National Puppet Slam #ATL

Beau Brown hosts The 2012 National Puppet Slam at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta Friday August 3rd at 8:00PM and Saturday, August 4th at 8PM.  For more information, call 404-873-3391 or visit puppet.org/perform/nationalpuppetslam

Experience the beauty, ingenuity, and hilarity of short-form puppet theater in this showcase of puppet slam acts from across the United States. Nominated by their respective slams, then curated by The Puppet Slam Network and the Center for Puppetry Arts, the nation’s best slam performances will be presented for two nights only!  

 
The lineup includes: Travis Lope #Auburn #NY,  Katie McClenahan #Portland #OR,  Gregg van Lanningham  #Atlanta, Therese Schorn #Ossining #NJ, Carla Rhodes #Brooklyn, Leila Ghaznavi #Philadelphia, Gwendolyn Bonar #Phoenix, Lyon Hill #Columbia #SC, Honey Goodenough #Brooklyn, and Spencer Lott #Kansas City 

Marsian: Why are you excited about the National Puppet Slam?
Beau Brown: I am excited to have so many talented slam artists all in place for the public to see. It was great doing it at the Nationals Festival last year for the puppeteer community and this year we get to share it with the public. I think that having it at a important puppet institution like the Center for Puppetry Arts is a wonderful way to continue to legitimize short form puppetry. People who would come and see adult programming at the Center might not go to a smaller local slam.

Marsian:  Why have a National Puppet Slam?
Beau Brown: I think it important to recognize excellence in our field. Right now UNIMA and PofA don’t really take much notice of short form and it is my hope that, as the tradition of the National Slam continues, acceptance into the show is considered an honor and something that the artists should feel extremely proud of. It is the Oscars of puppet slam! Also doing it at the Center gives these artists a chance to perform on the main stage of the Center for Puppetry Arts which without doing a full length show is not an opportunity that these artists might otherwise get.

Marsian: How do you see this selection showcasing where this movement going?
BB: I think that the lineup truly reflects the diversity in slam performances and puppetry styles. Just like the National Slam last year it shows that puppets slams aren’t just “naughty puppets”.

Marsian: It sounds like people are coming from all over the country...
BB: I have! It is so exciting to see members of the puppetry community making the trip. I am putting up some of them at my place and other members of the Atlanta puppet community have stepped forward to host some out of town guests.

Lets take a closer look at the performers...
 

Travis Lope #Auburn #NY

Travis Lope is a performer, puppet designer, and a costume designer and technician. Favorite credits include working with Dr. Cosby on Cosby, Lewis Black in Black Humor and Lorenzo Lamos in Dracula. Travis particularly enjoys building larger than life puppets. Ranging from dragon heads and dinosaurs to a 31-foot tall, cable controlled Giant for Ronald Dahl’s BFG. Travis’s work has been featured in commercials for the Connecticut State Lottery and Bob's Discount Furniture.  He recently finished graduate school at the University of Connecticut. The Enchanted Vanity Set has been performed in four different states.

Katie McClenahan #Portland #OR

Katie's love affair with puppets was sparked by a certain green, Balinese sea captain puppet named Captain Clamp. He and Katie were part of a roving pirate, puppet rock opera band consortium called Jollyship the Whiz-bang. After years of touring, Katie departed the high seas to find her land-lubbing ways were far more productive. Currently residing in Portland, Oregon, Katie runs Beady Little Eyes, a puppet event company that specializes in keeping adult short-form puppetry alive in the Pacific Northwest. 

Gregg van Lanningham #Atlanta

Gregg Van Laningham is a puppeteer who got his start in the world of puppet slams. He has written and performed dozens of shows over the course of the past two years, and currently works as a freelance puppeteer in Atlanta with a specialty in science education. Gregg often collaborates with his best friend and creative partner Qate Bean, and together the two of them have performed for audiences ranging from a 4-year-old's birthday party to a crowd of hundreds at Dragon*Con. Gregg earned a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Georgia Tech.

Therese Schorn #Ossining #NJ

Therese Schorn is a NY based puppeteer, clown and designer. She most recently performed in Puppet Art Attacks. She also performed and taught at the 2011 International Yunlin Puppet Festival in Taiwan. She is a 23 year veteran of the Big Apple Circus Clown Care bringing puppetry music and clowning to hospitalized children. Shows include A Village of Fools (Theater for the New City) and Peaceable Kingdom ,a puppet and physical theater play with a cast of 2.4 children. She also constructs and performs with giant puppets for Nyack’s Halloween Parade.

Carla Rhodes #Brooklyn

Carla Rhodes has been practicing the art of ventriloquism since the age of 9, after seeing Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop on television and to her absolute delight, was later mentored by her hero. Throughout her teens, Carla performed all over her hometown of Louisville. She has been living and performing in New York City since 2004, at such legendary venues such as Joe's Pub. Recently, Carla performed a full-length rock'n'roll ventriloquism show, The Continuing Story of Carla Rhodes. Time Out New York proclaims the show “is an idiosyncratic neo-retro blend of ventriloquism, rock music and comic storytelling" and she “throws her voice like a curveball, bringing old-school ventriloquism skills to new-school puppets (including one of Keith Richards).”  

Leila Ghaznavi #Philadelphia

Leila Ghaznavi is an actor, puppeteer and playwright currently based in Philadelphia. She has been featured as an emerging artist at The National Puppetry Conference at The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and her original multi-media puppet work, Silken Veils, received five stars and was nominated for best new work at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Silken Veils has been featured on the Leonard Lopate Show, BBC Persia, and Voice of America. Her featured work, Remembrances was presented at 2011 Puppetry Festival, UNIMA Day in NYC, and the Puppet Pandemic Slam in Philadelphia. Leila Ghaznavi has an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts.

Gwendolyn Bonar #Phoenix

Gwen is a second generation puppeteer who started puppetry as soon as she was able to walk and talk. A professional puppeteer from the Great Arizona Puppet Theater, she has performed all around the state of Arizona as well as numerous guest performances at theaters around the country. She has also had the pleasure to perform internationally, including Kazahkstan this Fall. 

  

Lyon Hill #Columbia #SC

Lyon takes his inspiration from comics, animation, pop up books, view master reels, and other graphic arts. In his work, he combines these diverse mediums to create new hybrids.  Supine is a nightmare experienced by his wife. Small paper puppets are projected large scale to tell the surreal story of a woman being chased through a desolate city by a shadowy figure.

Honey Goodenough #Brooklyn

Honey Goodenough is a New York City based puppeteer, producer, costume designer, educator, clown, and magician. She earned her MA in Educational Theater from NYU. She has produced many puppetry related events including the premiere of Puppet Rampage (Puppeteers of America Festival Documentary film). Honey has co-curated Emerging Artist Theater's Laugh Out Loud: Clown and Puppetry Festival in 2009, the Voice 4 Vision Puppet Slams hosted at The Theater for the New City in 2011, as well as the UNIMA USA: Celebration of World Puppetry, hosted by Teatro Sea. She is a three-time recipient of the Puppet Slam Network grant to produce Puppet Pandemic, a showcase of puppetry works developed during The National Puppetry Conference at The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, which supports the Alumni Scholarship, to help artists create more short form puppetry. Honey has been touring from Brooklyn to Brookline, Austin to Boston and throughout the Puppet Slam Network for the past four years. 

Spencer Lott #Kansas City

Spencer Lott is a freelance puppeteer. He develops and produces commercials and online video content as well as live stage productions. This summer his work was on display at the Springfield Art Association and his original puppet shows The Bicycle Brothers from Ohio and Bigfoot’s Magical Moped are now in development. Recently Spencer has performed in Puppet Slams in Kansas City, New York City and Chicago. After the National Puppet Slam, Spencer will return to Kansas City where he will act in Theatre Gym’s adaptation of The Miser by Moliere.

Honolulu Puppet Slams: Enda O. Breadon Interview - Part 2

Enda O. Breadon curates the Kolohe Puppet Slam in Honolulu and has worked as an actor, director, movement coach and playwright across the United States and Europe.  As a teaching artist in creative drama, Enda employs both clowning and puppetry.  His lifelong love of puppets has led him to include them in a number of shows that he’s written and directed.  While living in Atlanta, he was mentored by Clint Thornton and Spencer Stephens, who he met at the Center for Puppetry Arts. Enda briefly studied puppetry at the University of Hawai’i.  

M: Is Honolulu part of a slam circuit?

EB: For all practical purposes, the answer to all of that is “no.”  There’s a really great, fairly new burlesque troupe here in Honolulu, Cherry Blossom Cabaret.  Last October Chinatown hosted Hawai’i’s first ever fringe festival and there’s a new, unnamed clown/physical theatre workshop that is about two months old, so there’s a young art scene with a lot of chance for overlap that hasn’t fully materialized as strongly as I feel it is about to.  And in fact, it was a connection through Cherry Blossom that we were able to get a new location for the slam this month.  I’m told some of the Cherry Blossom dancers will make appearances in slams/cabarets on the west coast, particularly the Bay area.  But most local artists don’t think in terms of circuit because this is an expensive rock fly on and off of - San Diego is as close to New York as it is to Honolulu. 

 

M: Dang!

EB: And while our economy depends on it, the idea that this is place is some kind of theme park in the middle of the ocean, doesn’t encourage artistic interaction.  We’ve seen a lot of people come out here, give a half-ass performance because they really just want to be on vacation and then book it out of here.  Because of what we get from national performers some people here really believe we are a “less-than” destination artistically and there are others that look at what we get from the outside and have a really low aesthetic bar – it’s a cycle.  That said, there have been some really great performers who have come through and some promoters doing yeoman’s work, but they are in the minority.   I hope both Kolohe Puppet Slam and our fringe festival become a destination for West Coast artists and are part of encouraging local artists to start thinking in terms of a circuit and getting their work out there.  But if it happens it’ll probably take some time. 

M: Tell us about a fabulous failure and what you've learned from it.
EB: Well, just this week I feel like I’ve experienced one of my biggest failures to date.  Between what felt like the great success of the first slam in February, I ran into some problems.  As I’ve said, I just directed Inspector General for TAG, a show with live actors and two different kinds of puppets that play minor characters.  Literally, the night Inspector opened several of TAG’s board members complained that sock puppets have no place on the TAG stage and are “not to the quality of what we do.”  The poster and all the promotional material used had the sock puppets to promote the show, but apparently that somehow got past the attention of some board members.  And they apparently hadn’t talked to the Artistic Director, who’d been talking excitedly about the puppets for around six months before the show ever went into rehearsal. At this point, I must take pains to again thank Brad Powell, TAG’s Artistic Director.  He went to the mat to defend both the puppets in Inspector and to defend the slam to his board.  But after some of the longest days I’ve ever experienced, it was clear that it was not in the best interest of the slam or of TAG to hold a puppet slam at a theatre where there were hostile board members.   

M: So I guess we won’t be seeing the Lion King or Warhorse at TAG any time soon…

EB: The stress and potential for unhealthy resentment abounded.  But I’m trying to stay positive, I went to a hippy-ish Franciscan-nun-run elementary school.  I wish TAG nothing but success in their puppet-less future.

M: ::Sigh::

EB: A friend and fellow artist here in Honolulu gave me a “buck up” talk the other day saying that this was a lesson about focusing on the kind of work you want to do and making your own opportunities.  I guess that’s as good as a lesson as any.  This is all just in the last week, maybe after a few months of reflection I’ll have a real good perspective about what the moral of this tale is.  

Again, if there are other curators who have walked through similar experiences please, please, please email or call me.   I’d love to hear how others handled it so I can properly reflect and learn from the situation.

M: Please post that on our Facebook page, a great place to dialogue with other slam organizers… Why do you think Puppet Slams are important 

EB: For me, puppet slams are all about 2 things: 1) getting a chance to workshop your material and 2) experiencing the other puppeteers in your community/circuit.  We all know that not every idea we have is worth pushing to a full piece, that some of the best pieces need a lot of work to get good, and that pieces are awesome as short pieces. 

We also all know that getting to interact with other artists fills-the-well and motivates us to do more and better work.  The proverbial rising tide raises all the proverbial boats until the sailors puke over the proverbial sides.  

And to a much lesser degree, it gives people a chance to see artists grow through their career in the same way music fans like to talk about the difference between an early album/show and what a band is doing in their 40s.  I think what Patton Oswalt is doing with the Comedians of Comedy is pretty much the same thing we’re trying to do with slams. 

M: What motivates you to create a puppet slam piece?
EB: The same sick thing in my soul that got me kicked out of class almost every single day of my elementary, middle and high school career. 

M: Which slam artists you are inspired by?

EB: I’ve already mentioned Nicole earlier.  Her ideas and enthusiasm are inspiring.  My friends Gregg Van Laningham and Qate Bean have some characters they’ve been working on the Atlanta puppet slam circuit that are apparently illicit in the slams and yet they get requests to do them at the kid’s birthday parties too.  So while I haven’t seen them live, the fact they have dirty puppets also performing kids’ parties is among the funniest things I’ve ever heard.   They’re great writers, even though I suspect they wouldn’t use the word “writer” to describe themselves. 

Speaking of writers, while not puppeteers, there are two writing partners that constantly inspire me and the ideas we bounce around are starting to make it into some of my pieces.  First is Joe Goltz, the funniest human being, period.  He’s a musician and part of the comedy scene in Chicago.  But Joe and I have been friends since elementary school and it was scripts we wrote in radio and TV class in high school that not only got me suspended but made me really want to create for life.  Second is Lani Murray, who first came up with the idea of a dirty Bronte puppet piece.  I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy a relationship with someone 45 years older than me that is more raunchy or fulfilling. 

M: What pieces do you have in circulation to perform in puppet slams? 

EB: Hopefully the Bronte piece soon.  I think I’m going to retire the Russian sock puppets, at least for a while.  It might just bring up stressful memories of the TAG situation. I’m thinking of bringing back the dog chases from Stewart Little and making a new piece with them that has nothing to do with the book.  I’d like to remount and tour a puppet version I did of Marki Shalloe’s One Hand Clapping.  It’s a great short script about masturbating. And I’ve got a puppet I love that is a blue monster, with a cool way of working the hands.  But I just can’t make any material stick.  Maybe some day.   Also, it’s not my piece, but I’d love to see Nicole’s Chucky piece get a little longer and go on tour.  It is so well done.      

M: Where can people contact you to perform?

EB: The best thing they can do is call or email me.  kolohepuppet@gmail.com or (808)457-9324.  I’ll probably screen the calls, so make sure to leave a message. 

M: What is the future of puppet slams?

EB: I would really love to see some of our young puppeteers get to work the circuit nationally and bring back here what they learn.  And now that I’ve produced a slam I’d love to return to Atlanta where I was at best a fringe meteor to the puppet scene and watch the slams there with a whole new perspective.  As for the future of the Puppet Slam Network, I’ll probably look like an idiot if I make any predictions. 

M: What advice do you have for up and coming slam artists just starting out?

EB: I’d tell them to give me advice.  I am making this shit up as I go and I really have no idea what I’m doing. 

M: Anything else we should know?

EB: Don’t sleep with a raccoon in your bed.  You are always welcome to come here and perform, I’ll do whatever I can with my meager resources to help (also contact promoter Tim Bostock).  But don’t come here with a lame-ass I’m on vacation attitude.  Don’t bring rabies to the islands. 

Honolulu Puppet Slams: Enda O. Breadon Interview - Part 1

Enda O. Breadon curates the Kolohe Puppet Slam in Honolulu and has worked as an actor, director, movement coach and playwright across the United States and Europe.  As a teaching artist in creative drama, Enda employs both clowning and puppetry.  His lifelong love of puppets has led him to include them in a number of shows that he’s written and directed.  While living in Atlanta, he was mentored by Clint Thornton and Spencer Stephens, who he met at the Center for Puppetry Arts. Enda briefly studied puppetry at the University of Hawai’i.

2008 Photo: Sandra Payne

Marsian: So you are hosting, Kolohe Puppet Slam this month?

Enda Breadon: Honestly, I regularly tell myself, “Holy crap, no one is going to show up to watch or be in this thing.”  I don’t know if paralyzing self-doubt is normally part of the process for other curators, but it is for me. 

M: How do you find acts?

EB: ..After deep philosophical arguments with myself about where to find performers and audience, I email and call everyone I know on Oahu who has any connection to puppetry.  A number see a “slam” as somehow beneath them, but I’ve seen some seriously gnarly folks getting excited and stepping up either to spread the word or enter. 

M: Like?

EB: Jeff Gere is a local puppeteer who deserves serious props (notice my hipster use of 90’s street terms, very “slam” they tell me).  The biggest support the slam has gotten is from Mark Branner, professor of puppetry at UH.  He’s championed the slam to his students and has us connected with the young performers that are the future of the local arts scene.  I’ve been on the UH campus a couple of times badgering his students to take part, with Mark’s support. 

M:  What inspired you to start hosting puppet slams?
EB: I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an expert at puppetry.  I had three really strong motivations for making this happen: 

1. Selfishly as an audience member, I wanted to make sure there were opportunities for me to see more puppetry happening;

2. Through the puppetry classes at UH-Manoa there are a lot of young puppeteers here and I wanted to give all of them an opportunity to get in front of an audience and try out their material in a way that was not based getting a grade and made them feel like this was a community to stay and continue their careers;

3. In Atlanta I saw how great puppet slams in were for encouraging artists to gather and share ideas.   We had a few really great events serving this purpose, but I’d love to see at least 5-10 more. 

M: Have you performed at other slams?
EB: Again, I feel sheepish in answering this one.  Even though I lived in Atlanta for six years and worked there regularly for almost ten years, I never once performed in one of their many slams.  It was always on my to-do list, but a combination of a usually pretty-busy schedule and fear kept me on the sidelines of Atlanta’s slams – mostly the latter. 

M: Well, there’s no time like the present…

EB: I still kick myself in the butt for not using slams as a way to try out the puppets in several shows that I directed.  For example, in 2008 I did a version of Stewart Little that had some two dimensional puppets that allowed us to do some really fun chase scenes.  The prop designer called them “protest signs.”  I thought they worked great and got good feedback, but to this day I wish I’d had an extra 3-ish hours of rehearsal time with them.  I could’ve tried them out at a slam, problem solved.  But I guess my head was in my okole.       

M: So you have been hosting your slam at The Actors’ Group in Kohole..

EB:  First, I think it’s important to say that the slam might not exist if it were not for the support of TAG’s Artistic Director, Brad Powell.  I have directed exactly one show at TAG.  About a year ago, Brad asked me to direct Inspector General, which was my very first interaction with TAG or with Brad.  From the beginning it was part of my concept to have a sock puppet Greek chorus in Inspector.  Because Brad and I were talking about Inspector General and about puppets, it was a pretty natural fit to do the first Kolohe Puppet Slam at TAG.  And our sock puppets in Inspector (but not the “head puppets” we also use) got to use the slam as a way to help the puppeteers improve technique and find out what worked and didn’t work. 

M: Will you be having future slams at TAG?

EB: Unfortunately we’ve just had to move the slam out of TAG.  I’m not sure if I’ll direct at TAG again.  Brad hasn’t made a specific offer, but keeps telling me he wants me back.  The hulabaloo I’ll go into later has me wondering if that would be a wise decision.  The great upside of the story is that ARTsmith, a venue and artist-collective, stepped up and in the space of two phone calls was really excited to give our a home to our slam this month.  ARTsmith is about to do some reorganizing and in the shuffle we may be homeless again. I would love to get advice from other curators who have gone through this kind of thing. 

M: What was it like hosting your very first slam just a few weeks ago?

EB: I co-hosted with Judy Doodee (Howdy Doodee’s former trophy wife).  She was there to shill her new biography, Woodies I Have Known.  Apparently, the section on Pinocchio is pretty steamy. 

M: I haven’t seen that title.. I guess it must be too hot for the Puppetry Store. . .

EB: I wore an Aloha shirt, I guess because I believe in reinforcing stereotypes. Before the opening, I was sweating in places the FCC doesn’t like you to talk about. 

M: I hear botox can help with that.

EB: The whole day leading up to it my wife and I were making trophies for the slam.  They turned out appropriately crappy I think.  The winner trophy had a sign on the back that said, “Quit looking at my ass!” The Russian sock puppets from Inspector General took second place.   While not puppeteering, I interacted as part of their performance.  It was later in the evening, so a lot of the nerves had worn off.  But we had judges, so even though I was co-host and curator, I’ve got a little bit of defense against favoritism charges. 

M: Are you working on anything particular for your next slam?

EB: My friend Lani Murray and I have half-written a dirty puppet piece about the Bronte sisters using Barbie puppets.  We’re tentatively going to try out at the third Kolohe Puppet Slam.  I’m hoping when my wife and I bring our new baby to the mainland to meet family I can also go to some slams and enter the Bronte piece.  Just FYI, Lani is the funniest, dirtiest 79-year old I have ever known.  On the day we met she told me, “You know the best thing about my double mastectomy is that I can go topless on Halloween.”  

M: It’s a real gift to be able to make your own cancer hilarious.  What’s the most exotic location you’ve seen a slam?

EB: While Honolulu would probably be pretty exotic to a lot of puppeteers, in comparison to here, I guess the most exotic place I’ve seen a slam/cabaret was in Dublin.  My parents are from there and my cousin has worked the cabaret circuit with a really hilarious character I’ve seen her do twice.  Unfortunately the second time I was watching it with my mom and my cousin’s mom.  When she started her dirty ditties we all tried not to look at each other.  I’m pretty sure she’s taken that character to London and Edinburgh, but not positive.  I also once saw a poetry slam in Cardiff, Wales, that was really fun because the big name poets – the big draws – were mostly plastered and didn’t give a shit.  One of them joked about how he’d lost a slam at a boy’s school earlier in the day because the student judges all voted for the “busty female gym teacher.”

M: What’s the edgiest slam piece you have witnessed?

EB: As for edgiest, it might have been our winner last time.  It was a puppet that manipulated his own puppet, who had just gotten out of prison.  It was really cool.  The judges gave the award to Chucky, the puppet, and not to the puppeteer ultimately working them both.  In the interest of full disclosure, that puppeteer was Nicole Deslauries, who designed my Russian sock puppets that got second.  I only met Nicole when she expressed an interest in the slam.  So you can point out how awesome she is and/or point out how the slam is already drawing people together 

M: Done! What was the worst slam you’ve been to?

EB: Nothing jumps to mind as far as puppet slams.  However, I was once a judge for a high school acting slam/competition that was beyond painful. 

M: What made it a disaster, beyond the obvious?

EB: It was the complete level of bullshit from the parents and teachers.  They were hostile to the judges, all of whom were professional actors doing it as a favor to the host school.  Just thinking about that now is a reminder how important it is for me to keep the slam here all about having a good time.  If people are getting angry emails a week later because of the results and it isn’t fun, nothing else probably matters. I won’t say the name, but it was pretty prestigious private school in Atlanta.  I hope for the students’ sake the drama teacher there has grown up a little and it has rubbed off on the parents.   

M: Join us for part 2 of our interview with Enda O. Breadon where we talk more about the Honolulu puppet slam scene…