periale-hands.png

The Hand

It was almost thirty years ago when Bonnie and I got a call from a Public Television station. They wondered if we’d like to put together a piece that would dramatize all the things you could learn to do by watching Public TV. Though we were busy teaching out of state, it sounded like fun, so we ran back for a day. We didn’t have puppets with us, but put something together that morning using just our hands and a few simple props. The TV crew taped it after lunch and we headed back to our teaching job. We forgot about it, but a few months later we learned that it had been nominated for an Emmy. Its very simplicity lent the piece a charm that many of our more carefully planned shows can only dream of. Its power, I think, was in the hands themselves– those remarkable machines that are so expressive in their gestures, so evocative in their movements. We dedicate this issue to “The Hand” and its power as a performer.

This issue marks the beginning of the 36th year that Bonnie and I have been the editor and designer of UNIMA- USA’s magazines. Being instruments for spreading the news on (and information about) puppetry has always felt like a true service to the field. In all those years, we have never felt the urgency or significance of our mission so much as we do now. When societies began to lock down in response to COVID 19 in late winter, puppet theaters all over the world found themselves largely or entirely without work and without income. Artists have dealt with the crisis in a variety of ways, and there have been all sorts of programs to help keep puppet theaters and puppeteers afloat until we learn to live with the virus, though not everyone has benefited. In light of the enormous impact the pandemic is having on puppetry worldwide, we have created a special supplement to this issue to spotlight the many ways people are dealing with this “new normal” around the world. Kristin Haverty, one of UNIMA-USA’s newest board members, not only shares her reflections on how the Center for Puppetry Arts responded in the first months after they were forced to close, but she has compiled summaries of the “RésiliArt” panel discussions that have occurred online – each panel composed of leaders in the field from a particular region of the world. In addition, individual leaders in the field have shared news of what is happening in their theatre or region in England, France, Italy, Iran, India and elsewhere.

For historical context, noted shadow puppeteer Richard Bradshaw shares the story of the Jewell Marionettes, a U. S.-based company that got stranded in Australia during the flu pandemic of 1918-19. It is our wish that reading all these stories will help you feel less alone in your quest to survive this challenging time, and give you hope that those of us who make it through might emerge stronger than ever.

As for “The Hand,” we have a raft of articles and pro- files meant to charm, inform and delight you about our devilishly dexterous digits, whether performing inside a puppet or unencumbered. There are profiles of Ashley Bryan, whose marvelous hand puppets are featured on our cover, and Walter Wilkinson – the ultimate vagabond – who pulled his stage and puppets from town to town on a sort of wheelbarrow. Francisco Carter shares some technical innovations in Chinese hand puppetry that were a result of the Cultural Revolution, while Margaret Moody talks about her training in Taiwanese hand puppetry. Steve Abrams shows us glimpses of some of the performers who excelled at “naked hands,” in which the hand itself is the performer. Greg Pellone hunts for the origins of an unusual hand pup- pet, and Eugenio Navarro remembers a performance by the great British Punch professor John Styles that inspired him to take up the gloves himself. When you’ve had enough of reading, go to YouTube and search for Jiri Trnka The Hand – a short film by the iconic Czech animator that might finally answer that question: “What is the meaning of life?”

– Andrew Periale