I was barely out of training pants the last time a puppet show held me captive.
Twenty-some years later I’m older and harder to impress, but no less enthralled as I sat, delighted and surrounded by fuzzy beings, in Peggy Artelle’s living room.
These weren’t my mother’s felt puppets — the ones she whipped up on the sewing machine in an hour to keep us kids out of her hair. Each taking weeks to design and craft, the Ottawa puppeteer’s creations are more moving works of art than toys. Although I’ve grown up, it seems that puppets have too.
“Over the last few years, there’s been a trend where puppets have been more for adults,” agreed Artelle’s son, Mike, who is also a designer and puppeteer. “Puppets aren’t just for kids anymore.”
Artelle is president of the Ottawa Puppetry Club, which has convened regularly over 10 years to share puppet building and performing ideas.
Members include professional artists and performers who make intricate puppets and marionettes from a variety of materials, including latex, sponge and fabric. Some are even created for the water, and require a puppeteer to stand waist deep in a pool during the performance.
Dozens of the area’s performers recently regaled spectators at Almonte’s international puppet festival, Puppets Up!. But I got up close and personal with some of Artelle’s most popular characters in her home.
She introduces me to Waverley the mermaid, Brown Bear, Little A the turtle and Louie, the big bad wolf. When she performs a character, there’s a transformation in not only her voice, but her gestures.
I try a puppet on for size.
“Hello!” I/the puppet said, and the effect I get is a bad dub, like watching a German movie in English. I might as well have been using one of those felt puppets from my youth. But it takes practice, Artelle assured me. “Timing is everything.”
The characters might be based on mythology, fables and classic children’s stories, but the shows, which run about an hour long, are intended for grown-ups for the simple reason that more interesting storylines hold the puppeteer’s interest. In an impromptu shadow puppet performance, Artelle and her husband, Bob, execute a chase across a field by a rabbit and a wolf. In another underwater montage, a school of fish swirls under the sea.
In the end, they’re a bunch of cloth dolls and paper cutouts on sticks. As a child-free person — herself years removed from the frivolity of childhood — I admit that I’d personally have no patience for it. But am I still impressed? You bet.
Like many things that appear to be child’s play, it’s a heck of a lot harder than it looks.
“People are always quite impressed,” said Artelle. “You can tell because when you bring the puppets out, people stop talking and there’s no noise.”
