When she's not organizing New Brew, Alissa Hunnicutt performs at puppet slams in the tri-state area. Her original show, “The Kid Inside”, has been seen at
cabaret venues, Dixon Place , and at the Orlando Puppet Festival. Alissa is the resident
puppeteer at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital. She has been a featured participant at the
O’Neill National Puppetry Conference and has performed at Great Small Works’ InternationalToy Theater Festival. Her short film, “Can’t Buy My Love”, was included in the
Puppets on Film Festival at BAM. Alissa’s
puppet theater credits include Die Hard
the Puppet Musical, David Michael Friend’s EGO, Cosmic Bicycle Theater’s “Edward
Lear’s Absurd-Ditties”, and the UNIMA Award-winning Kevin Augustine’s “BRIDE”.
Marsian: So you are hosting, New Brew this month?
I know you've performed at a lot of slams, but is this your first time hosting
one?
Alissa Hunnicutt: I am hosting an event on March 16th
at Barbes in Park Slope, called New Brew: It's Better with Puppets!
This is actually the third slam I've put
together. The first was in 2008
called A Puppet Music Thing as part of the New York Musical TheatreFestival (I curated, performed and self produced). That was a great opportunity to expose the
musical theater community to a wide variety of styles of puppetry. And in December 2009, I co-curated the first
New Brew evening with puppets.
M: Sounds
intoxicating and musical. What exactly is New Brew?
AH: New Brew is a subgroup of a company
I sing with, Opera on Tap. New Brew is a Contemporary Collective of
Performers/Performance Curators showcasing the work of 20th and 21st century
composers. We each take a turn at curating an evening of arias and art songs by
living composers. My contribution as a curator has been to bring a puppetry
element to that material. It's really fun music to do because very often the
composer is in the room for the show.
M: So
how do you incorporate puppets into these works by living composers?
AH: Here's how the New Brew show works
- I reached out to the NY puppetry community (through my newsletter, guild
meetings, a puppetry listserve, and individual requests) to ask who would like
to participate in a grab-bag puppet slam of sorts. To create a short puppetry
piece for an adult audience based on a contemporary classical art song NOT of
their choosing. The very brave
puppeteers who answered that call have had less than a month to come up with
some visual representation of songs from the repertoire of music performed at
previous New Brew shows. My co-curator, Delea Shand, coordinated the line-up of
songs and I assigned them to the puppeteers.
M:
Sounds like half the show is what happens behind the scenes.
AH: It's an interesting process,
because it's more like a puppet challenge since the puppeteer isn't waiting to
be struck by some kind of inspiration to begin the process. They have to come up with a visual concept
with no choice in the material. The show is also special because all of the
music for the evening is performed live.
M: What was your first puppet slam like?
AH: My first puppet slam was Puppet Art Attacks as part of the
Voice4Vision Festival in 2007. I had
developed my first short piece that same year during my first summer attending
the O'Neill National Puppetry Conference. It's a table-top, moving-mouth puppet piece
called Raggedy Ann. I have a semi-costume element in that piece as
the puppet represents me, so I was wearing a white pinafore and my hair in
pigtails. That was the first time
performing at a puppetry event in NYC, so I was really nervous. And the piece is tricky because I think it's
really sad and speaks to a lot of personal truth about heartache and struggles
I've been through, but often an audience thinks it's funny. It's not typical slam material since it's
serious, but I was glad to get a chance to perform it again.
M: I’ve
seen Raggedy Ann, and it’s a mix of
emotions, just like life. Now you’re also really good at mixing up the world of
cabaret singing and puppets.
AH: Yeah, that's kind of my thing. I
came to puppetry with a background in music. I've been singing my whole life,
but I never really found my own artistic voice until I took my singing and
combined that with puppetry. In all my
years of performing, I never had the desire to create my own work. But I have been prolific with my desire to
create new puppet shows. Puppetry gave
me that voice. And puppet slams gave me the stage.
M: You’ve
performed at a LOT of puppet slams, some further away than the tri-state area.
AH: I hadn't added it up before, but
since 2007, I've performed in around 35 puppet slams. In NYC we're really fortunate because there
are a lot of slams, cabarets, variety shows, soirees, etc., where there are
performance opportunities - some several times a year, some annual, some
festivals, and some one-time special events. In addition to local performances, I've
traveled to CT, NJ, MD, MA, GA, FL, and I've had a film shown in IL.
M:
Wow, that’s a lot of traveling, and what would you say was the freakiest,
edgiest or weirdest show you’ve seen in your travels?
AH: The "freakiest, edgiest, or weirdest show” would probably have
been something performed at slam that isn't around anymore produced by Kate
Brehm called Slutty Puppets. The theme was exactly that. Pieces that were edgy. Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith is an amazingly
talented puppeteer who also has a wonderfully sick imagination and I love her
work. "Funniest" is impossible to
choose. I am a very lucky girl to be surrounded by really funny friends, and a
late night slam really lends itself to that kind of material. Liz Hara is hilarious and her pieces are
clever and well-written. Spencer Lott's
last bamboo piece cracks me up!
M: On the flip side, any slams that were
real disasters?
AH: 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'."
M: If you were to say you are part of a slam
circuit? What would that encompass? Have you ever been on a slam tour?
AH: The closest thing I've been to a
slam tour is performing in Honey
Goodenough's Puppet Pandemic
in 2010-2011. She got a few of us to do several slams in the Northeast by
loading into a couple cars and finding local housing to keep the costs as low
as possible. Many of us performed in
each other's pieces, so if you got the right combination of performers you
could really maximize the number of pieces available to showcase. It was a lot of fun.
M: Like a lot of performers I know, it seems
like you have used puppet slams to help in developing full-length works.
AH: When I got back from the O'Neill
with Raggedy Ann, I knew I wanted to
find more opportunities to perform that piece, but I didn't want to do a full
show that developed that character further specifically. I'd been toying with the idea of doing my own
cabaret show of songs for a long time, and this seemed like a great catalyst
for that. So I said to my musical
director, Steven Katz, "ok, let's do
a show." And he and I began
choosing songs I was drawn to sing or inspired with a puppet idea. Because my work has its inspiration come from
a song, by the very nature of that the pieces are short form. And because I like to explore emotions in my
performances, putting my heart and vulnerability on the stage, the work doesn't
lend itself to a children's audience. Steven
came up with the title song for the cabaret show "The Kid Inside" to pull all of it together. The universal inner child we all have,
especially as puppeteers.
M:
And from what I’ve gathered, you set out on a longer process to creating a
fully developed show from short pieces that you debuted at slams?
AH: So over the next three years I kept
the big picture in mind as I chose songs to develop as puppetry pieces.
I couldn't have gotten the pieces ready
without using puppet slams as my development sandbox.
Knowing a slam was coming up and what goal I
had set for it gave me deadlines and milestones to reach for each piece. I worked with my collaborators to explore new
styles of puppetry using these short form pieces to also grow technically as a
puppeteer. At the same time working with
my musical director to keep the pieces on theme for what would eventually be
our larger show where we knit the songs together into an evening where the
emotional journey of growing up, loving, living and laughing was the through
line. I'm really proud of the way it all
came together.
M: Tell us about a fabulous failure at a
slam and what you've learned from it.
AH: 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.
M: Why are Puppet Slams important to you?
AH: Puppet slams are a great way to try
out new material for the performer. Also
a way for someone new to puppetry to put their toe in the water since doing a
short form piece is less overwhelming (or can be). I think it's also really important to use
these short pieces, and evenings of short pieces, to showcase forms of puppet
theater the general theater-going audience is unfamiliar with. That's why I get most excited when the show
collaborates with a non-puppet audience.
I love
performing for my peers, but I think it's got to be our mission to educate and
expand the definition of "puppet" to the general audience whose whole
exposure to puppetry has come from their television.
Puppet theater is powerful and beautiful and
moving and exciting and funny and different from other forms of entertainment
in a really special way. I care a great
deal about it.
M: What inspires you to create a puppet slam
piece?
AH: 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.
M: Who are some other artists on the puppet
slam circuit who you are inspired by?
AH: I love what Jon Levin brings to his
work. He really reinvents a story when he's working with a song. As one of the forces behind Puppet Playlist, he sets a wonderful
example of how to develop something within their structure. Hugo Gets Flushed, or Plenty of Fish in theSea is a piece he does using his hands painted like a fish. The movement
and expression he gives that puppet is priceless.
Honey Goodenough's sweet marionette
pieces Handle with Care and Sweet Dreams) are beautifully thought
out and touching. I am enjoying watching her develop her individual pieces with
an eye for a larger theme and am looking forward to seeing her put them
together into a longer program someday.
WonderSpark Puppets (Z Briggs &
Chad Williams) are such great writers and storytellers. They are funny and smart. Jack and the Beanstalk, Part 2 is a great example of that. They are concentrating more on their puppet
company's business these days and they are sorely missed from the slam
line-ups.
M: What pieces do you have in circulation to
perform in puppet slams?
AH: Red Dress is a solo marionette piece, a
moment of a woman's reflection on expectations from her youth that didn't come
true. The marionette form, costume, and my costumes were designed/built by
Sarah Lafferty. The piece was developed at the O'Neill with Phillip Huber.
Marry Me is a toy theater piece based on
a Dolly Parton bluegrass song. It's cute and funny, about how easy it is to get
carried away with the excitement of the potential of a first date and first
kiss. The show was designed/built by
Michael Schupbach of the The Puppet Kitchen, sung to a track recorded by The
Birdhive Boys, and most often with the human acting partnership of Chad
Williams. Performed originally at the
Great Small Works' International Toy Theater Festival.
Almost Everything I Need is a solo
miniature theater piece that's fairly new. Using a puppet built by David Fino. It's the story of a woman in her new
apartment, alone, after a relationship ended. Feeling out of place. Taking stock of the situation. Created for the first New Brew puppet slam and
will be reprised this Friday.
Uninvited is a table top puppet
designed/built by David Michael Friend based on a song by Groovelily from their
musical Sleeping Beauty Wakes sung by
the Ugly Fairy who wasn't invited to the ball...and she's pissed. The other puppeteers on that team are Honey
Goodenough and Z Briggs. Uninvited debuted at Puppet Playlist's Seven
Deadly Sins show.
M: Where can people contact you to perform?
They can
find contact info on my site, www.alissahunnicutt.com to
sign up for my newsletter to find out when and where I'm performing next! But at the
moment I'm more interested in people contacting me to collaborate on new slam
pieces that then can start hitting the stage. If you're a builder and would like a gig
creating a new piece with me, let me know.
M: Where would you like to see Puppet Slams
and the Puppet Slam Network in the future?
AH: 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.
M:What
advice do you have for up and coming slam artists or performers who are just
starting out?
AH: I think a
lot of your interview subjects have suggested going to a slam if you're
interested in participating in slams. I
totally agree. See what other artists in
your area are doing. It's inspiring. I am also a huge cheerleader for The National
Puppetry Conference at The O'Neill Theater Center. Your readers hear that name a ton too, I'm
sure. The participant pieces that are
developed in the evenings are where a lot of the slam content comes from in my
circle of peers. In a few days you are
exposed to so many different methods and techniques for creating short form
puppetry. Plus it's a very tight network
of puppeteers who have leads on performance opportunities, become fast friends,
and it has a very special place in my heart.
M: Anything else we should know?
AH: I have some new ideas for pieces
I'd like to develop over the next year and add into The Kid Inside in order to put the show back on its feet in 2013
with some fresh material for returning audience. So you will see a lot of me as those new
pieces come to life!
