The National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neil Theater center is one of my favorite things. It’s a ten-day intensive workshop focused on performance and the development of new works. At the end there are performances.
This is from a couple of years ago and a fine example of puppeteer humor. Every person at the O’Neil had a control attached to this marionette. We all focused on the puppet and moved our controls with careful intensity but our goal was to not move the puppet. At all.
Trust me. If you are a puppeteer, this is hilarious.
This reminds me something I saw in a documentary about Penn and Teller. One of them (Teller?) was so into sleight of hand, that he used to practice “non-magic.” e.g., what it looked like was that he put a cup over a ball, then when he lifted up the cup, the ball was still there. (i.e., it looked like he hadn’t done anything at all.) What he was actually doing though was palming the ball as he set the cup down, then palming the ball back as he picked the cup back up.
I think that must be even harder than your typical cup and ball trick. The focus and control you have to have so that everyone moved their controls but the puppet didn’t move at all must be at least as hard to develop. Awesome!
That is great.