The naming of Sylvanus

It was a troubling departure from London...all was in a state of disarray. At midnight, with only four hours to go until the alarm call for departure to Stone Henge, I still felt I had to continue with the puppet. He would somehow be important during the festive period - I wanted him to look his best. I wanted him to have a black velvet jacket.

Four am on the morning of the 21st of December, the Winter Solstice, the puppet was wrapped in a blanket, tied with cord, and would later sit on my lap as my bleary eyes watched the scenery change from North London to Wiltshire. Three years after first setting foot inside Stone Henge for the shortest day of the year, we were returning.

It was beautiful to be back. There was the same awe and the same feeling of returning to a safe, sacred, ancient space filled only with people whose similar inclinations had led them to make their voyage there, that very early morning. However, a fear passed through me - that I wouldn't feel the same magic, the same physical sensations which, last time, overwhelmed me. We listened to the Druids' ceremony. I felt like a spectator, whereas last time I felt like a participator...it made me feel empty. Then I remembered the puppet wrapped in its blanket and bound with its cord, hanging from my shoulder, ready to serenade the 2yr old son of my good friend Melissa who we were due to find in amongst the stones. I suddenly knew that this would be a space in which, if I unwrapped my puppet and let him sit on one of the stones, come alive, start breathing, watching and moving, he would be totally accepted. I began to unwrap the puppet.

Well thats the very moment when those crazy feelings returned. It was as though a fever was suddenly seeping into all the muscles of my body, draining them, weakening them, as if they were contracting against their will. The feeling that I had ingested magic mushrooms, or some strange substance beginning to overtake all of my limbs. It was the very feeling I had had three years previously and it didn't come on gradually, it arrived with a jolt - the moment I unwrapped the puppet. Strange.

We found the rock. Tall, thin, above my head height. I gently lifted the puppet so that he was sitting on the rock, looking down onto the hundreds of heads witnessing the solstice ceremony. I could not see the puppet, nor could I see the figures beneath him in his panorama. But one hand was on the stick controlling his head, the other held the metal rod guiding his left hand. And so the puppet became a spectator, a mute onlooker expressing his emotions through the raising of his hands and the turning of his head.

Dear blog, this was my first ever puppetry performance. This was the morning that I stepped into the unknown. Sure enough, he didn't let me down. He felt, he watched, I was wrapped in bliss to be living through him. My feelings finally had a home, a world to inhabit.

The ceremony came to an end, the crowd dispersed. There was an interim. Then the attention rotated 180 degrees. Now the sea of faces were watching the puppet. There was no more dialogue from the Druids to promt the puppet's performance now, only the simple fact that this figure was here, on a rock, on this morning. He continued to live, breathe, create his own story, feed off all around him. Cameras bleeped and flashed.

The lady who smiled the most throughout the performance wondered what the puppet was called, and when I told her it didn't have a name, that today was the first day of its completion and existence, she wondered whether it might be named after Sylvanus, after her Druid guide. And so on 21st December my very first puppet was christened Sylvanus.

A table puppet in the making ...

Playing Truant

Excuse me for going home this afternoon. I just couldn't do it any more.

You see, when you spend weeks being given incredible skills, having creative doorways opened for you, it gets to a point where unless you go home and sleep, and process all of this wonderment and decide what on earth to do with it, it is pointless.

We've learnt how to communicate a message by making a puppet.

How to communicate a message by using an object.

How to communicate a message by manipulating light sources.

We've been given a tool box which for me is exciting beyond belief, but the downside is that I am so exhausted I can't think straight. That is why I need to be here, home, trying to remember what I originally intended to do with this degree.

I think it's time to just..........um...........try and put something together. To take the plunge, stop procrastinating, pondering, speculating..........and just start making something that is mine, comes from my brain, no matter how sketchy, how amateurish, how naive. Wasn't that why I did this in the first place?

Part of the exhaustion of the past 24 hours stems from a visit I made after school yesterday, to the Mayfair Squat. Two people from my course told me they were going to a squat in an exclusive street in Mayfair, central London, to prepare for a performance they are putting on tomorrow involving a painter and a pianist. They told me this squat had become a collaborative artistic eutopia. I was tired, and feeling a little run down, but gut overruled brain and I knew I had to go with them.

It is exhausting to be over-inspired. It truly takes the life force out of you.

Past immaculately-suited Park Lane businessmen we stroll beneath huge, ornate buildings with vast windows....shiny black chauffer-driven vehicles whizz up and down the road....there is an exclusive-looking restaurant on one side of the road. On the other.......a fairly neutral but majestic building, with one enigmatic, hand made flag hanging over the entrance. The massive wooden door has a handwritten squatters' rights sign fastened to it. We knock for ages, no answer. This building is five storeys high after all. Finally a small, foreign guy wearing a beanie lets us in and disappears back into the labyrinth. My friends try to find their contact. I follow, up sweeping staircases, along passageways, across landings.

Its hard to express my feelings. Imagine you had a dolls' house in which you had invented a make-believe artistic hideaway, filled with mysterious nooks and crannies, distant melodies, treasure, and a variety of characters each with an interesting story to tell. Then imagine you became tiny and were able to explore it, wide-eyed.

On the bottom floor, a dozen bicycles belonging to the temporary and permanent inhabitants who constantly came and went through the wooden door. A huge drawing room, in which some people were constructing what looked like a treehouse with inter-connecting bridge. The next floor up.........we pass through a room containing a maze lined by doors. We twist and turn through the room, catching occasional glimpses through the gaps, of peoples' private dens and studios. On the top floor, a girl and a boy are creating a kind of glade surrounded by an arc of tree branches. There is the smell of burning sage.

What huge potential has this £6 million disused, high-ceilinged, expansive mansion.

After clearing timber, lugging a piano and sweeping the floor I leave with my head in a whirlwind.

From the Westcountry to the Balearics

Aaaaaaa. These have been inspiring times. I have realised that this is not a puppetry odyssey, and this is not a blog about puppetry. This is just about the grand treasure hunt towards.....whatever it is I am trying to edge towards, in all that I do and all that calls me. So I am going to have to broaden the subject matter significantly. Basically this is just a blog about me.

This month of September 2008 has been full of magic - over the past few weeks I have been lucky enough to spend time in my two most dearly-beloved places in the world, both of which have filled me with inspiration and emotion and seemed vital stopping-off points before I start a huge new chapter.

The first weekend of September I was at the Westcountry Storytelling Festival, on Dartington Estate, in Totnes, Devon. I had dreamt about this festival, and waited so long to go. The problem is I am not sure how efficiently I can put into words my feelings about the experience.

There were perhaps 300 people at the festival. From our arrival to the green, leafy grounds of the estate I realised that between every single stranger at this event there was an acknowledgement, an openness. Every stranger passing would exchange a hello. Eye contact was a constant throughout, and how good it felt. The natural thing to do around the small central campfire was to talk freely, absent-mindedly, to whoever was nearby. It all felt very healthy, very soothing for the spirit.

I was a total newcomer to this world of Storytelling, which in this case brought together traditional english tellers, interpreters of Sufi tales, American mytho-poets, musicians......what reeled me in was not any individual teller or tale, any one experience from the weekend, it was the effect of all of it woven into one thing. It was moving to spend two days in such a tiny community which believed in storytelling and the ritual act of telling and listening. That ritual was like a spell over everyone....all 300 adults and children, all open, attentive, listening and relishing. What an incredible thing.

I liked the way that the Storyteller boundaries were undefined. Late at night around the campfire, three American poets Jay Leeming, Thomas Smith and Tim Young took turns reciting their poems, interspersed with gentle banter, nuggets of stories hidden from view. Later, in the shadows, two men whom I later discovered to be called the Brothers Frantzich took hold of the campfire gatherers and began to sing songs, one drum and one guitar. Slowly they invited participation. Before long we were singing gospel songs so very beautiful, so simple, so pure in message. The brothers were leading us along from one song into the next...repeated words, rounds, endless harmonies, music that was all about hope in the face of pain. I'll never forget that time around the campfire, when every single person, full of a lifetime of vocal inhibition, was singing incredibly, and loving it. They later said that such collective magic doesn't happen often.

Twice during the weekend I seated myself before Robin Williamson, formerly of the Incredible String Band, to a collection of his animated, lengthly, interactive stories interspersed with soft songs on the harp. Tears fell quite easily in the presence of this man who had created such whimsical, romantic psychedelic folk that I had clung so dearly onto in previous years......to see him creating it anew, to see him still carrying the flame.

I came away from the storytelling festival not wanting to leave this soft, secretive, enchanted world which I had just discovered. I wanted to follow the mytho-poets back to Minnesota. I wanted to trail around with the Frantzich brothers to more music gatherings in inns and on beaches. But I felt sure that this is the beginning of something. During the weekend new developments were spoken of........including the birth of the Westcountry School of Myth and Storytelling, and its opening weekend in Dartmoor, in late October. I truly hope to continue to be in touch with this irresistible subculture.

That leaves the other special place visited this month. An island which I first stepped onto as a tiny child, and which I keep having to return to...........more on that later.

Prelude

For the past four days I have been spending three hours at the Little Angel Puppet Theatre in Islington, London, doing a workshop on developing character in marionettes (a little side note: it allows me to hold a proper, a real puppet for the first time since childhood...) It has astounded me how exhausting these three hour sessions have been.

Although this workshop is separate to the course, I feel I may look back on this week and see it as absolutely pivotal. What I really needed was to get a feeling, become introduced to manipulating marionettes...to just confirm to myself that it is how I have been imagining all this time... I was afraid I might be disappointed - or even have a huge crisis and ask whether I have made a grave error of judgement.

It was all that I imagined and so much more.

It was this exercise that did it for me. We spent a considerable length of time walking around the theatre, with the gentle encouragement of our lovely, earnest teacher Christopher. We were to create three different walks - the first representing how we felt on waking this morning, the second representing how we would feel as a "master puppeteer" and the third, what kind of walk our 'inner puppet' would have. As an individual whose beloved drama lessons ended just before GCSE level it was a huge pleasure and novelty to be focusing on the subtle movements of the body, and the massive effects of the imagination. We were to choose one 'character' and build on it, strengthen it. I chose the master puppeteer. My master puppeteer was just a very calm, quietly confident individual with strong hands and a look of contentment. Now we were told to go and choose a puppet off the rail, and extend this character into it.

The elegant, stately human puppets seemed to be at the far end of the rail, so I opted for a goose and wondered what would happen. This was the big moment: my first experience.

I stood in a space with this surprisingly heavy assemblage of wooden parts dangling by string from a very complex-looking handle contraption. Our teacher put on some puppet-friendly, ambient music. And I just tried to transpose the feeling I had whilst walking, and the person I imagined, into this goose. I ended up bobbing it up and down gently in the air, and making it slightly sway its head from side to side as if contently pondering nice thoughts. After a bit of fiddling around I discovered a part of the handle that unclipped, so that now the long goose neck could arch upwards and sideways and downwards, its personality really beginning to ooze out.

All I can say is, I doubt it looked like much to a bystander, but in those ten minutes I felt a huge stream of very odd, intense feelings. During that time I concentrated on the goose like I have never concentrated on anything before, and to me it was animated and alive. Its movements were scarce, and really the effort was spent trying to keep it very steady and still. But by focusing on such tiny little shifts and movements (I can really see I'm going to have to watch out for cliches and trite phrases on this blog) I felt like I was sharing in a spooky and electric silence with a living thing. It was how I would imagine Zen buddhists feel after meditating on flowers, or blades of grass.

In any case, it confirmed for me that the art of the marionette holds some kind of enigma, and it made me almost pass out from exhaustion on the tube on the way home...

Things that stoked the fire.

I am attempting to bring you forward to the present tense so please bare me a little longer. First I just have to explain how this Puppetry lark got into my head and under my skin.
Last autumn, for the first time in my life, I was living close enough to London to be able to stretch the possibilities of what one could get up to there in a day. I began to realise that, rather than being a mighty, fearsome ugly machine, London held tiny pockets of enchantment, and it was an exciting process beginning to seek these pockets out.
One day at the computer, I had a daydream - about a puppet theatre on a canal barge. I thought it would make a wonderful idea for a story, but I doubted that such a thing already existed. When I typed "puppet theatre barge" into the internet search engine I discovered The Puppet Barge. Possibly the most life-affirming discovery I have ever made on Google.

www.puppetbarge.com/

The present location of the barge was Richmond in Surrey - a refined, elegant, candles-in-windows style town surrounded by the green countryside and intersected by a river. The nights were drawing in, England was becoming chilly, pumpkins were selling well in the supermarkets....and around this time myself, my boyfriend and two close friends also searching for a similar kind of fairytale undertook the journey to Richmond for an evening performance of The Ancient Mariner at the Puppet Barge.
There it was, we could see it - the long boat covered in its mysterious dark tarp, the little steps leading over the water to reach it. Light fading from the riverside. We drank locally-made cherry beer in a riverside pub, and then approached the Barge.
Down the steps, into the hatch, and into a miniscule submarine world of wooden walls and ceiling, the smell of coffee coming from a little percolator on a stand, a pile of marionette books and postcards on the side and old, dusty puppets hanging in corners, staring.
Into the theatre - about the total size of a schoolbus - the lights dim, the play starts. A disembodied voice verberates through a speaker, an old man narrates the tale....in it there are fishermen, billowing sails, an albatross...moments of silence, moments of wind, moments of water rippling deep down under water. Sometimes all there is to be seen is the great white sail of the ship against the black night, moving in the wind. Or of the depths of the ocean, with scatterings of dust falling through it like miniscule sea creatures.
At the interval we stood out on the deck, as a blanket of mist settled on the river and a slice of white waxing moon hung above us. It was freezing. And at that point we knew that there was something impossible to explain about this new world we had just uncovered.

Here is where it all begins

The purpose of this blog is to record what promises to be a fairly pivotal chapter in my life, which started around two days ago. After spending the past eight years (since I left school) as far away from institutionalised places of learning as possible, I am now making a full U-turn and returning to the world I spent so long running away from. But I am not doing your average undergraduate degree - I am starting a three year BA(hons) degree in Puppetry at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Until about a year and a half ago the mysterious cultural undercurrent of Puppetry had neither entered my thoughts nor caught my attention. I was just beginning a one year Art and Design diploma, to see where it would take me - I always knew it would take me somewhere. In many ways it was a rather harrowing and upsetting year for me. During my time away from schools and universities - living around Spain, soaking up parts of Morocco and later Mexico, I felt like I was truly beginning to tap into my own natural creativity - in fact my whole lifestyle was designed to support it in the best possible way. It was childlike, un-thought out, it grew in an unplanned, meandering way and the sense of happiness and, I suppose, inner peace that it gave me was huge. During my wanderings through places I started to recognise an affinity with craft traditions, things which took time, patience, love and extraordinary dedication. And at the same time I discovered that the amazing artistic creations I kept stumbling upon, and seemed to be looking for, on roadsides, up hills, outside peoples' houses, had a name, which I could use to search the media for endless other tantalising examples - Outsider Art. Art made by individuals outside the sphere of formal artistic practice - untrained, unrelated to financial gain, born of a private passion and vision.

This photo was taken on a roadside in Nevada, USA. The creator, a man called Slim Selems, died recently and a friend was displaying his four 'sculptures' in the yard of his mechanic workshop.

But I'm digressing. My one-year Art Diploma showed me, with bittersweet clarity, that pinning my hopes on the formal art world as a way to express myself would only cause me upset. The sincerity, the feeling of the kind of creativity I had discovered seemed to be a cause of great embarrassment with my tutors. What they wanted from me was mental enquiry, not romantic, gushy, twee outpourings of expression. Apparently it is not good to give way to feelings in the contemporary art world - such sincerity only runs the grave risk of rejection and ridicule. Although I managed, finally, to create a piece that embodied my outlook, it was a struggle from start to finish and I knew my days in this kind of environment were numbered.