“God damn it,” I mumble softly under
my breath as a tiny orb of scarlet grows from the tip of my left index finger
for what felt like the thousandth time, placing the needle and thread on the
table. It’s been years since I last sewed, and it showed. Sucking the tip of my
finger to stop the flow of blood, I flip the two crudely stitched pieces of
anti-pill fleece inside-out with my right hand and flop the abstract figure
down onto the table next to the needle and thread. The stitches tacking
together the edges of the ivory fleece are jagged and sloppy, but the shape
resting on the rough wooden surface is unmistakable. A faceless and legless and
spineless little man lay amid a mess that would soon define him, and, oh! what
a beautiful mess it is.
White
Styrofoam balls roll by black feather boas. Yellow hunks of foam rubber hide
beneath sheets of red and black felt. Brown squares of cardboard hold orange
pom-poms. Purple markers cross paths with dull gold wire clothes-hangers. A
blue hot glue gun sits faintly smoking beside a spool of white thread. It’s
hard to believe that this colorful pile of lifeless crafting supplies is
destined to become an animated, static creature, capable of swaying the minds
of children and adults alike—a puppet.
Ah, the puppet—such a curious
representation of the human psyche. The puppet is a caricature of man himself,
as stylized reality. Elements of realism, expressionism, symbolism, and fairy
tale combine to form such an undoubted caricature. The puppet is not just a
simple imitation of man; it is a veritable symbol of man. Convincing and
bursting with life it takes the place of man, yet must follow the laws of art,
and achieving this level of liveliness from throwing together a slew of fabrics
and foams and plastics is no small feat. Only if the puppeteer succeeds in creating
a puppet that is a mechanically and visually conceivable symbol of a certain
type of person, and only if this puppet is well operated, will an audience
accept the puppet as a living being. The puppet is a simple, yet inventive and
complex, representation of man. The careful conveyance of its physical
characteristics, basic movements, and depiction of its personality define its
success. Many puppeteers, puppet builders, and puppet designers devote their
entire lives to mastering this craft…
But here I am, surrounded by what
looks like about half of the stock of a craft store and a sea of notes sketches
on crumpled scratch paper, with no prior experience regarding anything puppet
related, wondering if I possess the imagination and skill to create a
caricature worth listening to, worth indulging in, worth loving. I take a deep
breath, and begin to build upon the loose, ivory, man-shaped sleeve of
anti-pill fleece.
After an exasperating five hours of
meticulous work and a few burns from the dastardly hot glue gun, I have finally
finished him. He’s a fairly modern style puppet—a combined hand and rod puppet.
To operate a combined hand and rod puppet, the puppeteer places one hand inside
the character’s head, controlling head movements by pivoting that hand from the
wrist and operating the mouth with the fingers and thumb. The puppeteer uses
his other hand to operate to rods or wires attached to the character’s wrists
to control hand and arm movement. I look down at him. He stares back up at me with
a blank gaze of tired desperation, lifeless. My eyes scan his limp figure, drinking
in every little perfection and every little flaw.
His soft off-white head stuffed with
foam rubber is topped by a plume of feathery black hair wildly sprouting from
the apex of his fleece scalp. A few onyx strands dangle in front of his wide,
bloodshot Styrofoam eyes. Though the eyes appear tired and sad, dark purplish
bags of apparent exhaustion hanging heavily from each, black felt pupils stare
up at me intently. A fluffy orange pom-pom nose bulges out from beneath the
eyes directly above a gaping black mouth hiding a bright crimson tongue. A
perpetual five o’clock shadow runs across his cheeks and down his floppy wilted
neck, stopping above skinny shoulders covered by a beat up old t-shirt as
stuffed arms sag from the openings of the sleeves. His right hand clasps a
large yellow No. 2 pencil; his left, a crumpled ball of paper marred by
scribbles and scratches and forgotten dreams. Straightened lengths of a
dull-gold wire clothes hanger cuff his wrists and shoot down past the opening
at the bottom of his t-shirt.
He’s beautiful. I gently run my fingers
over the sloppy stitching that keeps him from splitting in two—down the side of
his head, past his shoulders and arms and hands—stopping at the gaping opening
at the bottom of his torso, fingers toying the edge of the fleece. A strange
feeling comes over me, and I wonder what possessed me to build a puppet in the
first place, how I ended up sitting at my kitchen table staring at a caricature
that, for some odd reason, I feel like I already know.
I
jerk my hand away from the puppet as a blurry memory blankets my mind, and
remember how this odd journey began only a few weeks prior. I had just filled
my prescription for Percocet due to a slight re-fracturing of my knuckles, so I
popped the hard white cap off the translucent orange bottle and tossed a couple
of those little blue suckers in my mouth. I plopped down on the couch and
browsed through the Netflix movie selections, waiting for the inevitable
narcotics-induced euphoria to kick in. As the familiar warm and fuzzy feeling
of oxycodone and paracetemol washed over my consciousness, a furry little red
creature with excited eyes, a bulbous orange nose, and an endless grin
plastered on his face caught my eye, directing me to the title above him. “Being
Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey,” was splayed in thin white and orange lettering
across the top of the page, and I focused my attention on the description.
“Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, this
documentary follows the career of puppeteer Kevin Clash, the soft-spoken man
behind the furry red monster, Elmo.”
I was sold. I clicked play faster
than you can say, “TICKLE ME ELMO!” and spent the next hour and sixteen minutes
with my eyes glued to the computer screen. When the credits rolled, after what
was quite possibly the greatest seventy-six minutes of my life, I slammed my
laptop shut and closed my eyes. I was forced to face the truth.
My
eyes suddenly snapped open. I had become puppet obsessed. I had gone
Muppet-crazy. At that very moment, the sensational, inspirational,
celebrational, Muppet-tational puppets took hold of my mind, consuming my every
thought. For the next few weeks, I watched every Muppet movie I could find,
read anything I could get my hands on regarding the Muppets, spent countless
hours on the internet poring over Muppet fan sites. I can’t imagine how crazy I
must have looked, watching Sesame Street
in the library, laughing out loud while reading children’s books, or singing
along with puppets to show-tunes.
