Also, I don’t see it as an age limiting forum either—kids and adults could both join in.

Sixth…our guild puppeteers seem to love potlucks. When ever we have one, it’s always well attended.

Seventh, some of our guild members have written puppetry books…a book club meeting attended by the author! How snazzy is that?

Eighth, except for the smallest of apartments, anyone could host it at their place…space to sit being the only real requirement of the location.

What do you think?

Do you see any downsides?

If you lived in my neck of the woods, which books would you like to see on the list?