Puppets Telling Stories
Dog-Ear: Nov. 12, 2024
Bread & Puppet presents: Gray Lady Cantata #9 & The Possibilitarian Imperative Everything Show ~ The following is some writing I did after attending my first Bread & Puppet performance while they were on tour. I was inspired by the craftmanship, dedication and storytelling - showing joy to truth, and truth to power. When the show ended, I felt electric - in tune with the world while also fearing it, as if this church were separate from the Future or nestled in a quiet pocket titled Safe For Now. When the doors opened, I carried the feeling that events like these could become illegal in my lifetime, that free thinkers could be targeted, knowing hope & community is bad for business. It only made me want to be a larger part of this kind of work.
I have added some distance between myself and my writing practice, some distance between my writing practice and my sharing practice. But I have missed this space and missed my own creative consistency. I’ve been carrying many seeds in my pockets for projects and feel radicalized to center art even more diligently and intentionally. In this writing, I focused on the first half of the show, the heavier, longer half. The second half was full of joy and satire, it should be said, daring to dream of better futures. I encourage anyone who can to attend one of these beautifully crafted & radical pieces of theater. You can read a shortened version of this reflection in Issue 02 of the Portland Dirt. Thank you for reading.
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In a church I couldn't see the feelings inside of me. I showed up with friends and it was cold cold. Side by side with J & Ivy, believing in dread & closeness in equal measure. Scarves around our head. Winter kissing the stained glass. Masses huddled together to see a traveling puppet show. Hand-pressed flags and woodcut prints hung like prayer flags from the ornate support beams. Prayers like, Courage, World, Bread, Thanks. We took our seats in the back, the front filled and filled thoughtfully. A black curtain drawn over the pulpit, feels small under God’s blue dome.
I was looking at the hand-painted prayers held by clothespins on a string between the arches flecked with gold when J leaned in, said, Man, this place is decrepit. I looked beyond the art and saw the church eaten away. The plaster weak and patched, historic wood peeking through like a wound. Lights dimmed, all quiet.
Hands hands hands bodies holding hands, hands reaching up. A moon-faced monk, a holy thing up on sticks. I was up on the pews facing the world, here in the back, performers the size of dolls all in white and me, beaming with my feet on the pews, dim light from my notes app right now, absorbing a world of art I was excited to know still existed. The puppets stand up. The show begins.
Oh it's bodies bodies bodies running and moving and dumping dumping dumping. The violence of practical effects, simple and arcane. Black and white stories told and retold. Don’t you have dreams like this? Bodies bodies bodies running and moving and being dumped? The hands go up bloodless after reaching to the sky. Small hands, small hands, oh, our hands, our hands pick them up. Bodies. We feel the weight of them. Bodies. We struggle together in reverence. A violin, of course a violin, plays side stage.
The world becomes a small, ambient thing to tell stories with.
Hope like an embryo. Hope like a moon.
The people holding hands, holding hands, tugging white along a may pole. They wrap themselves up in it instead. They get tangled. The grief, the mourning, the load bearing, the weight. Relentless, it comes. Relentless, we watch. We see clean white sheets stretch across the stage, wide and bright. Then there is only staring, for a long time only staring at the bodies, pointing at the bodies, staring at us staring at bodies, saying wordlessly, look look look. Saying, Are you looking? Are you seeing? Are you OK with what you’re seeing? Can you live with it?
Opening hands. Rising hands. Shaking fists at God and flip flopping. Hands relieved by story. The narrative that sublimates and feeds, made simple so we can wake up in the morning and keep going. But there is a knowing and when there is a knowing, there is a knowing better. We hope a knowing better encourages doing better. Open eyes on stage and here in the church, silently looking back. God knows this one. We are telling the oldest stories still. Stories, narratives, crushed lineages under the boots of heroes. The puppets remind us to tell better stories - more honest, more nuanced, stories of suffering and survival, of humanity doing human things.
Bodies & stories dumped and exhausted, exhausted then exalted and then tugging away, trying to throw it all out together - the grief that explodes like mushroom cloud, the fallout of greed, the fallout of control, the bodies all down at the bottom in someone else’s story but right now, they lay at our feet, here in the dirt, where we will all meet again eventually. This pile of horrors; all of us losing ourselves and leaving when it doesn't go anywhere. Realizing we can’t go anywhere. We turn our backs on it. We glance back and weep unable to look at ourselves.
The actors on stage stand in a group, all in white. Each bending to it at different times. No one is untouched or unaffected. Looking and turning away, standing straight and crumbling to their knees. Some bravery, all grief. This mourning takes time.
In time, they begin picking it apart, doing the work with hands and knees. They stop, they look, they do it more carefully. They are cleaning up the mess. They are forging on. They are trying to understand something cruel and senseless. They are picking up someone else’s mess. They are the debris kicked up in the scuffle. They are the bodies that haven’t yet fallen. They are the future and the past crushed in the palm of Now, both bigger and beneath them. Look here, another story on becoming.
I watch the puppets and performers and they become us so easily. We are all silent in this church together. We are all grieving this world together. We are holding ourselves, holding each other, saying hi and dropping the mask. We are holding reverence and bending back down again, licking our wounds, nursing the others.
Silent in the cathedral except for bodies dropping. We let go and hold on all at different times. We are inconsistent in our grief, in our healing, in our doubts as well as our belief. We are alive together right now. Everyone comes together under something white and warm. We see hands again, all hands. Binding, dethroning, becoming one
Now it is just a sheet and a mask. Everyone shining and taking on shame, shining and then weeping, then stomping. One of us leans down and the stomping continues more. Someone is trapped, someone in there still, someone we help get free. Slow stomping, slow looking, slow helping & then all at once helping.
The stage changes. Big painted faces like boulders shuffle back and forth. The masked folk creep out together. Feels like surveillance to me. The puppets move like the children moved, in their own time, in unison or free. These big stone faces that didn’t emote, like gargoyles, like heads of state, making the people smaller and smaller. Like beasts, they stand up taller. They huddle closer together, afraid now. Bravery, another mask to nurse.
One is left alone, twisting itself into odd shapes until it is taken care of and loved, at least it looks like love. On a hand painted tapestry held up by children, it reads: WE WILL SURVIVE. It feels like hope. It feels like a threat. No, it feels like a reckoning, a recognizing. Like the children, like the puppets, we move through this at different paces and with different capacities.
The pipes snap in the church, the heat is on and bodies are still being moved across the stage. Someone says, Who, me? And something falls from the sky. Is it a key? It is hard to see from back here in the dark. I hear a car skid off outside or I hear nothing at all, am hearing things, am haunted by being alive and watching it all. It is not a key. It is argued upon. It is shaken. It’s a flag being shaken. Giant hands are shaking. Someone else’s hands tying the wings to the angel. An agreement too large to be made wholly, shaking back and forth, blessed, decided on, worshiped, turning outside of itself or maybe this church is getting to me.
Has the plaster continued to fall behind me? Are the hands still shaking and deciding for me? Deals made about bombs and belief. Stories go on and on. Is it dangerous to be here? No, not yet. This church is porous and in need of repairs. Saints try singing. Hands always open and outstretched towards the sky. A vigil for Gaza, a flag reads. The curtains close, looking small again under the trembling chin of God.
A page I dog-eared from my Nightmares & Morning Pages series ~ thank you for reading ~
G
I went to Shoestring Theatre the other night, and they had such Bread and Puppet going on. It was magic. Would love to see Bread and Puppet.