I had a conversation the other night with a man who’d been a puppeteer for years. In the course of the conversation he said that he’d never picked up marionettes because he thought they were too hard to learn. I’ve heard this before. I hear it a lot, in fact, that marionettes are too hard to learn for most people.
I don’t agree.
My feeling is that it’s just as hard and takes just as much time to master a marionette as it does to truly master a rod puppet. BUT in the beginning stages of learning, a marionette looks much worse than a rod puppet. To use a music analogy. Anyone can make sound on a piano the first time the touch it. Not everyone can make sound on, say, an oboe. That doesn’t mean that an oboe is takes longer to learn, it’s just that the piano is more forgiving to beginners.
I think puppets are the same way. Anyone can pick up a rod puppet and wiggle it, but to do it well takes the same time and attention as a marionette. People just give up faster because the beginning stages can be discouraging. And I don’t think that it’s really that they are more inept with marionettes, but that the mistakes are more obvious.
My parents have a recording of me at the age of five playing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” on the violin. I was not good. A year later, they recorded me again. I was still not good. I wound up playing the violin for seventeen years and got better.
I’m thinking that just because it sounds or looks ugly the first time, doesn’t mean you should stop trying. Once I got past the beginning errors, marionettes became as easy as a rod puppet.
I’ve always thought marionnettes are much harder than rod puppets. I agree with your music instrument analogy. The other reason, which I think is also a major factor, is that it’s harder to teach yourself with marionettes if there’s no given instructions.
I’ll completely agree that the beginning phases are uglier with marionettes.
On the other hand. Take the magic V hand-grip for a rodded puppet — the one that most puppeteers use to work both arms at once. I don’t think you’d stumble upon that on your own. I don’t think that you’d pick up a rod puppet and think about how to create the illusion of a ground, or feet hitting the floor without instruction. But the puppet still works, even when the manipulation is incorrect or less than optimal.
With a marionette though, you’d drag the feet or it would lean to the side. It’s more obvious that you’re doing it wrong because the puppet stops working. I think the obviousness of the mistakes discourages people. But I don’t think that it’s any more wrong just because it is more obvious.
Darn. Now I want to take someone and put them in a room with both and time them to see how long it takes to do each well.
Ah, the magic V. Actually, I watched a video on how to do that grip, but when I imitate it finger by finger, I got something very stiff and just doesn’t control the arms well at all. Then I thought, I’ll just come up with my own way… whatever makes sense to me. I came up with some kind of V grip which worked for me and then went back to the video, and realized that’s exactly what the video said. So did I learn it or figure it out myself? Hm… Incidentally, that’s actually also how I learned to use chopsticks. I just did whatever that made sense to me, and later realized that it was the standard way.
Marionettes, on the other hand (not literally), I still don’t know much about it, but I haven’t really spent much time to play with one either, so can’t really judge. The other thing that made marionettes more intimidating is that rod puppets seem to have only three controllers: one for the head and one for each arm. For marionettes, however, there’s at least five, if you just have one for the head, each arm, and each leg. Often there’s more.
What a long reply, haha.
I have one more question though (and I think you wouldn’t mind answering): is there sort of a standard marionette controller? I feel like I’ve seen many varieties of that thing (I don’t know what it’s called) you hold that has wires hanging from it, and I wonder if it’s difficult to use another variation if you are already used to a certain one.
Heh. I’m an oboist (blessedly, with over 10 years of training behind me). It’s a beautiful analogy, though now I’m trying to imagine what the puppetry equivalent might be of being told “You sound like a duck being run over by a steamroller.”