BY LUCIA MAURO
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The co-founder of Redmoon Theater likens his object-based craft of puppetry to poetry’s distillation of language and economy of words. "Every work [in poetry]," he continues, "has weight. Prose is thicker. Puppetry is like that in relation to actors’ theatre. The puppet has to distill a character to a single facial expression."
After moving away from Redmoon’s rapidly growing spectacle theatre in 1998, Thomas embarked on a pivotal inner journey–including formal study of Buddhism–and emerged with a deeper interest in intimate puppetry. He recently established Blair Thomas & Co., his own chamber puppet company, whose original productions he plans to perform locally and take on national and international tours. Thomas opens his latest work The Poet, the Puppet & the Prisoner, based on the writings of Federico Garcia Lorca, Oct. 25 at Pegasus Players in Truman College’s O’Rourke Center.
"I place a greater value on the puppets now," says Thomas, 40. "I make all my own puppets, and it can take up to three weeks to complete one. My focus is on chamber theatre. At Redmoon, I was working on a large palette and had a large canvas to cover."
The rough-hewn aesthetic of the folk arts guides his vision, especially in his hand-made Lorca collage in which Thomas serves as a one-man band, operating 30 puppets and a hand-turned toy theatre stage by himself. "I can play the horn, lay down a bass line and operate a pedal," laughs the artist, noting that he is positioned above his miniature proscenium, which is framed in piano keys against a rolling paper-scroll backdrop.
In The Poet, the Puppet & the Prisoner, the puppeteer-hero is imprisoned in the theatre by a carousel of puppet stages and condemned to perform a series of stories chronicling the "stages of man" from childhood innocence to the inevitability of death. Rod marionettes, a grammaphone, wooden hand puppets, a roller organ, and baritones and a tuba are some of the devices Thomas uses to tell these profoundly human stories. The Lorca texts include: "Buster Keaton’s Stroll," "Chimera," "The Little Altar of Don Cristobal" and "Ghazal of Dark Death."
And although he considers his various object-oriented media to be tools to make theatre, Thomas is proud to call himself a puppeteer: "I want to elevate the status of that position," he urges.
Thomas, a self-effacing artist capable of laughing at the absurdity of life while dedicating himself to his craft with almost a monastic commitment and endurance, is one of Chicago’s most successful puppetry pioneers. He has been part of a steady movement to return puppetry to its ability to comment on society at large–very much like hand-operated jesters. For him, puppets speak to those daunting questions of our existence; they are not merely cute toys for entertaining kids.
Since moving to Chicago in 1985–lured, he says, by a directing internship at Wisdom Bridge Theater that paid $100 a week–Thomas has worked as an assistant director at Wisdom Bridge, Remains and Organic (where he directed an award-winning production of The Danube in 1988). He set Redmoon Theater in motion in 1989 with the creation of its first production, You Hold My Heart Between Your Teeth, and co-founded the company the next year with dancer-choreographer Lauri Macklin. He served as artistic director until 1995 when he began sharing the leadership of Redmoon with Jim Lasko until leaving in 1998.
During his time at Redmoon, Thomas was integral in the creation of all the productions, including the annual Winter Pageant, the Halloween Lantern Parade and Spectacle, RedDevil GreenDevil, Moby-Dick, Frankenstein and The Ballad of Frankie & Johnny.
In 1999, he took time off from creative projects and spent half of that year living a semi-monastic life in a Chicago Buddhist Temple formally studying Zen.
Since then, Thomas has become an adjunct associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where he teaches puppetry, performance and film/video. Two years ago, he started the Puppetry Institute, a training program for contemporary puppetry at SAIC, and co-curated the first Chicago International Festival of Puppetry with Performing Arts Chicago. He then conceived, designed and curated the "Street Stages Project" with the City of Chicago’s Puppetropolis Festival.
He designed and directed Chicago Opera Theater’s production of the chamber opera, Master Pedro’s Puppet Show. His productions of The Little Altar of Don Cristobal, #27 The Blackbird–and the work co-created with musician-composer Michael Zerang, #36 Buster Keaton and the Buddha (part of their 108 Ways to Nirvana series)–have played throughout Chicago and recently toured to Bloomington (Ill.), Pittsburgh (Pa.), Tampa (Fla.) and upstate New York.
Thomas debuted The Poet, the Puppet & the Prisoner as a work-in-progress at this year’s Rhinoceros Theater Festival and just returned from presenting it at Pittsburgh’s Blacksheep Puppet Festival.
He seems to have been born with a natural proclivity for the puppet idiom. As a young boy, he worked mainly with store-bought puppets and was particularly attached to a marionette his grandmother had given him as a gift.
"I like the idea that [in puppetry], you could conceal yourself and perform at the same time," says Thomas. "I have the kind of psychological makeup that requires that. I have an extrovert and an introvert desire at the same time."
His earliest introduction to theatre occurred when the Alabama Shakespeare Festival (ASF) pitched a tent near his home town every summer. He worked there doing multiple tasks (assistant stage manager, props, set builder) from 1977 to 1980. "It left a huge impression on me," says Thomas of his ASF experience. "I saw the process of how shows go up and I learned how to read designs. I worked 14-hour days. It left me with a strong work ethic."
Thomas also played the tuba and was a member of the Alabama Youth Symphony. He continued to cultivate his concentration and discipline skills at the demanding Oberlin College’s Music Conservatory. There, he was required to carve out four hours of intense rehearsal time per day.
"That was the standard I set for myself," he notes. "The caliber at Oberlin was really high. And I realized that, if you’re really serious, this is what it takes."
Although he was immersed in music, Thomas gravitated toward theatre–more specifically, directing. In the flush of youth, he dreamed of directing classics, like Ibsen and Chekhov. He later had a revelation.
"I think, because the theatre arts are an offshoot of dramatic literature studies," says Thomas, "they carry with them the limitation of academic study. It took me a while to realize that devoting myself to the interpretation of existing texts is only one way of making theatre. I wanted to create something new–and that process I had to self-forge."
He also became disillusioned with the spoken word and moved in a more visual direction. Shortly before co-founding Redmoon Theater, Thomas got involved in arts education. He began creating theatre with individuals in half-way houses and students in under-served communities.
At the time, he was trying to make the work accessible to all people, while satisfying his intellectual needs and making it relevant. He found that these ideas merged best in interactive theatre.
"Redmoon was founded on the belief that the primary artists who make the work go out into the community," he states. "When that is achieved, theatre will be fundamentally changed. Our culture is hungry for all theatre experiences–not just a pre-fab one.
"And the best way, in my opinion, is to make theatre with the community, not teach people about theatre. That’s how Winter Pageant came about."
Over the years, Thomas has developed a process in puppetry arts that combines gut feeling with a well thought-out precision.
"When I’m cultivating the conception of a piece," he explains, "I’m mostly responding to intuition and to the desire to just have fun. I find something that delights me–my own sense of what can be manifested in the physical world; the unspoken word manifested in a physical object."
Thomas continues to elaborate on his fascination with the puppet form: "The puppet theatre is a replica world. It pierces us with its idea of being uncanny. It startles us to the reality of what it is to be a human being–a strange replica of a human being."
When he is developing a work, he likes to go into a theatre and "imagine the kinesthetic possibilities." Thomas envisions a frame or architecture that will contain his microcosm of life, and his solutions are arrived at from a visual–more than a textual–angle.
He then devises various kinds of puppets. The materials (wood, papier-mache, fabric) are key to shaping the puppet’s personality (embodied in the way it moves and sounds). Thomas prefers the less refined folk puppet tradition, opting for 19th century rod marionettes (in which the puppets did not exactly mirror human figures). He describes the rod marionette as "more blunt–like a wooden soldier–with broad movements." Thomas even physically demonstrates the robotic movements of the puppets by moving his own body hinge-like as a block, without clear joint delineation.
"Because rod marionettes do not have the delicacy of later [20th century] marionettes," he says, "they have to be direct and distilled to the essential. It’s the folk singer opposed to the classically trained singer. Yet rod marionettes still have a refined artistry.
"The puppets are colorful and carefully painted. I’m not a trained fine artist. I learned as I went along. I’m always interested in the integrity of the material. I feel like I’m making an object that will exist in the world–it’s a greater investment than creating something that will merely serve the illusion of a show."
Then Thomas chuckles when I ask him about the influence of Buddhism on his work: "In Buddhism," he ironically points out, "all is impermanent."
At the same time, he has found that the study and practice of Buddhism has inspired him to commit to a bigger picture.
"I’ve had to ask myself where I’m placing myself and where I’m placing the importance of what I’m doing," says Thomas. "I’m content with my career. I’m an artist, and there’s something more important than the immediate fruits of my labor.
"In Buddhism, you must meditate and be mindful–and reach a state of full awakeness. As an art maker, you are as awake as possible."
Thomas’ next puppet project will be based on a collection of 10 paintings, "The Ox Herder Tale," about a man searching for an ox which can enlighten him. It’s a Zen teaching technique.
When asked if he believes puppetry is experiencing a renaissance or if it is more accepted in mainstream culture–especially since the puppet-heavy film, Being John Malkovich–Thomas lets out a weary sigh and snickers momentarily.
"You can go back to journals of puppetry arts from 1932, and they talk about how puppetry was undergoing a resurgence," the artist responds. "I think it’s in a renaissance today, but it’s still a little bit of a new thing. It’s hard to say.
"Puppetry is a marginal art form. And I think it will ebb and flow in and out of the dominant culture. People will feel like they’re re-discovering it again. Puppetry, however, really can’t be consumed by a dominant culture. It also has ties to death cults and primitive culture–perhaps because of effigies–that it can never really shake. But not being part of the dominant culture is puppet theatre’s strength: It can always comment in a subversive way."
Thomas returns to Buddhism for a moment, citing a monk–Samu Sunim–as a great inspiration. The puppeteer unexpectedly breaks into hysterics. He then slightly composes himself, between fits of laughter, and explains why Samu Sunim is such a powerful role model: "Whenever he sees me, he points his finger at me and laughs hysterically. That allows me to not take life so seriously and keeps me from becoming too arrogant."
This simple gesture underscores the notion that puppetry–in its ominous absurdity–just might be considered one of the greatest equalizers.