 We go ahead and begin so good evening. My name is Blair Thomas, and I am very Excited to have this inauguration of our Ellen von Volkenberg puppetry symposium for the sixth edition of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival begin with a first of our four book talks and so I just want to say thank you for making your way up here and that after the talk I would invite you to Visit our studio at 433 which is directly below this space And in that we have three gallery exhibits happening Actually, there's only two today But we have two exact gallery exhibits because one is La Liga's puppets that are now getting ready for tomorrow's a puppet performance But Michael Montenegro has a Collection of paintings and sculpture work. He's a local puppeteer. It's a very fantastic he's connected to the little coral production and he directed and designed that and And then we also have some some images from some of the productions on Materiality the shows that are in the festival itself So but without further ado, I would like to introduce Paulette Richards and she's gonna take it from here So Greetings, thank you for coming out We've been doing these Symposium series for several years now and in recent years We were focused on kind of what I call the metaphysics of object performance so we were getting very philosophical and theoretical and People enjoyed it, but I also had some comments afterwards about it being too technical So when Blair and I started planning for this year, I thought well, why not Get to the nitty-gritty the materiality of the puppet So for the all eight sessions this time, we're gonna be talking stuff And I'm very happy to introduce my colleague Colette Searles Who has produced this wonderful book on puppetry in Star Wars? So I'll give you her a brief bio and then we'll just jump right into the questions so Colette is Associate professor and of theater and head of performance at the University of Maryland Baltimore County There she has devised award-winning puppet productions and as a stage director she specializes in visual storytelling with Her directing credits include Albert's dream at the brilliant Baltimore International Arts Festival Noah Hyde's vigils at the woolly mammoth theater company and Fixed boundary at San Francisco's exit theater For her original works in found person found object puppetry She has received grants from the Jim Henson Foundation and Puppeteers of America Her new book and that's what we're here to talk about today a Galaxy of things the power of puppets and masks in Star Wars and beyond and this book has recently received an Unima USA Nancy Stubb award for excellence in writing on the art of puppetry So please give a warm welcome to Colette Searles you Well, I'm so glad to be here. Thank you so much for proposing this idea. Thank you for inviting me Blair This is at my first Chicago International Puppet Festival been wanting to come for years. So I'm so happy to be among this crowd Thank you. It's such an honor and I just wanted and it's so such a pleasure to share the stages I have a few times now with my friend and colleague Dr. Paulette Richards who wrote this amazing book This the past several years as three amazing women have been writing these books This is Paulette's book object performance in the black Atlantic, which also just won a Nancy Stubba award by the way And is amazing You have to get it If you don't have it now get it soon and reading the puppet stage by our friend Dr. Claudia Orenstein who also helped a lot with this work that I did and I cite her a lot has written this book that focuses on the Dramaturgy of the puppet in theater and specifically it's amazing. So please check it out and she'll be here next week Yes, and the two of you will be talking next week about your books. So, um, yeah Was I supposed to say where's I get it? No, that's great. That's great. Okay, so hopefully we've whetted your interests There's all of these great puppet books coming out But we're gonna talk about the one at hand today And so could you give us a little background on how you came to write a book about puppets and Star Wars? So I have like many people in this room Who are puppetry artists and enthusiasts? I have a hard time explaining to people why they're so that they are so amazing first of all that we see puppets all Over the world all over the place advertising in film video TV theater on the street Everywhere we go we see objects performing characters and we give them so pay them so little mind and give them so little credit For what they do so I'm always struggling for ways to explain this to my students my theater classes to people at parties when I tell them what I do and One day I and I love Star Wars So one day I was watching a teaser for the new sequels that came out I think it was 2015 or so and JJ Abrams was was charged with directing the new sequel in Star Wars They came out the live-action film the Force Awakens and there's a teaser I don't know if any of you saw this but it was a teaser on YouTube that sort of broke the internet in which he was giving some sort of promotion about a contest and Behind him well, he's on the set right outside in the desert and this Creature walks by that's just this kind of like peasant creature with a funny turtle like face And it's got like a basket of other creatures inside it that are all kind of moving around and and it just walks It's just walking by mine at some business and it looks at the camera and JJ Abrams is like And and you know they did this on purpose But it looks accidental and everyone just freaked out because they thought oh my the response from the press and even even the Cover Vanity Fair, I think was oh my gosh the practical puppets are back, you know after the CGI dominated prequels we're going back to the old school and And I suddenly went okay. I got it tell it to them and put in Star Wars That's a line from 30 Rock I think was a TV show where One of the comedians had to explain the uncanny valley to someone and she's like oh, hey And it says just tell it to me in Star Wars So this book is is telling it to you in Star Wars Essentially why puppets and masks are so amazing? So I do want to really quickly say if I and if you beg my ear indulgence here people have asked me to explain What's in the book? It's actually a fairly skinny book as you can see I tried to make it really a quick read It's five chapters and but they're all kind of separate essays that all come they connect together But I know people come to this with different areas of interest Yeah, you might be a puppet scholar. You might be a practitioner or big Star Wars fans So I'll just quickly say what's what's in here Chapter one is sort of a is a rundown of all of the live-action Star Wars in release order from 1977 to 2023 two-ish three-ish of live-action Star Wars not the animated series none of that but just anything that was live and it looks at the journey of puppets and masks and How they were made and what the technologies were and how they contributed to story through that trajectory of about a little over 45 years, so you're kind of looking at you know a real beginnings of the practicals puppets and masks and only a few of them and they were mostly evil characters to becoming more meaningful through Yoda and Then you had the CGI explosion and the controversy over that with the prequel films And then the sequels and the new streaming series which went back to the old school But then also brought in some really amazing new digital technology such as performance capture So I take everybody through that and then I talk about something called the Star Wars thing aesthetic Which is a way that Star Wars treats materiality With certain qualities. I won't go into all of them now But like for example, there's a recycled element to everything in Star Wars. It uses a lot of like repurposing and recycling Chapter two is a theoretical chapter, which I try to make really simple and easy. I talk about the three D's which we'll get into So I use Star Wars characters to explain for example the concept of distance of puppets have distance from human beings And why that's exciting and Chapters of three and four or companion chapters, which which do a deep dive analysis of What I consider the strongest one of the strongest puppets. I'm not alone in this like I consider this a lot of people Who are more important than me in film criticism consider Yoda to be one of the greatest achievements of special effects in the history of film And how I talk about how Yoda came to be the history and the trajectory of his of his creation How how and how he affected the story how those few scenes that he was in in Empire Strikes Back Actually, I make a case for how they launched the deeper meaning of Star Wars And I I would suggest even I'm not sure Star Wars would have continued if that hadn't worked as well as it did Then I make a similar case for Darth Vader So I talk about puppets in chapter 3 and in chapter 4 I talk about the best example of a mask Which I think is Darth Vader and I talk about how the revelation anyone anyone let besides me and my folks here See Star Wars in the theaters back in the 70s and 80s. Okay, right So when when we saw that when the I'm sorry spoiler alert, but Darth Vader's Luke's father But the moment when he said I am your father The revelation of that was powerful but it was powerful in part because we didn't know what was behind that mask and we'd seen that little gross kind of Moment where we see the back of his head the revelation of the mask and the fact of the mask really made that that movie work and It also launched a storyline which which continued onward. In fact, if you think about it the original films asked the dramatic question What was behind what's behind the mask? And it answers it in the climax. We see what was behind the mask The the prequels then answered the question. Well, how did that mask get on in the first place? How did that happen? So I make a case for how the materiality of puppets and masks are deeply deeply meaningful and then the longest chapter chapter five Is it is a Good to see you. I'm seeing so many wonderful friends here is actually is about is about how Material characters are so powerful that they can cause harm and they have I talk about racial representation in Star Wars negative racial representation and stereotypes I get deep into Jar Jar Binks but I also try to really look at the positive potential that could have been there for that character and I also look at images of women and servitude and in service in the droids So that was a really interesting and fun and challenging chapter to write and see Okay, great. Thank you for that overview. I hope everybody's now just salivating to get their hands on this book And so linking into our theme once again materiality I wanted to ask if you could talk about The concept of material characters a little more give me a moment to give some background because if I'm not mistaken It was does the opposing her who put first put this concept of material performance out into the world Yes, I think she did. I mean I looked up I I'm not sure she was the absolute first person to utter it But she's she's I was certainly credit her with the term and the idea Having spoken with her and and read very carefully what she wrote in the introduction to the Routledge companion of puppetry and material performance another book you must have in 2014 And it's in that introduction. She and her co-editors John Bell and Claudia Orenstein Both write about their definition of puppetry and material performance expanding the term the idea of material performance being that That that puppets there's there's more than puppetry to puppetry and that puppets have agency they have agency to and I think there's a quote from Darcy apposner to shape and create and They they themselves in their materiality in their presence have the power to shape and create and that really was helpful to me because I thought You know Darth Vader's mask alone by itself without being on or part of any body has power It's it has power the meaning that it's been given I mean it the whole sequel trilogy in some ways kind of looked at the melted mask You know that image of the melted mask was itself so powerful I have a photograph in here of how it's used as a sort of religious relic almost It has power to create stories I was at Party City while I was writing this book a few years ago And I was like balloons of like all the current pop culture characters frozen whatever it was and there's Darth Vader And it's like 2022 Yet Darth Vader from 1977. You know what I mean? That's how powerful it is. So I Think so I so did you want me to talk about how I came I'm gonna lead you into that No, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is great. This is great. So we I'm establishing a lineage here So from Darcy apposner's work We get material performance and then I was at I think it was the 2017 puppeteers of America 19 yeah critical exchange session and Colette gave a presentation about this work that she was beginning at that time and she talked about material characters And I'm like so she's expanding on Darcy and I'm like, oh, I need that Because I was doing a lot of work with blackface Puppets because people would send the pictures of them to me and want me to verify is this a mammy is this a stereotype and so This is in my face So it's also been a wonderful journey because we we've laughed about being book pregnant together Colette's got her contract from Rutledge like a month before I did and so we would have these Friday afternoon Phone meetings. We'd both be folding laundry and and we would talk through Concepts in the book. So I was running down what I wanted to do with this idea of material characters and Calling these blackface stereotypes material characters and Colette was developing that further And I think that leads us into the 3ds. Yes a little bit. Yeah, I'll get there. Yeah I mean, I remember actually one time I gave up my laundry and I was walking around the backyard And and I was like walking in circles and listening to you talk about Aunt Jemima bottles And I was like you were like are those are they material characters? I was like, yes, you know our church fans material characters Yes, so yeah, I mean and I want to thank Paul it to this, you know first for suggesting that I really I don't remember Using the term material characters in that presentation. It's only because you told me I did and it was useful that I was like, oh and then I started ticking and started going someplace with it and what what where What I found useful about making this sort of concrete noun out of the noun material performance Of a thing material character is it gave me a way to collect as a community puppets masks and performing objects, which is the title of a really important essay by John Bell and I think Frank Potion also talked about performing objects this family of Characters So that not to suggest they aren't distinct types I mean within puppetry that are very specific and distinct styles and types and that's very important So I don't mean to suggest that puppets are masks or masks or puppets But they are part of a their cousins and I think it's important to give that that Cousinship a name to be able to give them a collective unified power and talk about their powers because they share quite a few So to me a material character as I suggest in the book is a Semi-human a non-human or a concealed human character that has come into being Through a performers collaboration with material of some sort And so what I what I thought about talking about in the book I wanted to kind of come up with a quick and easy way to collect all the puppetry scholarship I've been reading into some clear terms So I came up with this idea of the 3d's distance distillation and duality These are not terms that I created myself Distillation I mean did you know distance for examples talked about a great deal by Stephen Kaplan Penny Francis and others duality Darcy Paul's and others have talked about But I wanted to kind of put them together in this alliterative trio to help people remember to make it easier for professors like me to talk about them and For you know and for theater artists for directors I'm working with a director right now who's putting puppets in their show for the first time and helping them understand What will make this character? increasingly meaningful So yeah, there's a distance distillation and then there's five dualities And I can get into them if you like but we can we can see how much time we have Yeah, um, well, could you give us a little sketch for each? Distillation and duality, okay great So distance is this is is the fact is like the main power that all materials characters have which is that they are distanced from the human being So, you know C3PO Looks a lot like a person in terms of the outline sounds like a person has a human voice acts like a person but is not a person is clearly not is signalling with their material Imagery that they are even before they utter a word before C3PO utters a word. We know that's a nonhuman In fact, I talk about C3PO is kind of our host through Star Wars because that's the first thing we see Well, the first human like your first character we see in Star Wars is C3PO and we actually follow into Star Wars through his his his point of view So there's that distance element and distance enables things like violence C3PO gets blown to pieces several times in Star Wars and it's totally fine, you know, it can be fixed You know, so his head can come off and it's not grotesque So it's a storytelling element to that it can create separation You know, you can take off Darth Vader's mask and hold it and look at it and that is gives meaning So there's also distance just enables you to make a character look it can have a hundred eyes It can have it can be this tiny it can be a giant puppet when you're distanced from human anatomy Which is essentially what three to seven feet tall is the usual human. We're not that we're not that in terms of our shape We're pretty narrow, you know, if you look at all of creatures on the earth, you know There's a lot more variety there and puppets enable us to create with such abandon because of that distance Do distillation is simple It's just that the fact that when you are creating when you create a character out of material It is going to by nature end up communicating, especially if it's well-designed and well-performed Really ideas in a really distilled way and I use I use Star Wars characters mostly from the original films in the book to explain these ideas sort of tell it to you in Star Wars Because most of us can conjure up an image of Chewbacca or C-3PO because they're that famous So I talk about Jabba the Hutt who's this in in Empire Strikes Back is this like big slug And I talk about how he's a distilled idea of this greedy crime boss, right? So, you know, you think of the stereotype of a like ugly kind of, you know, slimy Crime boss. He's literally slimy, right? He literally throws his weight around He's literally too important to walk like people just move for him himself for him So but it's but if he'd been performed by just a human being in a costume Which I think was the original idea it wouldn't have had that impact So there's a visual impact to that Finally duality It was really this was the hardest one and I and I and I really do want to credit a dossier posner again because she she talks about All the different paradoxes in in one of her essays in the in the companion to material performance puppetry material performance She talks about all the different paradoxes that a I think she's puppets are co-committally alive and dead for example They are both living and not they're both real and fictional And so I thought this is exciting. So how can I make this digestible in what I'm thinking about material characters? And so I have these five dualities. I'll just give two examples one of them is novel familiarity So their paradox is essentially that a that a puppet can be both a material character is both this and that thing Which are opposites so, you know For example, our 2d2 is novelly familiar, right? We've never seen one of these before Our 2d2 was made up out of a bunch of different brains coming together part of it was like a lampshade a little bit like a vacuum cleaner There's a lot about our 2d2 that is totally familiar, you know He a lot like Lassie actually the dog that goes off and does what you need, right? Looks very much like a mid-century vacuum cleaner or or postal box, right? So and I get into why that's exciting I get into why each of these dualities helps helps make these characters particularly compelling another one is limited limitlessness Which is a bit of a hand of mouthful, but thinking materiality I often hear puppetry artists say things like a puppet can be anything puppetry can do anything Any puppet can do anything that's actually not true if you're a puppet tree artist You know that you wanted that puppet to do that thing and it didn't do it, right? And but it's that relationship you have which we are all now arguing is not Godlike It's not a hierarchy of me over you. I'm the God and you're the puppet. It's a negotiation The Claudia talks about this a lot, too it is it is a synergetic collaboration and So by the puppet or the material character refusing to do what you're trying to force it to do You and John Bell talks about this too You have to actually negotiate with it and then that itself has a creative outcome for example Anthony Daniels got inside C-3PO in 1976 and it couldn't he couldn't walk well Just couldn't right so he ends up shuffling. Well now C-3PO has this very distinct shuffle Right that is is part of his character. It's his iconic characterization same thing with these akimbo arms, right? So it it's it's that materiality has delicious limits. Yes, it's limitless in a way, but those limitations are also The limitlessness is limited and that's a good thing. So that's part of the duality. So there's other dualities you can Read about if you wish Great, okay, so we hit all the absolute must-have points and now we get to go have fun so was there Since we are going to get in the Artist panels into the nuts and bolts of what is this puppet made of and how did you design this mechanism and What was the construction process like and how does the material affect the way that you manipulate the puppet? Did you cover any of that and can you give us examples? Yes, I mean I think that the limited limitlessness is the one where I talk about it the most You know, there's so many opportunities in the way a character is Resists you or works with you. Maybe I'll slide into the CGI question here. Okay so One of the things I like to think about with material characters the term that is useful in thinking about how do we talk about all these non-human or semi-human special effect characters and film television and theater I want to think expansively and So I would consider I do consider any even images that are Characters that are non-human or semi-human if they're in live action Even if they're animated images, I still consider that a material character I talked about this a bit in my chapter in the the companion about CGI and it's it's evolution There's a there's a technology called performance capture motion It's motion capture, but it's like a step further Andy circus I don't know if you're familiar with him But he performed golem in in Lord of the Rings and he also performed King Kong and a lot of the primates in the Age of a what is it called the plan of the apes? Yeah, so he's a and he does he performs Snoke, which is the evil humanoid in in In the sequel films and he's an expert at performance capture. He really understands how to Combine the human with the non-human image So I give a lot of kudos to that technology. I think it's very exciting and So people have asked me I you know Paul it and I were both at Dragon Con back in September in Atlanta And there were a lot of Star Wars fans at these panels that we were Giving or that I was giving Star Wars and you know, I would do the puppetry ones and people would ask me to talk about CGI versus Practicals, I think there was even a panel called CGI versus practicals in Star Wars and I was like it's not a binary and right so because because of these dualities you actually if you understand them if you understand the power of material characters you can actually make the characters Serve the story and meaning in a in a better way For example, you may not if you may I feel badly because not everybody's seen everything here But there's these characters called the Kaminoans in the prequels that have like these they're made of they're CGI animations They're not performance captors. There's pure cartoons in a way pure animations. They have faces like rabbits and they're they're kind of white and glowy and skinny and and and and very fluid and I feel like these characters were actually the first CGI characters in Star Wars that were successful Because they understood their limitations somehow and I don't know whether this was intuitive or purposeful on behalf on the part of the Creators, but they and they didn't try to walk. They just they would glide Right and they were very polite and they were very well spoken and they were very Elegant and it suited the sort of fluidity and liquidity of the CGI style You know whereas Jar Jar Binks did not you know Jar Jar Binks was was was very was a physical theater character and physical theater You need stuff you need physicality, you know, I mean you're good If you're juggling you need actual objects and actual gravity and so that's why that that character kind of failed So there's what's that one reason one of the ways Right so yeah, so I think that You asked me about materiality in here. I'm talking about non material intangible images But I think that that's part of what what answers that question of does material matter and and the answer is yes I mean there's yak hair in in Chewbacca and that's meaningful because there's a real organic animal in there And it's woven in a very particular way so that he can move in a way That's very believable, but there's also something novelly familiar about that, you know We've never seen a Chewbacca before that was invented, but there's something truthful in in in the animal fur That we can kind of feel into it, so I hope that's helpful. Yeah, that was very yeah Since you brought up Jar Jar Binks, then we can get to your last chapter where you unpack the ways in which these Material characters can be harmful And this was the part of your work that I found most useful because you had your Your list of human and non-human could you run that down again, please? Sure right, so I talked about a Material character is a character that is non-human Semi-human or a concealed human which is like it offers the opportunity for masks And I think then you expanded on that I added subhuman because I needed to talk about Ajimaima and the whole minstrel gang and I also found your work on looking at these CGI characters through the lens of puppetry because so many of these images that I was dealing with existed as live performance as performing objects and as brand logos in the realm of illustration and animation and and in all of those medium They Performed as what we are now calling material characters. So subhuman add to the list But let's let's hear what Jar Jar Binks. I have never forgiven them for that. I stopped going to those films after that, but You were able to analyze what happened with that character. So yeah Yes, thank you and many have and you gave me some real courage and help in writing that chapter There's a section in the chapter called the the lost potential of Jar Jar and I chose that title because you know I'm at best to perform Jar Jar His career was nearly ruined by that and it wasn't his fault, but he also wasn't you know just a young Naive actor he was young and he was but he was already successful and he had a really thoughtful approach to that character And I was curious because I'd been reading about that. I thought well then what went wrong, you know, of course Lucasfilm is was busy saying well, you know, we didn't mean it. We didn't mean for it to be racist Of course, we have no racist intentions, but as we all know that and it's not about intentions It's about outcome and harm that that comes out of it and you take responsibility for that And so but I didn't feel like it there were there was a lot of talk about well Why should that responsibility fall necessarily on a mod that I'm at best? And so I read about his approach interviews with him and there's actually really amazing podcast now that he's he's given Interview that came out after the book was published that is fascinating to listen to about his process But I wanted to ask so I was like what part at what part what can I contribute to this in this conversation? And and I decided it was Is it because in part because he was CGI was was the fact that Jar Jar Binks was CGI was that part of the problem and the answer is yes I think I think it did actually contribute to the problem And and it's and this there's many reasons why there's many reasons within the reasons But one of them is that he was in some ways a little bit of a goofy character. I don't mean that in a small g I mean capital G goofy The character which was actually based on a racial stereotype to begin with so there was that lineage there, right? That was one of the reasons and and there we talk about the negative side of the duality of novel familiarity, right? Yes, we've never seen Jar Jar Binks before that was a really when you look at the design process for that character It's quite imaginative the designers and builders behind him really studied animal anatomy really looked at like skeletal structure Really thought carefully about that character and it had a lot of potential But there's that then there but once it was put into the context of the characterizations that ended up that character ended up performing on in the final film there was that other Familiarity of the racial stereotype which we're all familiar with if we've watched cartoons You know, especially if we've watched cartoons we watch Disney films those stereotypes are in our in our consciousness and so So that's part of the problem too Yeah, and it was just it was unseen and unacknowledged but also a huge part of it is context. I think I'm The context is often not considered and you have to understand that that You know what it's not just about the character in in isolation It's what they were with they were operating within which was a franchise in which all of the main characters Who were heroes and the villains as well were white men for the most part it was their world, right? If and in the characters of color were very much off to the side, you know We finally had a first black Jedi a mace Windu, you know But that was one character and then there was like a servant in Naboo and that was it and the rest were Were white and frankly British speaking they were given British accents, right? And the sort of native buffoonish characters were sort of coded as as people of color And and that was so that context was a big part of the problem too. Yeah Okay, have you covered everything that you wanted to say about your book? I'd love to have Q&A Yes, yes, so we do have time for Q&A So what I'm gonna do is get up and go into the audience and bring the microphone to whoever has a question Yes, sir Well, I'm an amateur among experts, but I do have a question your presentation mainly Seem to be about the visual experience of puppetry, but I'm wondering about how people with visual limitations experience puppetry or even blind people The there has to be some did they are they allowed to touch puppets or I don't know how that's dealt with That's really interesting. No one's ever asked that question. Thank you I mean, yeah, this is a room full of puppetry experts and maybe someone else could else could address that Puppetry the puppetry community is very engaged with accessibility and disability There's a large section of there's a large group of puppetry artists who are engaged in therapy particularly with and We're particularly what with people on the autism spectrum and children who find that distance from the human being to be particularly particularly helpful in social anxiety, right? But as far as blindness specifically, I would think that It's you're saying this is fictional, of course, but there's a period when Han Solo is blind in in return of the Jedi and he Recognizes Chewbacca by the feel and if Chewbacca had been a CGI character that wouldn't have been possible So there's that and there's a lot of embracing and hugging and petting that goes on between Chewbacca and others And there's that tangibility, so it's fictional of course, but but yeah, I imagine if you're if you're a Chewbacca fan And you can't see and you're at Dragon Con and you meet one of the Chewbaccas That's that's pretty powerful as opposed to shaking hands with somebody who's dressed as Luke Skywalker You know what I mean? There's that you know, we're touching the dome of Feeling the smoothness of C-3PO, you know, I'm sorry the RTDT. Thank you. The spherical feeling of BB-8 Yeah, there is that tangible element. I would think so. Yeah Thank you anybody else Yes, oh, yeah, this is one of our experts here Hi, Colette. Thank you Can't see you This is this is a question from my youth rather than really a puppetry question per se Which is I didn't see the original Star Wars in the theater But I definitely saw the prequels and I remember the enormous controversy about CGI Yoda and I think you you sort of addressed What I take to be your argument for why CGI Yoda was so horrific But I'd be curious to hear a little bit more of that sense It's probably the controversy that I can point to where Everyone I knew cared a lot all of a sudden about puppets in particular. Oh, that's great. I never thought of it that way Thank you. I don't remember that as much. That's so interesting You know that someone said to me I teach a class I'm about to go to start next week teaching a seminar on this book And I've taught several seminars already on on the Henson puppets Sesame Street Muppets and Star Wars. So this would be like my six or seven time But every time generationally I get a different group of students who have a very different understanding and memory like some of them are big Ewok fans Right, and if you what is the thing they say tell us this is how I can know how old you are Tell me what you think of the Ewoks, right that because if you love them that means you're young And if you hate them that means you're like my age so Thank you for that question. Um, yeah, I mean I actually was on a panel a dragon con about like Yoda specifically and They're just that's a world It's wonderful. It's wonderful. And and we talked about that There are Star Wars fans who love CGI Yoda because he can do all those kick-ass crazy Things with a lightsaber and and I think Frank Oz also, you know I've spoken to this before and one of the interviews that he gave talked about how it's a tool So use the tool at hand for the for the job that you got to do if he's gonna have to wield a lightsaber and fly in the air Make it CGI because a puppet can't do that So then there's that question of limited limitlessness in which you ask yourself well, I would have liked to have seen them try That might have been really cool You know and I think so I think that's that's That's a big part of it, you know I also talk about Grogu baby Yoda and I compare right I talk about that a good bit in the book and the Success, do you think the first Yoda was successful? this Yoda Was amazing and it was one of the most expensive special effects ever made and again one of the most important successful But because we he was novel and new but he also was familiar reminded us of the original Yoda that made him more More endearing to us But that character, I don't know if you any of you heard of this but but they were thinking about making him CGI You know and who was it that said? Or Furner Herzog was like your cowards and if her turn her talk tells you not to do something you're gonna be like, okay Cuz he's in the episode and he's like these puppeteers so magical it is amazing and he was like it bring me tears to my eyes You know and and that is a legendary story of the new This is from the Mandalorian the new streaming series that came out a few years ago The first of the streaming series which turned out to be tremendously successful in part because of baby Yoda But just to come back to that. Yeah, I mean, I think that baby Yoda sealed the deal make it a puppet do it You know you will not regret it Disney says this now, right? So it's proven So I One quick thing because I think also what a raised for those of us that were old enough to see when they Released four five and six was the change in job of the hut And I think that was what raised our hackles when when the because they were very close to each other when they were released And then when the prequels came out so I want to say I think that was when we all we started to think it's like Wait, where are the puppets and then when it came out and it was like where are the then we got really angry We were a little irritated and then we got really angry from the CGI But I just wanted to add that because that was when I remember it saying saying that job What is what's up with job nights? Why is he moving? He's supposed to be moved around anyway to your point So one thing that I find really fascinating So a lot of the work and and my background is with indigenous Communities and whatnot especially, you know within the Star Wars and there's this very much about this sort of claiming reclaiming of these particular Star Wars characters and especially these these the the material performances these objects are the ones that we in as Sort of indigenous Have gravitated towards and so I think my question because you know, I mean there's there's you know, baby grogu There was tons of stuff when when you know the baby came out and we were just like nice ours now You all go away. We we this is ours, right? But it doesn't apply to characters it applies to these these objects There's a whole thing with R2-D2 being like no R2-D2 is one of ours now, right? Like there's really fascinating art and work that's been done around that So I'm I'm kind of curious and you kind of brought this up a little bit in the addition is the cultural Connections around this and sort of I guess your research around some of the cultural Like the cultural understandings that go in this beyond say American culture, right? So like indigenous cultures and global cultures Do they do they hold or do you think they hold in the same kind of way? I Feel like I want to have a longer conversation with you for sure So I'm gonna say two things that may not fully answer exactly what you just asked but is related You know, there there is there was a name there, you know To say Native American or indigenous is that I know that I'm generalizing by saying that but there was of course There was a love and hate embrace and rejection going on throughout the Star Wars Releases and you know one for one thing, you know I believe the original Star Wars was the first to be filmed to be translated Navajo So there was that and but then there was also the Tuscan Raiders who were clearly, you know playing on the Native American Western trope of these savage natives, right that the Tuscan Raiders who've now been or they were called sand people Right, which also of course is many familiarities of many racial stereotypes is also Middle Eastern stereotypes there as well So there's been a reclaiming and I actually do write about this quite a bit as well I write about Native Americans claiming Star Wars in in the new the book of Boba Fett Which is one of the new streaming series in which they they they totally center material characters I love this they center material. I love about the new streaming series. They're not side characters anymore I mean the Mandalorian is literally about a masked character and his relationship with a puppet That's the whole thing so book of Boba Fett is about a masked character who becomes unmasked and he's he's of Maori He's a Maori, so he's an indigenous man In in his in his own identity and he uses some of the traditions of his culture in in the storytelling They also use sign language and they had a Sign language a coach too as one of the performers working on that and and they they give the Tuscans a new identity and they give them dignity and centrality I'm not saying it's all perfect. They also killed them all at the end So, you know Star Wars is a way of like it's just about to do better than it doesn't sometimes But but I do write about that and I do look at Native American voices and reviews and criticism too So thank you for bringing that up, but as far as other I also talk about Asia the Absent presence of Asian cultures too so we can let's talk more. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. I'm not sure you may be the last question But anyway Let's see so I am not a super fan of Star Wars, but I've seen most of the stuff I'm just young enough to have not managed to see any of the originals in theaters But I saw the rest and I've seen all the streaming serves. Okay My personal feeling which is definitely also based somewhat in the conversations that have just come up about you know How fans feel about things is that? Yoda absolutely right the puppetry and the material object of the original three was huge Darth Vader's mask all those things that the the next three which are the prequels And then the final three Which are the sequels? Okay, yeah That the best character in those three really was Darth Vader's mask And you said like his uses ritual object. Sorry. This is sort of first, but not I'm not the only one who says this, okay? So that but that really was and that that's almost why they brought it back because like you had to you had you needed something They didn't have anything else like that in those and you needed it And then Mandalorian which arguably has been the most successful the streaming series and kind of gave them a restart in a way the movies didn't You have baby Yoda the material object. So my sort of thought is first of all That hopefully they're that they have kind of but not quite managed to learn a lesson about how much they need that But second this actually goes a little bit further Do you see this having an effect because they have been so incredibly successful? With particularly like the masks the puppetry in Star Wars There's so many other properties out there that use CGI famously and all the new special effects that are out there and all the stuff Is there a sense of materiality? Do you think that is I know that Star Wars has helped popularize? Or what is the problem that somehow even Star Wars then they back away from it and then when it isn't successful They go back to it and then they back away from and then they go back to it because they that's what makes That seems very clearly to be what makes these things successful. So do you have anything to say? Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Yeah, so it's just summarized. Are you asking is that okay? Well, do you think Star Wars is maybe helping popularize the material in other things? Yes, and why is it people keep backing away from it when obviously they fail when they back away? Because it's well, I think it's I think that CGI is leaned into because of its affordances, right? And I tell this to my puppetry students all the time. I say your puppets are gonna have powers and limitations Affordances or powers. There's there's affordances things they could do. Well CGI is very murcury. Oh, it does language Well, the mouth moves well if you want a character that speaks very articulately CGI can be very helpful for that if you need them to transform or fly or be liquidy fish They're great at that. They're really not good at gravity. Do you know, they're really not good at tangibility. They can't hug you So you need to know what you're dealing with in its affordances and its limitations So I think that they're learning that I think when they first leaned into CGI was all about the affordances and you know And when you have someone who's as all-powerful as George Lucas, he had no limitations Everybody was a yes person. Nobody said no, so he was just you know going wild with it And and I don't think it's a binary. I think that even I even Grogu is enabled by CGI in part So they they go back to those affordances. Is it making it more popular? Is it proving the point? Absolutely, there are so many puppet shows right now There are so many plays films Netflix series with I can't even keep up with them all It used to be like a big deal when a new show came out with puppets in it It was like make the cover of Peppetry International magazine and now it's like oh yesterday and an hour ago So they're they're everywhere. They're everywhere. Yeah, thank you Kate and you I told you you'd ask me a smart question. Oh shoot. I just want to smart um, yeah, I when I I You know now how to start when I talk about distance and duality I am often thinking about the puppeteer the performing puppeteer and I'm happy that in this conversation that person has not been totally erased and forgotten Because in a lot of times when you know the the New York Times writes about puppet shows They don't even mention that there's puppeteers in it But it seems like a really really central figure to all puppet shows that because of their invisibility or Secret falling away that people just forget about them And I think that they're having really interesting core relationship to distance the the literal distance between the puppet and the puppeteer affords you storytelling that you wouldn't otherwise have and like who is this person in relationship to this object and And I have this other thing I talk about Simultaneity and I sometimes I'm like oh God is that different than duality? But now that you've said that you have different types of duality. I'm like oh simultaneous like Simultaneity is like a kind of duality So my question is about the Simultaneity of the puppet and the puppeteer in the puppets in the Star Wars Like do you think that there is a kind of like juiciness or magic that happens because the Simultaneity is going on and do you feel like because it's on film It's harder to notice or is it something that you're like no, of course Everybody knows that it's that there's a person in there and therefore the magic is is there I don't know. Can you say anything about that? I'm so glad he brought that up and I would just learn this morning that Kate is teaching puppetry at Harvard So yes, it's made it people. Yay. She's made it for us on our behalf So yeah, I talk about it. I think I have heard that term simultaneously I don't know from something that you wrote or somewhere else, but I have heard that term I call it the duality of absent presence So there's that paradox of the puppeteer the person operating the puppet whether they're using remote control animatronics Whether they're in a motion capture suit or they're literally going like this There's a there they are both present and absent So they're there and their work is going to make it onto the stage or onto the film is going to make it And it is necessary, but they are also absented in a way We're asked on stage just as we saw with walk-a-walk-a show last night We are asked not to look at them by virtue of their being dressed head to toe in dark colors that recess into our visuals Recess into the background so we're asked not to pay attention to them even though we see they're there and that's interesting You know, but on in the film as you suggest It is it is different because they are literally taken away like they're just taken out in post production We don't see any trace of their body. So there's actually a puppeteer running around behind the droid BB8, right? There's actually two I think and and there's an article that one of them I want to say Tompkins. I'm trying to remember his name, but he he wrote He was interviewed in puppetry international puppetry journal about his experience as a puppeteer So even though we don't see them their work is absolutely there the choices that they make the little head turns And all that are there One of the most to the most interesting examples of absent presence to me and Star Wars though our Chewbacca because we see the eyes of Peter Mayhew through Chewbacca and Peter Mayhew If you ever see him in behind-the-scenes interviews or anything like that He's passed away recently, but he's a very awkward way of walking He's a very fluid kind of angular way of moving that is absolutely Chewbacca his legs are very close together center of gravity is very low and The the the actor who is now performing Chewbacca who understudied with Mayhew for years before he died You now see his eyes, right? But he's also trying to kind of keep a bit of Peter Mayhew's spirit in the performance So there's a presence that will never go away there. So obviously Anthony Daniels I mean there is no C-3PO without Anthony Daniels It is a he even said between the two of us we make a beautiful sculpture He understands it's a synergetic relationship and of course Frank Oz and Kathy Mullen and perform and others in performing Yoda I mean it's it's you feel you not only feel the presence of of Frank Oz's voice and Comic timing in working with Yoda, but there's also a funny kind of way that he had he works with Muppets Muppets are funny in part on the Muppets show and in Sesame Street because of the way they interact with human beings There's a bit and that was permeating culture popular culture and television when Star Wars came out We a lot of us like we saw people interacting with puppets a lot, right and that Relationship Mark Hamill leaned into with Frank Oz and Yoda and so the presence of Frank Oz as a Muppeteer Was it was also part of what made that puppet successful. So if that answers your question. Thank you for that I'll be going downstairs after this to the cafe And so if y'all want to if you want to pick up a book, I'll be down there for a few minutes You can sign if you'd like, okay. Thank you so much Colette