I had the opportunity to look back and share reflections on my training as a puppeteer during a meeting of the Boston Area Guild of Puppetry on June 7th. Below is a transcript of my presentation.
Thank you to Margaret (Margaret Moody) for the idea of dedicating our meeting to reflection and discussion about training for puppeteers, and for inviting me to open the meeting.
I would like to begin by pointing out that the word “training” can mean two different things. First, it denotes the educational process through which candidates and aspirants are shaped into skilled or professional actors, actor-puppeteers, dancers, and practitioners of many other professions. Second, it signifies the ongoing practice maintained by dancers, athletes, actors, and actor-puppeteers throughout their professional lives. These two realities overlap. I will speak about both, but I will try to devote more attention to training as practice.
WROCŁAW MIME THEATRE
My first acting training experience was at the Wroclaw Mime Theater. For half a year, I was one of a few apprentices. We participated in daily training that included classical dance and classes on developing the plasticity of the body. In addition, we trained in acrobatics two or three times a week. From time to time, when theatre founder, Henryk Tomaszewski, was available, he introduced us to the mime acting technique he had developed. These sessions were particularly beneficial. There were only a few of us in the studio, and he was able to give us a lot of attention and inspiring, individualized instruction.
I still use some of these techniques. Let me mention a few.
Counterpoint: each action is accompanied by the simultaneous opposite movement of another part of the body. The hips are often the center of this contrary movement. For example, when a hand reaches forward, the hips move backward.
Identification: the mime shapes her body to reflect the form and characteristic features of the object of attention or action. A mime lifting a heavy burden shapes the body to mirror the weight and form of the object. A mime threading a needle mirrors the shape and properties of the needle and thread
“Tok” was Tomaszewski’s word for a specific kind of impulse. To simplify, I would say that it originates in the solar plexus and becomes the beginning of every movement.
These trainings — which at the Wroclaw Pantomime Theater were called “classes” — fit the definition of training as a regular or daily practice.
PUPPETRY DEPARTMENT IN WROCLAW OF THE LUDWIK SOLSKI STATE DRAMA SCHOOL IN KRAKOW, POLAND
In 1978, I began my puppetry acting studies at the Puppetry Department in Wroclaw of the Ludwik Solski State Drama School in Krakow, Poland. In Poland, the study of puppetry means the study of puppetry acting, complemented by the study of live acting. Scholarly courses included the history of theater, puppet theater, drama, culture, children’s literature, and psychology.
We learned several puppetry techniques: traditional Polish long-rod puppets (kukły), short-rod puppets called Jawajki (“Javanese puppets”), glove puppets, and marionettes. We also studied the universal foundations of puppetry, including object puppetry, and experimented with puppet form and construction. Separate courses were devoted to pantomime, mask acting, rhythmics, and dance.
Sessions were usually divided between learning and practicing techniques and routines, and improvising or developing scenes individually or in groups.
The study of live acting included text interpretation (with separate courses on verse and prose), classical and contemporary scenes, elocution, voice placement, solfege/solmization, and singing.
In the fourth year, students applied their skills by participating in two productions directed by guest artists, while also independently creating their own performances. Under the tutelage of our professors, we researched selected topics and wrote a final dissertation.
LABORATORY THEATRE OF JERZY GROTOWSKI
I studied in Wroclaw. About a mile from my school, near the medieval Old Town Hall at the Market Square, was the Laboratory Theatre of Jerzy Grotowski. After the premiere of the legendary “Apocalypsis cum Figuris” in 1969, the theatre stopped producing new plays. However, they continued performing, and members of the older generation of the ensemble conducted diverse workshops and training programs.
It was interesting and inspiring to learn how these methodologies had been developed. They researched many sources. Grotowski studied Stanislavski and other Russian masters in Moscow. The ensemble studied yoga as well as Eastern and Western performative traditions.
Training consisted of intensive daily practice and formed part of an ongoing investigation into the psychophysiological conditions of the creative performative process. In practical terms, each team member participated in collective training, while developing their own area of interest, a leading role in the group, and a methodology for teaching others. They continually educated themselves and trained one another.
As a result, when the theatre opened its work to people interested in learning from them, each member of the ensemble was a highly competent specialist. They conducted workshops both individually and collectively, and it was enlightening not only to train with them but also to observe how uniquely individual and full of vitality each of them was.
COMMUNITY CULTURAL CENTER IN WROCŁAW
After Drama School, I began working at a community cultural center on the outskirts of Wrocław. I continued participating in workshops and programs offered by other artists, but I became increasingly focused on developing training that served my own work as a teacher and director.
The group I worked with used Laboratory Theatre physical exercises as a training foundation while freely exploring other methods, improvisations, and interactions.
At first, we did not try to structure or fix emerging actions. We enjoyed the process. As we built puppets, masks, and various visual forms, the training gradually equipped us with skills useful for working with these different performing objects. Soon, we moved outdoors and began developing actions, improvisations, and dances. As our work evolved, the training evolved as well.
For some time, I became obsessed with plaster-casting people’s faces, making masks, and transforming these masks into visual performance objects. At other times, I experimented with puppets that also functioned as rattles, and we explored how they might live and “speak” within street theatrical actions.
The puppet, mask, or other object came first. We did not begin with a prewritten story. These actions were often closer to dances than to what is conventionally considered theatre. Training played an essential role in preparing performers to work skillfully with forms, to explore their expressive potential, and to deepen their relationship both to the form itself and to one another.
Simple principles helped organize the actions: remembering the beginning and end of an action, limiting or simplifying movement patterns, using pauses and stillness, varying rhythms and dynamics, and alternating between simultaneous action and a dialogue of actions in interactions. These are a few examples.
WROCŁAW PUPPET THEATRE
At the end of the 1980s, the Dean of my Drama School — my former teacher and the director of the Wrocław Puppet Theatre — asked if I would be interested in directing at his theatre. I was free to choose what I wanted to do.
I gladly accepted and wrote an adaptation of a Grimm fairy tale. Taking advantage of this artistic freedom, I designed original puppets consisting mainly of the characters’ heads, with pieces of fabric attached at the neck with openings for the actors’ hands. The stage was bare. We used a black background for a succession of actions and visual compositions created with painted flags that the actors moved, carried, danced with, and arranged into changing visual realities.
I worked with four actors. The first rehearsals were divided between reading the play and training with puppets and flags. We explored their possibilities through experimentation and improvisation, developing actions and dances and shaping visual environments for the scenes.
As we structured the material that emerged from improvisation, the work gradually took on the character of more conventional rehearsals. Sequences developed through improvisation and the elimination of unnecessary elements slowly became parts of the scenes.
I directed three more productions at this theatre. In each one, some form of preliminary training with the puppets created for the production was part of the process. It was particularly important when the puppets were unique in style and construction, and we had to explore their expressive potential.
ODIN TEATRET
One of Margaret’s questions asked what was most interesting to me in my training. So many things were interesting. But after a pause, I had an answer. It was not about one thing; it’s more about meeting Odin Teatret, participating in workshops led by its actors and Eugenio Barba, the theatre founder who, by the way, celebrates his 90th birthday this year.
Between 1961 and 1964, Barba assisted Grotowski at his theatre, then he studied Kathakali theatre in India, and after returning to Europe, he founded Odin Teatret. He trained his actors, and training remained the ensemble’s daily practice. They started with Laboratory Theatre exercises and practices, and later training was closely tied to studies of diverse, mostly Eastern performing traditions. In 1979, Barba founded ISTA, the International School of Theatre Anthropology, where Odin actors studied with theatre practitioners and scholars from all around the world. The research was devoted to identifying culturally universal principles that make an actor’s presence and performance captivating.
The basic observation Barba made was that performers use their bodies in a different way than non-performers. He called it extra-daily techniques. He wrote: “They are characteristic of the performer’s life even before anything is represented or expressed. This is not easy for a Westerner to accept. How is it possible that there exists a level of the performer’s art in which he or she is alive and present without either representing anything or having any meaning?”
Three pillars of extra-daily techniques were:
Alteration of Balance: Rejecting the natural walking balance of everyday life. The performer continually risks losing equilibrium (leaning, counterbalancing) but maintains control, keeping the body in a state of dynamic readiness.
The Principle of Opposition: Ensuring every movement contains an opposing force. If the body leans or directs its energy to the left, the head, gaze, or hips initiate or pull in the opposite direction.
Wasted Energy: Ignoring the biological efficiency used in everyday life. The performer expends more energy than required by the task, tightening the muscles to create resistance and an amplified, artificial stage presence.
Studying different traditions and working with universal principles made training very adaptable without losing its core. I participated in workshops they offered in Poland and in Denmark, and it enriched my own work immensely.
The term “pre-expressive,” related to the extra-daily techniques, could be puzzling. Improvised action could be interesting without following the narrative theme. An action inspired by specific tasks or themes could be stripped of its initial narrative layer and worked further, either by modifying the form or confronting it with other meanings. The actor does not just express the pre-designed life of the character. She is in search of the character’s life and identity. Barba writes about the dilated body. My understanding is that using these words, he also points toward the peculiar quality of the relationship between body and mind, the condition where body is transformed (“extended” or “expanded”) by used techniques and mind may follow the emerging narrative of the body in spite of and thanks to contradicting impulses and logics. The body speaks first; the mind may follow, searching for meanings.
This way of thinking helped me not only to integrate my varied experiences but also supported my projects and productions in which visual forms, puppets, masks, pendants, and other performing objects were created first, and where work, explorations of their expressive potential, and improvisations led to creating scenes, emerging narratives, and characters.
ACTING AND PUPPETRY TRAINING IN UNIQUE THEATRICAL PROJECTS
Lessons I got from working with Odin were particularly helpful when working with other artists-teachers and useful in developing projects where two or more instructors worked with groups and facilitated creative processes and experiences.
This was particularly fruitful when we worked with international groups, using more than one language. Work often consisted of basic training, building puppets, generating scores of actions solo and in groups, and varied montages and dialogues of prepared actions. Since teachers used different techniques and participants often did not know in advance what other actors or groups prepared, these dialogues were surprising, challenging, and inspiring. The principle of pre-expressive expression, which did not seek to convey any predetermined meaning, left each action open to multiple interpretations and induced a heightened state of awareness.
Let me bring Eugenio Boarba’s words one more time:
“The performer can start from the physical or from the mental; it doesn’t matter which, provided that in the transition from one to the other, a unity is reconstructed. Just as there is a lazy, predictable, grey way of moving, there is also a grey, predictable way of thinking.”
For me, this refers to a human actor as much as to a puppet, and a puppet and puppeteer duo.
CHILDREN’S THEATRE
At the end, I would like to mention that I found actor and puppeteer training to be very useful when working with children. School-age children have no difficulty understanding the concept of pre-expressive forms and actions. Jumping, walking, extending a hand, or falling can simply be what they are, without representing anything else.
In my work, every puppetry production with children began with training exercises and acting games. It has always been an enjoyable way to warm up and begin the class.
Featured photography by Paweł Syposz. “Black and White”, a street action by the Group of Theatrical Actions, Wrocław, 1986.
