Interview with Puppeteer Collective
Photos courtesy of Puppeteer Collective
Interview by Kiel McGowan and Max Callimanopulos
"They're either scary or silly," Kiel said when I asked him what he thought about puppets. It was a brisk morning in early March. We were walking across the Boston Common. I've known Kiel for ten years; I respect his opinions, and I found myself agreeing with his latest. Scary or silly was about right. Our destination – the Boston Puppet Collective and Library – had colored the morning's conversation. I hoped that an hour there might inject some nuance into our opinions. Besides, the collective's website showcased a vast selection of enormous wearable puppet-creatures, and I wanted to put Kiel in one. The collective occupies two basement rooms underneath the Emmanuel Episcopal Church, a stone's throw from Newbury Street's designer outlets and expensive hamburgers. We knocked on a broad door, feeling a bit like speakeasy patrons. A head popped out of the wall to our left: Sara Peattie, head of the Boston Puppet Collective, introduced herself. We shook hands and followed her into her domain. Kiel and I, heads bent under the low ceilings, slowly got our bearings. The space was stuffed with puppets and the materials used to make them: bits of construction paper, pipe cleaners, old newspapers, clay. Peattie explained that we were standing in the collective's workshop. Next door was the library. People were free to come and borrow puppets for parades, school plays or a jaunt in the park. I wondered how often they did that as I wandered around the place. To me, it seemed more museum than library: cavernous; the objects on display unified by their single medium – papier-mache. But the puppets here were not organized according to some curatorial principle; rather, they represented the personal tastes, artistic inclinations and whimsy of Boston's puppeteer community, a community that was clearly craftier and more alive than I had thought possible. Their output was prodigious. Most of the puppets were animals, as if a papier-mache menagerie had escaped from a zoo and found refuge here. Lions and tigers lay curled in corners, a row of seahorses pinned to a wall. A frog, given a slightly dour expression, had made its nest in a heap of fabric. After we finished our tour of the workshop and the library, Kiel and I sat down with Sara. Flanked by a pair of enormous roses and the head of a pterodactyl, we talked about the collective, scary puppets and life as a member of the puppeteering community – "a small town that's all over the world."
Kiel
So we wanna start off talking about the history of the collective. Do you know when it was founded?
Sara
Yes! I was there. My partner and I – George Connaugh (?) – founded it in San Francisco in…I'm gonna say '76. And I've been involved with it since, you know, dropping in and out. We were in San Francisco for a year and a half and then moved back east. One thing about San Francisco is that the clouds aren't good there.
Max
The clouds aren't good there?
Sara
They have fog, they don't have real clouds. It got on my nerves. And George I think wanted to get away from his mother.
Kiel
Fair.
Sara
Then we were working in Vermont and in New York a lot; we still have a section in New York. And George died, um, in 2001. Right before September 11. George died and the whole world went up in flames.
Kiel
I'm sorry to hear about George –
Sara
He was an interesting guy.
Max
Yeah, were you guys together until he passed?
Sara
We worked together.
Max
You worked together.
Sara
I don't know; it's not a relationship they have a name for, and I worked with him very closely through a couple of wives and a bunch of girlfriends; we were also involved emotionally.
Max
So a really close working relationship.
Sara
Yeah.
Kiel
You two were the main founders of the collective, but what inspired you both to create all this?
Sara
We'd been working with Bread and Puppet theater (in Vermont) since I was a teenager and George must've been not that much older.
Max
And you said you were apprenticed to a puppeteer. Does that mean your parents pushed you to be an apprentice or you chose yourself to be an apprentice?
Sara
No, I got sent up to Maine.
Max
By your family?
Sara
Yeah.
Max
Why did they decide that would be an instructive thing for you to do?
Sara
Who the hell knows?
Kiel
So you started the collective with two people. How has it grown or changed over time?
Sara
It sort of…morphed. I came here and I started working also with another group – Back Alley Puppet Theater – and the Northeast Kingdom Puppet Theater, who had taken over from Black Wheat Puppet Theater, who were here, but were not the original puppeteers who were here, and then they changed names and morphed and sort of left and Back Alley sort of…became entangled with Puppet Co-op – Back Alley doing Boston stuff and building stuff much quieter, more respectable, and Puppeteers Co-op doing workshops around the country and doing big parades. A much more loud and traveling group of people. We were working a lot with First Night, which at the time was expanding madly, and we were doing First Nights all around the country, and they all had puppets and parades.
Kiel
It sounds like there are actually quite a lot of puppet groups that maybe someone like myself might not have heard of, but that are actually expansive and everywhere.
Sara
Yeah, there are a lot of puppet groups everywhere…in the world!
Max
Do most major cities in America have a puppet group?
Sara
Oh, yeah!
Kiel
Is there another one in Boston that's a competitor with your group?
Sara
Not a competitor! Go talk to the Puppet Showplace, they have the Puppetry Guild, which has many member groups.
Max
A guild…
Kiel
A guild…
Sara
It is, yeah.
Max
Do you have to pay dues to be a member of a puppetry guild or collective?
Sara
You just join. And pay little dues, like thirty bucks.
Kiel
I feel like puppets aren't most people's hobby, so when they come together it seems like a pretty welcoming group, yeah?
Max
Are most of your friends puppeteers?
Sara
A lot of them. Puppeteers have a funny, um, a funny civilization. It's a lot of potlucks, it's a lot of meetings; it's like a small town that's all over the world. There's an origin story about the puppeteers which is probably not true but which I really like, which is that Tony Sark, who was an early puppeteer – he invented the inflatables for Macy's Parade – went to Europe and learned the secrets of marionette shows by looking up to where the strings were so he could find out how they worked. When he came back to the United States, he got everybody together and taught them what he'd learned. Ever since then the puppeteers here have festivals and potlucks and teach each other everything they know. Which isn't true of most arts.
Max
So you're generous with knowledge, everyone shares in it.
Sara
Wherever it comes from; that's the social life we have.
Kiel
There is a competitiveness in a lot of other arts.
Sara
And the puppeteers don't have that.
Max
It's democratic.
Sara
Not exactly; it's more like a craft kind of thing.
Kiel
You mentioned marionettes. Do you deal at all with those or work mostly with these kind of larger puppets?
Sara
I have a couple marionettes and you know, I manage to get even two strings tangled. It takes like twenty years to learn marionettes. I would need two other whole lifetimes.
Max
So most of the puppets here are ones you inhabit? You wear them?
Sara
Yeah. I also do toy theater, which is sort of expansive in a way because you can do a little box with puppets this big in it and it's a whole world. You can have a meteor crashing into the world and everything exploding because it's so small.
Kiel
Is that kind of like stop-motion? How does that work?
Sara
It's the same as stop-motion only live.
Max
How do you move those puppets?
Sara
Usually with little wires, or just with your hands. Traditional toy theater is printed – they sold a lot of them in England – and it was all paper. People did, like, Hamlet
Max
Like Punch and Judy shows?
Sara
Well, not Punch and Judy because you have to be able to whack people in Punch and Judy. But Hamlet and other plays by Shakespeare.
Kiel
Who designs the puppets? Looking around, a lot of them have a similar style. Is that just the style of this cooperative or is there one person who's doing most of the designing?
Sara
I make a lot of them. People drop things off (points to a papier-mache pterodactyl) – somebody just appeared at the backdoor with it. A lot of them are similar because they're made over clay. You make a clay positive and then put papier-mache over it and pop it off.
Kiel
So the collective has a model where you guys allow anyone to come in and take any puppet for free. How did you come to the decision not to charge anyone money and just make it an open resource?
Sara
Because…because it would be more trouble than it's worth, charging money. The church wants something socially relevant to be happening here. When people donate money to us I often give it to the church, because we couldn't afford to rent a broom closet around here. So that free model actually pays for a huge amount of space in the center of Boston. It's a pretty sweet deal when you come right down to it.
Kiel
So the church is bankrolling this operation in a way.
Sara
In a way, yes. Although it's space they couldn't use for anything because it's unoccupiable. They let us be here – we never had any agreement with them, we're just here. At one point we were donating ten percent of any money we made to them and the church said "Oh, you're tithing." Which a church can't object to!
Max
"Tithing." That's kind of an archaic term.
Sara
The whole is beyond medieval.
Kiel
Do you guys ever do any religious events with the puppets?
Sara
There's an Easter parade where the church uses the puppets.
Kiel
Is there an Easter Bunny puppet? Or a Jesus puppet?
Sara
(Laughing) No.
Kiel
The puppets are almost pagan, in a way.
Sara
Yeah, I've gotten that.
Kiel
So it sounds like you were almost raised to be a puppeteer. Did you have any other training in the arts?
Sara
I did painting and drawing. I left tour to go to college. I went to Antioch and I did the whole arts program backwards, so I do have a bachelors of the arts.
Max
As a kid, did you paint and draw?
Sara
I drew; I never saw anybody paint until I got to college. I don't think I realized that people could do that. You know, you see paintings in museums but it doesn't occur to you that actual people can actually do that. I was thrilled.
Kiel
Do you still make art outside of puppetry?
Sara
Yeah. I do painting; I do computer animation.
Kiel
Do you do the drawings for the instruction manual on the website?
Sara
Yeah.
Max
Those are all you?
Sara
Yep. During the winter I need something to do. During COVID a bunch of us got together and did Shakespeare's Tempest. One guy did all the voices.
Kiel
So you get involved in the performance aspect of puppetry as well?
Sara
Yeah.
Kiel
Are most people who are into puppetry involved in the creation and performance?
Sara
Otherwise it doesn't work.
Max
You've got to have a background in art and in theater as well, then.
Sara
And you have to know that it works. That's the base.
Kiel
If someone were to walk in here, how do they join the cooperative?
Sara
Mostly I recruit people for parades, and things like spring performances, and then they stick around. It doesn't take more than that. You don't have to declare allegiance or anything.
Kiel
So what kind of people generally come in here to borrow a puppet?
Sara
Curious people. A lot of organizations, but a lot of the people who come in and do puppets are people who are just open to anything. I once did a show in New York that involved seven supposedly identical dragons; and I looked at the performers and thought "This is like a movie crowd." There were two black men, a black woman, a white gay guy…all these different people, and I looked at them and thought: "These people look the same somehow." They had that same look, like, "Huh! What's next?"
Max
Expectancy.
Sara
Yeah.
Kiel
How often do people come in and borrow a puppet?
Sara
It depends. In the spring a lot more people borrow stuff. And then it sort of goes in and out of public consciousness; sometimes there's long periods where nobody comes in.
Max
What's the oldest puppet you have here?
Sara
It's an old tiger, so heavy. Probably thirty years.
Kiel
Do you have a favorite puppet?
Sara
No.
Max
None that you're particularly fond of?
Sara
It's always the next one that's gonna be the best one.
Max
Yeah, how often do you make a puppet? Are you constantly designing new puppets?
Sara
Yeah.
Kiel
Are any in progress currently?
Sara
There's some shaker puppets next door that are meant to be scary – we don't have enough scary puppets – but they're a disappointment to me; they don't pack well; they lose their little shakers.
Kiel
What's a shaker puppet?
Sara
They have plastic heads with nuts in them that make noise when they move.
Kiel
Ah. Have you noticed any trends in terms of which puppets are popular?
Sara
I haven't – no. Dragons are always the most popular. Everybody likes dragons. And little riding horses.
Max
The ones you wear?
Sara
Yeah. Because it's not a puppet of you being something, it's a puppet of you in your proper self, the wonderful person you are riding your steed, or a dragon. But a trend I have noticed is that I have a lot of trouble getting people to understand what a library is. People say, "Oh, you rent puppets," and I say, "No, we loan them." And people in the last few years seem to have trouble understanding things that aren't money-based. I've had people just sort of refuse it. The idea is just too awful for them.
Max
The idea that there could be a free library of puppets available to be borrowed whenever they like?
Sara
It's too vague a relationship.
Max
I mean, you said you started in '76, and it feels a bit like something from an earlier and more innocent age of American hippiedom, if you don't mind me saying.
Sara
Well, the puppet library is like that, and it's not hippie-based. But you could never start something like this today.
Max
No.
Sara
Free stuff, yeah.
Max
And free performance, also. That's not something we're so used to anymore.
Sara
Too bad.
Kiel
Have you ever had someone not bring a puppet back?
Sara
I once had somebody not bring a puppet back for, like, a year – on purpose. They signed a false name and took it away, and then a year later I found it by the back door.
Kiel
Wow. So do you guys also have a similar setup in New York City?
Sara
It's more…fly-by-night. At one point we had a puppet library in the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in Brooklyn – which is actually hollow, full of spiral stairs – but eventually the roof fell in.
Kiel
Do you have a favorite puppeting event?
Sara
First Night, probably. It's been the longest relationship of my life. There are a lot of people who go to First Night who are the children of the people who originally went; I meet people with masks from the seventies; and it's weird because they're people I only meet in passing once a year but I've known them longer than anybody else in my life.
Max
What exactly is First Night?
Sara
At one point it was this huge thing. It's a non-alcoholic New Year's celebration. Less of the enforced drinking and…now it's much – just a few shows and a parade.
Kiel
A lot of people are afraid of puppets. It's very warm and welcoming in here, but have you ever been scared of a puppet?
Sara
No!
Max
You've never been frightened by a puppet?
Sara
No!
Max
In the corner of your eye, at night, as you're turning off the lights, you've never been scared of one?
Sara
No! Although one of them got shot at one time. We were working in a zoo and one of the guards thought a puppet was an escaped animal. Apparently the zoo animals get out a lot. They had a cheetah that had been escaping every week, and he thought it might be that.
Kiel
Must be hard to catch. What would you say to anyone with a fear of puppets?
Sara
Let them be afraid.
Max
Do you get particularly attached to any puppets? Even if you don't have a favorite, do you find that certain puppets have a personality for you? That the act of creation gives them personality, or some kind of spirit?
Sara
Yeah. Or the fact that they move in a certain way gives them personality. I reverse-engineered some puppets from a leaflet about Malian puppets – apparently they have a huge tradition there – but these puppets have long arms, so they can really emote and do Shakespeare. They can always look great, no matter who's using them.
Kiel
For you, what does it mean to be a puppeteer?
Sara
Well, because puppets are so different – tiny, huge; I know people who use everyday objects to make puppets – an egg crate, or a pair of scissors. So a puppeteer is somebody who throws themself into something outside. You throw your opinions and characteristics into that outside object. That's what a puppeteer is, in my opinion.
Kiel
What's your favorite part of the puppeteering process?
Sara
It's got everything. It's got painting and working in a cellar and running around on the street with crowds; it's quiet work, and it's performance too.
Kiel
Would you consider yourself a puppet master at this point in your career?
Sara
You know…(laughs) Did you see those movies? Those puppet master horror films.
Max
I don't think so.
Sara
There was a period you couldn't say that, puppet master. But in a sense, yes. Like those Japanese artists who are the only ones who know how to weave sea silk, I'm a puppet master in the sense that I know an awful lot about what to do with a piece of cardboard – something other people have no reason to know. Puppet master isn't a real term. It's something people say about someone who can do things that other people can't necessarily. When I started doing these workshop parades, where we put together a parade with people who haven't done one, that was like "Ok, I'm a master." Because I'm doing something people don't do, or wouldn't want to.
Kiel
Do you have any apprentices right now?
Sara
Yes, actually. I used to do workshops in all the community centers around Boston, and I hired three youths from one of them to work on the First Night parade. Lately, they've been able to run the parade. I can just go home because they know how to do it.
Max
So there's a younger generation of puppeteers taking up the mantle?
Sara
Yeah, I didn't take them on as apprentices. They were there; they learned how to do it; they seemed quite happy that they can run a parade. Two of them got engaged.
Max
That's really sweet. Do a lot of puppeteers meet their partners through the community?
Sara
Yeah, because you're in one place all the time with someone. Also you get to know everybody's secret thoughts.
Max
How so?
Sara
Because having the puppets speak for you is more or less your secret life.
Max
Have you found that to be true? When people make a puppet and speak through it, they say things they would never say themselves?
Sara
Yeah.
Kiel
That's a thing in some therapies, they use a puppet and talk to each other like that.
Sara
It's sort of safe, because you're offloading it onto something else.
Kiel
Do you find it to be therapeutic yourself?
Sara
No, I think I've been around the block too much. Any therapy that was gonna happen happened decades ago.
Kiel
Are there any secrets about the puppeteering community that you could tell us, that you might want people to know.
Sara
That I would tell you? I don't think so. Just that most puppeteers, without admitting it, sort of think of the puppets as being not exactly like people, but maybe like pets. Like, a little bit alive. Like a snail or something. I think there's a tiny bit of confusion that puppeteers have with that.
Max
And you feel that way about some of your puppets?
Sara
Yeahhhh…
Max
They're a bit alive?
Sara
I would pet them a little, or I wouldn't want them hurt.
Max
Do you ever talk to them?
Sara
No! I have a cat.
Kiel
It makes sense though, because you put your energy into it and try to give it a personality…
Max
Also they have faces, they have expressive faces.
Sara
It's like magic. You work on something, and think about it…
Max
And your energy is transferred into it.
Sara
Yeah. So you think it would work, although it doesn't. But it's easy to believe in.
Kiel
What does it mean to be a superstar?
Sara
Don't know. No experience.