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Editorial Coverage |
Editorial Quotes
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Pieces of paper by Pendle Harte, Living South, July 2003 Here's one definition of a puppet: "an inanimate object invested with spirit through human intervention". There's something undeniably spooky about puppets and it's probably to do with almost lifelike movements, expressionless faces and jerky gestures. Puppet makers are often portrayed as mysterious, lonely artists able to express themselves only through inanimate objects but Joe Gladwin's not like that at all: he's friendly and open and obviously at least as good with real people as with dolls. "It was the Muppets that really made people aware of puppets," says Joe Gladwin. Before that, people would just think Punch and Judy, nothing else. Then came Spitting Image and now there's quite a lot of puppetry in contemporary theatre (Shockheaded Peter, the Theatre de Complicite and others). It may be a minority interest but puppet making features increasingly on theatre design courses and it's a fascinating art. And puppeteers have cropped up in several films recently too. (Being John Malkovich, for example. Which, incidentally, Joe thinks portrayed the puppeteer quite unrealistically. "Someone that good would never be without a job.") Joe Gladwin has been a puppeteer since the early 1970s, when he trained with seminal puppeteer Barry Smith. He focused manly on rod puppets and glove puppets until about six years ago, when he devised his fist paperplay. These are 45 minute one-man shows, featuring lots of voices (all Joe) and music (on minidisc) as well as very creative painted sets. So far his repertoire comprises Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Dracula and The Hound of the Baskervilles and he's working on an adaptation of Rider Haggard's She as well as a pantomime Dick Wittington. Joe chooses stories with a twist, stories with "texture and flavour" and he doesn't direct them at children. Dracula especially, inspired by Hammer Horror, is unsuitable for small children and as Joe says, "slightly over the top". And Hound is full of misty moors and smoky London scenery. It's unusual to be puppet maker, performer and script writer all at once but Joe found in paperplays a way of being both stage designer and actor, careers he was torn between. For Cinderella he camps it up with lots of falsetto screeching, while Dracula requires more gothic melodrama. The scripts are his own and the sets are devised with killer precision and intricacy. Each show takes as long to set up as to perform because everything has to be perfectly co-ordinated. A wooden stage has grooves where cardboard characters slot and slide; each piece is used just once so that the flow remains simple and each slidey bit is kept together with the other bits that make up each scene. Thus each character is represented many times, requiring multiple pieces. Joe's small workshop (a converted shed in his Crystal Palace garden) is incredibly well-organised, with little drawers labelled things like "balls", "beads", "tubes", "curtain rings", "beeswax", "bellwire" and "candle ends". In the 19th century, puppets and toy theatre were huge, Joe explains - not as children's entertainment, but for adults, cheaper than theatre and with fewer restrictions. But the art of puppeteering was pretty much wiped out by WW1, when so many people died that entire crafts were lost. And by the time people were ready for entertainment again, there was radio and silent movies, which effectively replaced puppetry on the entertainment front. But, as Joe points out, the Muppets changed all that and put puppets back in the mainstream. "I love the Muppets because they're not too sentimental. It would be impossible to be sentimental when you've got a character like Miss Piggy." As well as making paperplyas, Joe's a puppet-making teacher, working with students at Central School of Speech and Drama and Hull University as well as various children's workshop. He'll bring his plays to parties (tailoring them to children or adults as required) and about 50 people can watch at once (with binoculars). It's difficult to perform them in public spaces because of the diminutive size of everything and the necessary intimacy - but if anyone knows of any local venues such as galleries or small studios that might be interested in hosting a paperplay, then please get in touch with Joe. And invite him to your parties. Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |