The Future of Puppet Slams

Leading Puppet Slam Artists reflect on where they see the Puppet Slam movement in the future. Where do you see the Puppet Slam movement in the future? Join the conversation on our Facebook Page.

Dolly Wiggler Cabaret #Calgary, The Wind Up Arsenal, 2011, Photo: Sean Dennie

Roxie Myhrum, curator of Puppet Showplace Slam #Brookline

I see more collaboration between puppeteers and musicians. Puppet Playlist did this successfully, and many of our regular performers are musicians themselves or are tapped into the musician community. And puppet shows are infinitely better with live music.

Honey Goodenough, curator of PuppetPandemic

 I’m constantly surprised by the support this movement has inspired. With the help of many friends from the PSN, I have partnered with other Slams to tour Puppet Pandemic:

Enda O. Breadon, curator Kolohe Puppet Slam #Honolulu

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.

Beau Brow, curator of the  Puckin’ Fuppet Show, 

The Puppet Slam at DragonCon and the National Puppet Slam  #Atlanta 

I would love to see a puppet slam tour, it would be a feat to find time when enough people were available to do it, but a week or so touring up a coast or the Midwest, or somewhere, putting on puppet shows and maybe workshopping in cities to help them start puppet slams would be a really lovely endeavor.

I also like the idea of encouraging slams to get video projectors and screens and have a system where slams can show other slam's work, either as filler, if it's needed, or to show some brilliant show that just happened in Seattle to the fine folks of Asheville, because how else will they get to see it?

Alissa Hunnicut, guest curator of New Brew #Brooklyn

 I really appreciate what the Puppet Slam Network does with financial granting for the people who produce slams on a regular basis.  I found out the hard way with my first producing experience how much money it costs to do a full slam in a theater space out of pocket when you pay your puppeteers, lighting designer, sound designer, publicity, programs, host, etc.  If we want people to produce evenings of high quality theater, the financial help that the network is doing is so important.

I love the communication that has opened up between slams cultivated by the Slam Network. It's a great resource for a new performer to find performance opportunities if they aren't tapped into those in their area.  I hope the network continues to grow its support of the individual performer along with the producers.  Offering ways to showcase their work (maybe individual pages with a simple CMS performers can use to generate a profile), and perhaps offering financial support for developing new short form puppetry is an area that could be considered.

Valeska Populoh, curator of Puppet Slamwich! #Baltimore:

More slams in more cities so that it is easier for people to tour from one site to another. We still need to get better at coordinating our dates with other slam sites, though! This can be tough, since many slams are organized by a volunteer crew of folks with other jobs.  The Puppet Slam Network really helps us get a bigger picture of what is happening along the East Coast in the coming few months!

Evan O'Television, host of Blood from a Turnip #Providence

I would like to see the Puppet Slam Network continuing it's current trajectory.  It's pretty inspiring to see it grow.  And I would like to see more and more of the Puppet Slam Network in person.  Namely, I would absolutely love to have a majority of the shows I do in 2013 to be at Slams around the country.  Puppet shows and puppet audiences have always been my favorite crowds.

Special thanks to Paul Eide from Puppetry Journal for helping to edit this entry.

Where Do You Find Inspiration?

If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, what makes these leading slam artists sweat?

 

Nasty, Brutish & Short: a Puppet Cabaret #Chicago - Davey K, Ian Fullerton, Stephen Lieto, 2011 Photo: Links Hall

Deborah Hunt, curator of Sobre la Mesa #SanJuan

The shortness of time inspires me. To create a succinct piece that adds to an evening’s intrigue gets my juices going.

Valerie Meiss, curator of the Wham Bam Puppet Slam #Asheville

beauty, chaos, unfinished stories in my head, songs, friends of mine, relationships, odd facts I recall from history class... anything and everything!

Alissa Hunnicut, guest curator of New Brew #Brooklyn

For me it almost always starts with a song.  Something that when I hear the song I "see" something, usually a moment, a single image that becomes the jumping off point visually.

Lana Schwarcz, curator of Slam Noir #Melbourne

I was inspired by attending the National Puppet Slam in Atlanta when I visited in 2011. I saw the great work that was created by the themed slams in the US and the strong community that it created, and I started to feel upset that we didn't have that same sense of community here in Australia. 

Alexander Winfield, curator of the Pirate Puppet Cabaret #London

Inspiration can come from many sources: a banal occurrence seen while walking home, a dream, a piece from a history book. Who knows? Inspiration is a funny beast.

Carole D’Agostino, performer-at-large #NYC

Different things. One of the most common questions I get is “What style do you work in?” This depends on the story I need to tell. I have a peacock marionette that was inspired by a trip to a sculpture garden. My shadow show about science was developed at the Puppet Playlist, so music inspired that one. My old show about Icarus was inspired by my father's death. It's all life based, like anything. I won't just throw a piece together for nothing though. All of my shows are storyboarded, well rehearsed and have something valuable to offer the audience.

Beau Brow, curator of the  Puckin’ Fuppet Show  #Atlanta 

For me it was crucial to have a deadline. I would love to be the kind of artist who is inspired to build puppets and write shows because it just came to me, but I’m not.  I have to sit down, usually with someone else and say, “Okay we need a show.”  The structure of the slams gives me the kick in the pants and I need to write something.  Since puppetry is the synthesis of all art forms (visual art, voice, and movement), it opens so many doors to so many different kinds of artists.  Puppetry allows us to tell any story we can imagine… ANY. The possibilities are truly endless. The only other art form that I think allows that is animation.  I would love to have the patience to do animation, but I don’t.  So puppetry allows me to tell those stories. However most of those stories aren’t an hour long.  So how else can I get them front of a live audience? Puppet Slam. 

Evan O'Television, host of Blood from A Turnip #Providence

I wish I knew where my ideas came from so that I might burn a fire under them and become magically way more prolific.   Most of my ideas are about situations I can imagine the TV and I struggling with onstage.  If you have seen any of my performances, it's pretty clear that they are all built around a some performance goal that is thwarted or that the TV and I ultimately become distracted from in some way, or ultimately fail at. 

I also always like to play with breaking the audience boundaries and pursuing new ways to interact with the audience, because the more I do that, the less restricted and trapped I feel by the fact that I am performing with a recording.  Finally, in recent years, I have looked for new ways that circumstantially or plot-wise my live-performer character can sometimes get the upper hand or grab some power from the TV, because the Evan on the television is so often the more charismatic comedic star of my show.   I like to occasionally have the straight-man win one 

Jessica Simon, curator of Nasty, Brutish & Short: A Puppet Cabaret #Chicago

I'm inspired by (and a bit jealous of) Connor Hopkins and Carolin Reck down in Austin [hosts of Austin Puppet Incident].  Not only are they creating awesome long-form work, but they've created a great little puppetry community that works together creating short pieces for their slams.  From what I understand they host regular open shop nights and anyone who wants to can come in try something out.  I'd love to have a regular workshop time for people to collaborate.  There is somewhat of a community here in Chicago, and it's growing [with Puppet Meltdown], but I'd love to mix it up even more and have a dedicated time and place for people to come together.  

Special thanks to Paul Eide from Puppetry Journal for helping to edit this entry.

Fabulous Failures & What Can We Learn?

What can we learn from our mistakes?  Leading puppet slam curators and artists open up to reflect on some fabulous failures and spectacular slam disasters and what can be learned. Have you had a fabulous failure at a slam? Join the conversation on our Facebook Page and share your story! 
 

Austin Puppet Incident #Austin
Amanda Maddock, Jessica Simon & Caroline Reck, 2011, Photo: Chris Owen

Alissa Hunnicut, guest curator of New Brew #Brooklyn

Mostly you learn that it's live theater and anything can happen.  So think on your feet when there are technical glitches and be honest in your performance.  You also learn pretty quickly what doesn't work in a slam context when you have no control over what comes before your performance..

I don't think any of them have been disastrous. Some of them have pieces that are "less successful" than others partly because it might be a less curated slam or a slam that really welcomes less experienced performers, but that's the good part about a slam.  

Everyone can try something out and if it doesn't really work, the audience is on to a new thing pretty quickly. Like we all say, "too short to suck."

Gepetta, Performer-At-Large #Philadelphia

I think I count on failure or at least making mistakes to some degree. A lot of my stories are very wordy, more poetic than funny, and I often forget my lines, though if I can quip with the audience its okay.  A lot of mistakes graduate into being essential parts of the show.  Recently, I lit my hair on fire during a performance at a crowded loft. That wasn’t at a Slam, though I think it would have gone over better if it had been.

Roxie Myhrum, Curator of Puppet Showplace Slam #Brookline 

I once put together a slam with a lot of artists who typically did shows in all different styles of puppetry, but somehow I overlooked the fact that the pieces they wanted to do for the slam were all shadow puppet acts. Oops. After that I implemented a more thorough tech form. We also once had a speaker fall on an audience member. Now we warn people who sit in the front row.   

Evan O'Television, host of Blood from a Turnip #Providence

One of Kristin McLean's occasional collaborators was the director of The Revolving Museum - an organization that curated site specific shows at various different locations all around Boston.  The director of the Revolving Museum had set up a show for First Night (New Year's Eve) Boston that he populated primarily with Puppet Slam performers.   He asked me to perform at it.  It was at the Cyclorama in Boston and there was a very cool set, and we were all in different rooms of a mocked-up house.  People were encouraged to wander around and it was definitely a very cool set up if you were a more interactive performer.  But the problem was that I was performing a 15 minute version of the "Ex Machina" show I described earlier.  And this piece also now included an audience-plant routine.  The biggest issue is that my pieces are narrative and definitely require the undivided attention of an audience.  Here, we were playing a venue where people would essentially wander through look at what we were doing for about 2 minutes and then move on. Because I perform with a recording it's difficult to stop or start over and nearly impossible to improvise.  So we just kept performing it over and over, often with no one in our space and just me and my friend and collaborator Mark Myatt (who was my audience "plant" originally intended to blend in with the never-constant audience).  Most of the time we were performing for no one, or else for people who took a brief interest akin to viewing animals in a zoo.. After performing in this show I have always taken pains to clarify that any show I am booked at is organized as a theatrical performance and not an "installation" style environment.

Alexander Winfield, curator Pirate Puppet Cabaret #London

I can’t say I’ve ever been to a disastrous Puppet Slam, sorry! One slam I did attend was a bit awkward: it emphasized audience participation, insisting space be left for the public to contribute to the work. Unfortunately it underestimated the audience’s bravery, leading to long passages of awkward silence!

Kat Pleviak, curator of Puppet Meltdown #Chicago 

I was in a slam at a puppet festival and we were asked to bring two pieces, one of which was cut because the slam went to long. The piece we did show was too small for the space to be seen by anyone in the venue so no one got to enjoy it.   

A note to producers: Your slam performers are your guests and it should be your number one goal to help them succeed and have a great experience. A note to performers: be true to your work. If you walk into an event and can see your piece won't work, pull it. It does not help you to do a piece that disappoints based on a technicality. Know your work and show it to it's best.

Enda O. Breadon, curator Kolohe Puppet Slam #Honolulu

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. . .

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.

Lana Schwarcz, curator of Slam Noir #Melbourne

Hmmm... I think we've had a couple of pieces go longer than five minutes, and that was tough. I don't feel comfortable to name names or even describe these shows, but sometimes new pieces (which is what they are for the slams) can drag on a bit - the fat needs to be cut from them.  If there is one thing I have really learned from Pam Arciero (and by gosh there were many many things learned from that Hawaiian goddess) it's that things really have to be too short to suck.  So I think in the future, we really stick to that 5-minute rule. If it doesn't fit in 5 minutes, it doesn't go on. It makes the artist really think about what absolutely needs to be in there. Although sometimes that still gets ignored....

Beau Brown, curator of the  Puckin’ Fuppet Show, 

The Puppet Slam at DragonCon and the National Puppet Slam  #Atlanta 

Never try and simulate the sound of someone’s pelvis cracking by breaking celery into a microphone. It won’t work. 

Valerie Meiss, curator of the Wham Bam! Puppet Slam #Asheville

Oh wow... maybe my reluctance to say means that the wound is still fresh? . . Lets just say, technical requirements and Murphy's Law make wretched bedfellows. I have learned to cope with technical disasters in fun and friendly ways, to curb egos in a non-defamatory manner, and to (most importantly) take control of a situation (which is easier said than done), but I have certainly learned its importance

Oh, also, don't ever ever use a smoke machine!

Carole D'Agostino, Performer-At-Large #NYC

I succeed and fail at each event. I now always travel with my own tables, tape, extension cords, light bulb replacements, shadow screen replacements, scissors, sharpies, wipes, etc etc etc, because at each and every venue there has been something wrong or missing and I don't want my performance to suffer because the venue or I am ill prepared. Professionalism can only come by learning from failures.  

 

Jessica Simon, curator of Nasty, Brutish & Short Puppet Cabaret #Chicago 

[taken slighly out of context]  I got a bruise on my head from a flying piece of chocolate at the National Slam in Atlanta...

Vanessa Gilbert on the Eve of Her Last Late Night Puppet Salon #Providence

VanessaGilbert is a collaborative theatre artist based in Providence, where she hosts Blood from A Turnip – Rhode Island’s only late night puppet salon.  Vanessa produces and directs theatrical works of varying scales, from miniature puppet theatre to multi-day performance festivals, and opera.  In her 17 years with Perishable Theatre, Vanessa has directed and produced scores of plays and events. At Perishable, she founded both Blood from a Turnip and the Resident Artist at Perishable Theatre program.   She instigated Magdalena USA, to date the only Magdalena Project event in the United States.  Vanessa is an associate artist with Sleeping Weazel, an expansive theatre company based in Boston and on the internet.

Photo: Marilyn Fontenrose, 2012

Marsian: How long have you been involved with Puppet Slams?

Vanessa Gilbert: My first slam experience was inventing Blood from a Turnip, our salon in Providence, RI.  I thought that Jeremy Woodward and I invented the concept, not knowing that a sister event, the Puppet Slam at the Puppet Showplace in Brookline, MA was going strong at the time.  Jeremy and I wanted a venue to showcase both our own short puppet shows (we were the purveyors of The LunchCart Circus, the only circus in the world with a snack for the audience at the end of the show) and those of artists who were starting to work with puppets in their own work.  Being in a city with an innovative art school (the inimitable Rhode Island School of Design) and a hip liberal arts school (Brown University) has provided a steady stream of performers.  Some of the most memorable shows that we have presented were made by sculptors or visual artists who found their way to puppets as an extension of their art practice.  Once I met Kristen McLean, then the director of the Puppet Showplace and the mind behind their Puppet Slam, I was introduced to the concept.

Marsian: What was the very first Blood from a Turnip like?

VG: I believe that our first Blood from a Turnip featured short shows by students at the University of Connecticut at Storrs’ Puppetry Program as well as Evan O’Television, whose video ventriloquism was just starting to make the rounds of the incipient puppet circuit.  Another early salon showcased a sculpture student at RISD who performed a mysterious show that involved a rotating board, small plastic animals, and a farm animal speak and say toy. 

M: What is the funniest, freakiest, edgiest, or weirdest show you have seen?

VG: Running the salon in the way we do has made for some very memorable experiences.  I am thinking in particular of a show called HamBot, the Robot Hamlet, in which the lead artist adapted the entirety of Hamlet into an toy theatre show as envisaged by the B-film director Ed Wood.  Because the artist was working with the whole play, he didn’t take into account our time constraint of 10 minutes and after about 15 minutes of somewhat stilted object manipulation, the audience caught on that we were in for the full ride of Hamlet as told through a robot figurine, which had a very mechanical character voice as you would expect a robot to do.  The entire audience went on a ride of discomfort and then eventual acceptance and euphoria by the end of the 30 minutes when it ended.  We joked afterward that we ought to have t-shirts printed with the slogan, “ I Survived Hambot.”

  

M: What inspired you to start hosting a Blood from a Turnip?

VG: With scenic designer Jeremy Woodward, I co-founded Blood from a Turnip, one of the first puppet slams in the circuit.  We started just months after Kristen McLean started the slam at the Puppet Showplace Theatre in Brookline, MA.  This was in 1996/97. As well as working with Big Nazo Puppets, Jeremy and I were making shows collaboratively as well as individually and started noticing that other artists were finding puppets too.  We decided to create Blood from a Turnip as a venue for artists to perform their shows, which were often quite different than their other work. This led us to the wonderful underground scene of puppets for adults.  We determined that Blood from a Turnip would have the following qualities:

1. Blood from a Turnip would be a salon, not a slam.  Slam connotes competition and we wanted there to be only winners at the end of the evening.

2. We would welcome anyone who had a puppet show or thought that they had a puppet show.  It was important to open the door to people who were new to puppetry in addition to the seasoned professionals.  We adopted a “ If you are so moved to do a show, we will present you” attitude that has served us well for 15 years

3.  We would limit the acts to 10 minutes. 

4.  We would be a late night event; we wanted to serve adult audiences both to reclaim puppetry as a form for adult enjoyment as well as provide an alternative to going to a club.

5.  We would ask a local musician to provide “charming and personable musical interludes” between the acts

M: Wow, you just got bullet pointy at me! Anything else?

VG: There were other rules that have gone by the wayside over the past decade and a half; for instance, when we began, we hosted a communal dinner for the performers that always featured turnip as an ingredient.   We also started out as a monthly event, with 9-10 shows per year. After a year of constantly having to program and publicize the salon, we settled on a 5 show per year formula that has served us well. 

M: You had a series of co-hosts…

V: Jeremy and I would co-host, but after three or four years, we were eager to move on to other things, even though we loved Blood from a Turnip.  At that time, Jeremy and I split the hosting duties between us and I invited you, Marsian, to join me. What fun times we had, no? 

M: It was so many moons ago. We’ve become different people and yet remained the..

VG: ..Right, and when you left us for graduate school, I invited my husband David Higgins and my puppet husband, Evan O’Television, to become part of the producing/curation staff.  We have also been joined as a host by Nicky Heart and playwright/puppeteer Amanda Weir.

M: What gap do you think puppet slams fill that is not filled by other forms of puppetry?

VG: Slams are a place to celebrate adults who still play with dolls and enjoy the thrilling exchange of energy between a performer, an object, and an audience.  Even though there is a place for puppetry in the neo-vaudeville circuit, Slams (and Salons) provide a focus on unmitigated delight.  Don’t we need more unmitigated delight?

M: Who are some other artists on the puppet slam circuit who you are inspired by?

VG: Pretty much every performer who comes through our doors is inspiring to me.  Artists are not on the slam circuit to make money, so there is a no-holds-barred sensation about their pieces.  Some of our more recent folks include Kim Mikenis, The Human Light Box, who makes naughty and hilarious shadow puppet pieces that she performs within a shower curtain stage; Liz Joyce of Goat on a Boat puppet theatre on Long Island, whose hand puppet shows make me guffaw; and Carole D'Agostino, who is really an excellent puppeteer with remarkable comedic timing.  I also really love the folks who bring us their first puppet shows.  Beth Nixon of Ramshackle Enterprises made one of her first puppet shows for Blood from a Turnip, and now she is touring the NorthEast with her work.  Folks don't always know where the puppet is going to lead them.

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

VG: I recently revised an object theatre piece that is a retelling of the Vasilisa, the Beautiful fairy tale in which Vasilisa is a small wooden match.  The story is a Russian version of Cinderella, really, in which Vasilisa is sent out to the deep dark woods by her evil stepmother and stepsisters to fetch some fire from Baba Yaga, a witch who purportedly eats humans and makes their bones into the gates of her chicken-footed hut.   Not too many theatres may be happy about hosting the piece as I light a match; none of this LED fire substitute for this girl.

M: Well hopefully, you won’t get blacklisted from this interview. Where do you see the Puppet Slam Network in the future?

VG: I think that the Puppet Slam Network has had a critical impact on the connectivity of all of our separate performances.  Because of the PSN, I feel as though I can call folks all across the country for inspiration and guidance. 

M: Do you have any exciting news announcements that you would like to drop here first, exclusively on our Puppet Slam Blog for the tens of hundreds of readers?!?

VG: On Friday May 18^th, we are retiring the late-night format for some prime-time slots that will allow us to have longer shows.  We are reuniting the entire gang of hosts in person or via Skype to give back the night.

M: It’s a date!

VG: I am quite looking forward to it.  I will probably wear a dress, which rarely happens.

M: Do you expect any backlash? Never mind... You heard it here first!

Don't change the channel - its Evan O'Television! Part 2

For the last 15 years, the performer known as Evan O'Television has hit the slam circuit as both sides of his comedy act with his television alter ego.   Evan frequently performs at puppet slams in Providence and Boston. For a decade, he produced  PAN 9, a multi-genre variety show event out of an artist's loft in Allston, which hosted one of the earliest Boston area puppet slams. Recently, Evan has been co-hosting Blood From a Turnip, which will have its final late night iteration on May 19th.  Evan's  feature-length show "Evan O'Television in Double Negatives" traveled to the New York International Fringe Festival.

Blood From a Turnip #Providence, Evan O’Television, Photo: David Higgins

Marsian: What was you most disasterous slam experience?
 

Evan O'Television: One of Kristin McLean's occasional collaborators was the director of The Revolving Museum - an organization that curated site specific shows at various different locations all around Boston.  The director of the Revolving Museum had set up a show for First Night (New Year's Eve) Boston that he populated primarily with Puppet Slam performers.   He asked me to perform at it.  It was at the Cyclorama in Boston and there was a very cool set, and we were all in different rooms of a mocked-up house.  People were encouraged to wander around and it was definitely a very cool set up if you were a more interactive performer.  But the problem was that I was performing a 15 minute version of the "Ex Machina" show I described earlier.  And this piece also now included an audience-plant routine.  The biggest issue is that my pieces are narrative and definitely require the undivided attention of an audience.  Here, we were playing a venue where people would essentially wander through look at what we were doing for about 2 minutes and then move on. Because I perform with a recording it's difficult to stop or start over and nearly impossible to improvise.  So we just kept performing it over and over, often with no one in our space and just me and my friend and collaborator Mark Myatt (who was my audience "plant" originally intended to blend in with the never-constant audience).  Most of the time we were performing for no one, or else for people who took a brief interest akin to viewing animals in a zoo. 

M: What did you take away from that experience?
EO: After performing in this show I have always taken pains to clarify that any show I am booked at is organized as a theatrical performance and not an "installation" style environment.

M: How could your slam circuit grow?

EO: I definitely would like to see more connection and sharing of acts from Boston and Providence up to Vermont, with Sandglass, and obviously Bread and Puppet.  So many performers I have enjoyed over the years have spent time in Vermont and yet, we still haven't fully been able to make Western Mass and Vermont a consistent part of a circuit down to Boston and Providence.  There's plenty of work still to be done on making the loop from New York to Providence to Boston and back more regular and fruitful.  Even though there has been some success with mini-tours in recent years we can always do more.  It would be also be cool to extend the performer's circuit up to Maine, which has always seemed to be rich with talent (Frogtown Mountain Puppeteers come to mind). 

M: And Nancy Andrews is up there too!
EO: I would love to see a slam circuit that brought more performers from Vermont, Western Mass. and Maine down to Boston and Providence, perhaps though UConn and on to New York, Philly and maybe even D.C....  and of course, vice-versa.

M: Tell us about a fabulous failure and what you've learned from it.
EO: There was an early show, probably the  5th or 6th piece I created as Evan O' Television, where I had a lousy idea for a very odd and awkward premise, where the TV and the live performer would start by speaking for many minutes entirely in synchronized speech, saying the exact same things, almost like a chant, and then a breakdown in our synchronized presentation would happen and we would separate into our usual argument mode.  One problem was that I was under-rehearsed so I was genuinely screwing up the synchronized speaking before the built-in intentional screw-up" could happen.  But it was basically too convoluted and too elaborate a performance idea with very little payoff to recommend it.  It taught me a lot about how I need to simplify and shape my ideas in the writing and recording stage before I got to the performance stage.  And it also taught me that when I am attempting something very stylistic different within my formula, I need to allow for even more rehearsal time.

M: Why are Puppet Slams important to you?  

EO: I love Puppet Slams because they are some of the only shows you can attend and still see things you didn't expect to see.  There are very often surprises, in terms of what kind of performance someone sharing, and what their particular angle or interpretation of puppetry is.  It is also great that very often the participants are a mixture of pros and amateurs, newbies and veterans.  You not only have very good odds for seeing something completely unexpected, but you also could see something astonishingly professional in its execution, and sometimes both within the same performance.

M: What inspires you to create a puppet slam piece?
EO: I wish I knew where my ideas came from so that I might burn a fire under them and become magically way more prolific.   Most of my ideas are about situations I can imagine the TV and I struggling with onstage.  If you have seen any of my performances, it's pretty clear that they are all built around a some performance goal that is thwarted or that the TV and I ultimately become distracted from in some way, or ultimately fail at.
 

So I guess the seeds of my pieces always are twofold:
 

1. What would be interesting to watch the Evan on the TV and I try to do? 
2. What is a new, interesting and entertaining way for us to fail at that goal? 

I also always like to play with breaking the audience boundaries and pursuing new ways to interact with the audience, because the more I do that, the less restricted and trapped I feel by the fact that I am performing with a recording.  Finally, in recent years, I have looked for new ways that circumstantially or plot-wise my live-performer character can sometimes get the upper hand or grab some power from the TV, because the Evan on the television is so often the more charismatic comedic star of my show.   I like to occasionally have the straight-man win one.

M: Who are some other artists on the puppet slam circuit that you are inspired by?   

EO: At a Blood From A Turnip  show that Vanessa Gilbert organized on the Brown Campus many years ago, there was a really amazing shadow show, I think it was The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by the Drama of Works.  That really blew me away.  It absolutely pushed the most cinematic potential of shadow shows in ways I've never seen.  You had a piece in that show as well, Marsian, your Michael Jackson's Zoo storybook piece which I really enjoyed in all of its perverse splendor.  

M: Go on!

EO: I especially liked  the way it was reminiscent of Children's TV - just you sitting there with the giant book, that you opened up and the puppets came out of.  I have always loved how quickly you are able to immerse the audience in the uniqueness of your world.  As you know I also loved every iteration of Growing Up Linda, that I have seen and really enjoyed it when you revived it at my Itching Man show at the Coolidge Corner.
 

M: Well thanks for the trip down memory lane...
EO: Sarah Frechette is always one of my faves, though I haven't seen her perform in a while, not since she moved West.  I'm just mesmerized by her power to make herself invisible through her Marionette skills and I love the puppets that she builds.  The Man on the Burning Trapeze, I believe was the name of a piece she used to do that used to give me chills it was so good.

M: Anyone else? 

EO: Last Winter in New York at the Hellzapoppin' Puppets show I saw Carla Rhodes for the first time and I was in awe.  It was just so exciting, to see someone who, like me, is playing around thematically with updating vaudeville traditions - but unlike me, has absolute real-deal chops and virtuosity regarding the traditional twin talents of puppeteering and ventriloquism.  Also, the way in which her puppet Cecil, both seduces the audience, but then punishes us by being totally offensive, is something that I really enjoy comedically.  I like the way we, in the audience, are made to feel guilty for liking him, and also how it falls to Carla as the puppeteer and performer to negotiate those uncomfortably funny problems of political incorrectness, in front of the audience.

M: What pieces do you have in circulation to perform in puppet slams?
EO: I have about three 8-10 minute sets right now that I feel are slam-ready and slam-worthy.

The first piece is essentially the initial 10 minutes excepted from my NY Fringe Festival show Double Negatives.  In it the television and I are undermined in our attempt to introduce ourselves to the audience by technical difficulties that involve a particularly awkward moment for the TV... of losing lip-synch.

Another piece is an abbreviated version of the show I am currently developing, called TV Personality,  In addition to dealing with a difference of opinion about how to start our show and greet the audience, the TV and I get into conflict about the appropriateness of a certain Abbott & Costello anecdote and entertain very different ideas about what the future holds for us.  If people are interested in booking a longer set, I also perform a 25 minute version of this show.

I also have a piece called Similies in which the TV attempts to moderate the live Evan's stress, by smoking an illicit substance.  But this ends up working in the wrong direction, resulting in the opposite of a mellowing effect.

And finally, if people want to book a longer piece, I have my long-standing, crowd-pleaser, Pavlov which famously involves audience participation and hypnosis and runs about 15 minutes. 
 

M: I love that one!  Such a classic. Where can people contact you to perform?
EO: People can contact me at my website, www.EvanOTV.com.  It is still kind of just an old Wordpress Blog where I sometimes post about my shows.  It will be undergoing a redesign this year I hope.  Or you can email me at Evan@evanotv.com

M: Where would you like to see the Puppet Slam Network in the future?
EO: I would like to see the Puppet Slam Network continuing it's current trajectory.  It's pretty inspiring to see it grow.  And I would like to see more and more of the Puppet Slam Network in person.  Namely, I would absolutely love to have a majority of the shows I do in 2013 to be at Slams around the country.  Puppet shows and puppet audiences have always been my favorite crowds.

M: That's a fabulous post-apocalyptic goal! What advice do you have for up and coming slam artists who are just starting out?
EO: Maintain a spirit of adventurousness and experimentation but also never forget the importance of the audience.  What is the journey you are hoping to take them on?  How successful are you?  Whenever experimental work forgets to continuously engage or reward the audience then it misses the inherently conversational nature of live theater and risks being over-indulgent.


M: Anything else we should know?
EO: On May 19th Vanessa Gilbert and David Higgins and I will be having our final Blood From A Turnip of the season. We'll have the always inspiring and hilarious Z & Chad with their  Wonderspark Puppets (another favorite act I could have mentioned above).  We will also have MF Town Productions from Providence, and Nicole LeDuc Hartigan bringing her newly acquired Storrs, CT, puppet school knowledge.   This will be our final season of doing Blood From A Turnip as a late-night series.  We will return in the Fall and Winter with a smaller selection of shows that will probably be more feature-driven.

And on June 9th and 10th, in Cambridge, Mass., I am reviving my Itching Man brand of live events in Boston with a two-night Fest celebrating Art Doing It With Comedy that includes ventriloquist Carla Rhodes, puppeteer Kim Mikeness, and sock-puppet soap opera Fat Nancy and Crisco alongside some of my favorite comic performers. 

M: Yay!