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Bridging the Gaps: The Puppets Up! International Puppet Festival

2009; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 138; Linguagem: Inglês

10.3138/ctr.138.006

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James B. Ashby,

Art Education and Development

Puppet artists, from the fatherly Geppetto in The Adventures of Pinocchio to the more troubled Craig Schwartz in Being John Malkovich, are often represented as loners, pursuing their chosen art without any outside aid. The solitary puppet artist certainly exists, but as Steve Tillis points out, “[T]he opportunity for control that puppetry offers the artist is frequently taken up less for artistic reasons than for financial ones, at least in America”; and the situation is not markedly different in Canada: “[I]t is often only by working alone that an artist can earn a living” (33). Even the lone puppet artist — or indeed, perhaps especially she — can learn from exchanging ideas and techniques with other artists, however. Moreover, puppetry as a whole can only benefit from the intellectual and artistic cross-pollination that ensues when artists and companies come together in the same space, at the same time, to view and discuss each other’s work. A puppet theatre festival offers a rare chance for artists to do just that.