 Good morning everybody, good morning, thank you for coming, thanks for coming out this morning. I'm Blair, the director of the Puppet Festival, we're in our penultimate day of our festival, beginning Saturday morning, so I'm feeling a little, my voice is lower as you can tell, and two of our panelists are making their way upstairs now, but we want to go ahead and begin, and so just to say we have one more book talk that happens today, and that one's at 4.30, 4.30 in this room, so that'll be our fourth one, so if you're interested in this kind of thing, as well as just to plug that tomorrow we have our, the final performance is Yael Razouli doing an evening of song with her puppet of Edith Pioff, and it's happening up north at the Rhapsody Theatre, it's a beautiful little cabaret space, so it's gonna be a really special night, so if you're up for that kind of thing, I think it's gonna be pretty entertaining. So without further ado, I'm gonna turn this over to Paulette Richards. Thank you. Hey, greetings. Thank you all for dragging yourselves out of bed on Saturday morning in the second weekend of the festival. We are happy to welcome Tira Yakobeli and Natasha Belova this morning, and we also have the wonderful translation skills of Ana Diaz Bariga, who is a graduate student at Northwestern University, and one of our very talented reviewers of shows for the festival, so we're gonna start with the people at hand, and our other panelists will join us when they get here. So the theme of our symposium series this year, as you may know, is the materiality of the puppet, and I had four nice alliterative titles for the panel sessions, materials, mechanisms, manipulation, and then I was also interested in construction techniques, and I thought it would be really cool to have Basil Twist on that panel because he is such a genius at construction techniques and design. However, when it got posted to the website, this panel was named Manipulation, so we're going to do a mixture of both today. Since we have Yakobeli Belova company here first, what I'll do is introduce them, and then they have some slides from various shows that they will talk about, and then we'll see if the other panelists have filtered in, and if not, we will just riff. So thank you for your patience. Let me introduce the panelists that we do have here, and then we'll get started. Thank you. All right, I gotta squint at this. But I'll start with Natacha Belova, who is here in the green. She was born in Russia and graduated in history and has lived in Belgium since 1995. After initial work as a costume and set designer on the Belgian and international performing arts circuits, she went on to specialize in contemporary puppetry, circus, cinema, and opera. She acquired a great deal of experience that drove her to instigate her own projects. Her first creations came in the form of exhibitions and installations. Yay, welcome, Yau. She made it. Yay, please have a seat. There you are. Good morning. Okay. So, in November of 2017, she realized her first work as a stage designer with Companie La Barca de Matis Passagheria at IF Festival, Internationale di Teatro di Imagenet e Figura in Milan. I hope I didn't butcher that too badly. Spanish, I have a bit, Italian, not at all. So, Italy, okay, in recent years, she has given numerous puppet workshops in 15 countries across three continents and in 2016 founded her own Center for Research and Training, the IFO, a non-profit based in Brussels. And this is a good moment. I don't know if the workshop that you all are teaching after the festival is full or not yet, but you might want to inquire, and if you would like to spend a week learning their marvelous technique, that would be, I think, a really fun time. How did the workshop, wasn't it? Yes. Okay. And the partner, Tita Jacobelli, whom we saw last night in Chaica, yes, began her career as an artist in 2001. In 2003, she won the Best Actress Award at the Nuevos Directors Festival and since 2005, she has worked as an actress and puppeteer as well as co-directing several works by Jaime Lorca's Viajena, sorry, Gracias, okay, yeah, it's small here, okay, company. So she also gives puppetry workshops. Her work on various stages in Europe and the Americas has included productions such as Gulliver, 2006, and Othello, 2012. Her close ties to music led her to direct several musicals with youth theater company Teatro de Ocasión and theatrical concerts with the Chilean Jazz Fusion Ensemble Congreso and the Phil Harmonic Orchestra of the Santiago Municipal Theater. So please welcome our first two panelists, generously, and I think what I'll do, oh, here he comes, no, no, no, sorry, I thought it was him, sorry, okay, so I think what I'll do since I have media for them is let them have 15 minutes or so to speak about their work and then the background, I'll be pulling up what I need to properly introduce Yael, and hopefully Basil will arrive in the interim. So let me take this down for the moment and put up, I'm in Basil's thing and I need to be in the other one, okay, okay, so you put three posters, which one do you want to start with? No, I don't have it. It's so soft and mixed. Because it's more technical. Okay. The other day, you also sent me the sign, it was that, no, that's another person. Yes. That's it. But it's already talked about very concrete construction. It's not to talk about the design of very technical posters on the construction. Yes, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Okay. We're going to improvise. So, sorry, we didn't get all the media files together, but we're going to work with what we have and as I said, I had envisioned this panel as the construction panel and Natacha is the construction expert. So we are going to dip into construction, but we will try very hard to link how construction relates to manipulation. Thank you. So, is this... It's going to be in French. Yes, it's going to be in French. We are an international festival. I worked more in the construction before Marionette, before working with Tita. I worked with some companies before working with Tita in Loco and Chaika, which are the shows that they've created together, and you developed two construction techniques. So, I worked with Tita, I worked with some companies before working with Tita, and they developed two construction techniques. I worked with Tita, I worked with Tita, I worked with Tita, I worked with Tita, and you developed two construction techniques. Before talking about the very concrete things in construction techniques, maybe we can talk about some questions you asked us. We have several questions. Before starting to build things, I'm going to also... I can start with that. Great. can start with the questions that I sent in advance and I sent those to I meant those for the whole panel but so you'll hear them repeated the first one what did the puppet need to do what did the puppet need to do that allows her to like figure out why she does things one way rather than another She comes from working in a theater of actors so she didn't have to build the actors So the first piece she worked on was a piece based on Alejandro Jodorowsky where they were like in a school of Intriloquists and the actors had to build their dummies based on their kind of like hidden passions, forces, their darkest secrets That was the first show that she built puppets for and no one in the company had manipulated neither the actor nor the director no one had used puppets before There were 12 puppets, human-sized puppets She had to develop her technique based on this impossible situation She took photos of all the actors She just printed them on paper She sculpted the foam And she dressed up the foam with the skin of the actors that she had created So she came up with this idea because it was kind of like a primitive way of dealing with the challenge that she had at hand and it was a puppet that had an articulated mouth because these puppets needed to speak These puppets needed to be like they she thought that she had a style of her own but but it's a style that exists which is the human-sized puppets and these actors needed to be very present on stage because they didn't have the technique of a puppeteer so their bodies were used as part of the puppets So this is the foam sculpture that has the space for the hand With the printed photos of the actors starting to come on top of the They needed for this show that the puppets resemble the actors but they needed to look a little bit grotesque They needed to be able to be manipulated very organically with the hand of the actors who didn't have this experience of manipulating puppets So this is the first technique that she uses and the second one uses termoplastic and warbler So these puppets they don't move their mouth but the expression of the face gives like the sensation of movement as you have seen in Chica This is a different puppet but you can see the stages of construction The question that she is asking herself after 15 years of building puppets like this and that drives how she builds puppets So she builds these puppets that look kind of human and they are human size but she's like looking for a space where they are imperfect There's something that's not fixed and they have a strong expression so that they allow the spectator to transform the emotions that they are projecting onto the puppet So it's projection of emotions that the story tells you So the spectator tells more stories with puppets than the puppet tells them It needs to be like a panel of projections To tell you very specifically, we have two shows One with the Chica techniques that you may have seen with a puppet that doesn't open its mouth and yet he speaks a lot and it was quite logical that she doesn't open her mouth because it's somewhere in her head So they have another show that is done in the same style as Chica where the puppet is supposed to speak a lot but this puppet doesn't move his mouth and so it works really well Oh it is Chica, so in Chica The puppet doesn't move the mouth but it is speaking a lot but it makes sense because it's the projection of what's going on in their mind where the character speaks a lot it speaks less and it opens the mouth and in their other show, Loco, the character speaks less but that puppet can open its mouth because somewhere when it opens the mouth it doesn't always correspond to what it says So the opening and expression of the mouth makes sense more than understanding it Do you see what I'm saying? How do I explain this? How do I explain this? I want to say that when it speaks so badly that sometimes the way it speaks doesn't help to understand but helps to understand that it's crazy So the way he speaks is nonsensical or not correct so sometimes the way he speaks is not actually reflecting what he's thinking but it reflects that he's crazy And this is the character of Loco and we can start at the beginning and so this is a character which is precisely with these two techniques that I showed before without mixing together there are plastic terms which allow a stronger finish and foam which allows the mouth to be articulated So this puppet combines both techniques allowing for the strong expression but also the movement of the mouth And this is the picture of the show I'll leave the floor because I don't know Just let me have a moment here There's a few people standing in the back and there's still some empty seats up front so feel free to come and have a seat if you would like Okay, thank you Okay, this is good So you gave a very comprehensive and fascinating answer to that first question and in the midst of answering that first question you also answered the question of how the design evolved and in a way the advantages of the chosen material that is the warbler thermoplastic versus the foam and I suppose it's a latex skin over the foam No, what is it? I used the fabric fabric, okay or paper or paper Okay, so we had two different materials that provided two different capabilities for manipulation and what I'd like to do now is pose the manipulation question that I sent you all to Tita So how did your manipulation techniques evolve in negotiation with the materials and mechanisms of the puppet? To speak in Spanish, okay? So when they were developing Chaika they were speaking about the duality that exists in Chekhov's seagull and Natasha took the mold on my face to make Chaika and Natasha took the mold on her face to create Chaika and she arrived in Chile one day with the puppet's head ready It was very shocking and very scary because I saw my grandmother, my grandmother because she could see her mother, her grandma herself as an old woman and I was afraid and immediately she created a tension because I said, I don't want to talk about myself and that created tension because she didn't want to speak about herself but you always talk about yourself especially with the puppets, you talk about yourself but you're always speaking about yourself especially with puppetry You're the puppet So she had this idea at the beginning that she was going to be manipulating the puppet and kind of like provoking it in like a kind of mean way but you can never plan ahead the puppet is always going to do whatever the puppet wants to do So she developed the personality of the puppet and find the puppet's voice so the puppet could find her own way and show it to her So if you start developing the personality and the gestures of a puppet you're kind of like generating a vocabulary you're learning the alphabet of the puppet and then being able to build words and build sentences through the gestures So after you do that you can release the technique a little bit and you can let yourself and the puppet respond more to the text of the play or the actions of the play and then the question becomes not what am I going to do with this puppet but what is this puppet going to do with me and then whatever initial ideas she had flipped completely and she became an assistant of the puppet and helping the puppet get through this play performance Thank you So I'm going to take the opportunity to ask one question that came up in the van as the catapult participants were writing to the next performance after seeing your phenomenal performance last night So the puppet here in Chica we were wondering is it really a puppet or is it more of a mask because there's the head part that's a separate piece and then you're wearing a costume that in a way you are inside the puppet performing rather than the puppet being more distanced from your body Well, this hybrid technique that Natalya and I developed has to do with questioning us as people all the time so it's not a puppet separated from the actress it's the same person who is divided into this duality that I was talking about So through this hybrid technique that they developed they're always like questioning who they are as people and the idea is that this puppet is not a puppet that exists separate from the actor but rather the actor and the puppet are part of a duality And all the themes that we take from the work of Chekhov we develop them through this double image And all the themes that they took from Chekhov's play are developed through this dual image So yes, it is a mask and it's also a puppet but it's the two things at the same time We wanted to talk about many things like solitude, loneliness and of course there are many layers in the work that you can reflect on There's many layers in the performance that you can reflect on but maybe the most primitive is a person playing with a puppet that doesn't exist but the most basic one is that it's a person playing with a puppet so it's a person that is alone Is there a point to your face? And we were very interested in this sequence where you are struggling with the puppet and it seems that it does pass in front of your face in some way During the whole show the face of the puppet is in front of her own face This is an interpretation of Arcadena, the old actor in Cigar and Nina And the deep fear that Arcadena feels about the new generation taking her place So when they were workshopping the show they played a lot with many ideas including having it as a mask that would cover a Tita's face but when Tita disappears they kind of lose the center of the issues that they're trying to explore in terms of the duality Thank you and I hope that cleared up some of the discussion in the catapult as well Thank you, thank you We're going to turn to the next panelist and I hope that Basil may be ready Okay good, so he did send me some things Sorry While I'm fumbling perhaps there's one burning question from the floor Anyone? No? Okay Jackie go ahead Can you both? I know you kind of mentioned it a little bit but what exactly are the materials that you use and do you use any non-toxic materials for people like me who can't use toxic materials So she uses Warblack which is a thermodynamic resin If you go to the website they give you all the information about the chemical components of it She found people who sell it in Belgium and talked to them and they gave her a certificate of everything that it has and how to use it safely in a big space and using a mask The website has all the chemical specifications, she's not a chemist so all she knows is from this information So when she was young she used to use more dangerous products and then she wouldn't wear a mask etc So after a certain age she started being more mindful of those things and she's really careful of using products that are non-toxic and won't harm her or her students So this product is not an industrial product, it's a product that is created mainly for people that do cosplay for them to use privately at home Thank you so much Okay I finally have pulled up Basil's bio and I will introduce him properly and then I have his images already so we're good to go So a third generation performer, Twist was born in Chicago and is a third generation puppeteer Twist has garnered an international reputation as a puppeteer, designer, director and creator He is a sought after collaborator for theater, ballet, opera, dance and film His unique approaches and techniques have been recognized with multiple awards, fellowships, critical acclaim and have furthered contemporary artistry and the technical craft of puppetry Basil is known for revitalizing puppetry as a serious and sophisticated art form through his imaginative experiments with materials, yay techniques, yay that's what we're talking about and uses in both narrative and abstract works Basil's shows range from productions of classic stories to abstract visualizations of orchestral music and are informed by puppetry traditions from around the world Basil received a degree from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionette in Charleville-Mézière, France where he was trained in set design, costume design, dramaturgy music and acting Original works include Symphony Fantastique from 1998 which featured abstract materials in a tank of water to simulate imagery and characters to music He contributed to the magic of Alfonso Cuarón's Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban didn't know that, cool, creating the Dementors Highlights of his original shows include Petrusca, Dogugayashi, Rite of Spring, Hansel and Gretel Arias with a twist, La Bella Dormente in Bosco and Sister Follies Please welcome Basil Twist Thank you So I think that Natasha gave us a good opening by taking up the question that I had sent to the panelists so I'll ask you and then I'll open your slides and hopefully you can link it to the question So the question is, what did the puppet need to do? So the pictures that I sent you are for the show that is part of this year's festival which is Book of Mountains and Seas and in this puppet that you can see here, it's interesting, it's a journey So the puppet originally, the show had a very interesting genesis, it's being presented here as part of also besides the Chicago International Festival of Puppet Theatre but it's also part of the Chicago Opera Theatre season So it has 12 really extraordinary singers on stage and the piece was really created for those singers and it was made by Lars Nova based out of Copenhagen and originally, the original invitation for the show was to have the singers be puppeteers and I thought, no way, that will never work and I went and I, but I was invited to go and meet this group of singers anyway and I did meet them, this was in 2018 and they were actually pretty game for the process and at the time, so the piece was being written So the composer is the first time I've worked with a living composer named Wang Rou The composer had not yet written the piece, he'd written snippets of it but he had some concepts of the stories which were based on Chinese creation myths and so one of the stories in particular is the story of a giant who's chasing the sun and I did what I always do in every process I started working with cardboard and I like silk a lot so I like cardboard and it is sort of a hard element and silk is the soft element and tape and scissors and I'll cut stuff together and put it apart and you can make, I think, almost anything out of that just as the initial process and so I did that with the singers and we made this cardboard giant that they puppeteered and sung with actually, they sung things that they had already knew and memorized and they actually puppeteered this giant and the aspects of the giant, I remember you build a thing in a workshop and it's not extremely well built and it started to fall apart in the workshop and we realized it was extremely moving that this big figure, that everyone was excited by working this big figure and having him move and he's chasing, kind of running after the sun which we represented with a paper lantern and he would fall apart and we thought it was really beautiful as he fell apart and that was the workshop and we did other, there are four different stories which have different aspects in them but just to speak about this giant in particular because he's kind of the most interesting and he's the most figurative of a puppet within the show so I laughed at that experience thinking well, I guess they can do it, they're sort of game alright, I'll make this show for these singers and all of the stories it had to be very obviously pared down and slim what they were doing so that they could focus on their singing because that's really their main thing fast forward into the pandemic, etc nothing at all but it actually didn't really matter it was about the piece being written once the piece was actually written the piece got finally written it's an extremely complicated piece of music for even the most experienced singers to sing and then they came back to me and said Basil, we can't memorize this music we won't be able to memorize it we're going to need to hold sheet music in our hands and I thought, well this, that, I knew it this will never work so I brought in puppeteers I brought in a team of my puppeteers from New York and they joined the troupe and that was a challenge to the producers but eventually we made the show but the genesis of how the giant was was that the giant was meant to be he was going to be actually in a way also that we saw in the workshop that he actually gets assembled on stage and falls apart on stage and goes through some very simple paces that accompany the music so anyway that's sort of just a funny anecdote about the singers doing it ultimately then we had the next problem with the puppeteers okay the puppeteers are going to do this so I did it workshop with the puppeteers with the cardboard again using cardboard but kind of rebuilt the giant several times and made the eventually kind of figured out how he should be like what parts of him the idea then got clear about the piece so I was using silk and paper lanterns and instead of cardboard I decided I wanted it to be a very raw material organic looking material so I wanted to use something like driftwood which is what this figure eventually was meant to look like and we built him out of cardboard and the puppeteers would work him and we had a great plan for him he was going to be worked as a broad puppet because the spaces that we were going to be in were often concert halls where there was no real theatrical it wasn't equipped as a theater it was just a concert hall so we had to kind of make it be very simple and we had these pieces that started as cardboard that eventually became driftwood and I can say more about what the driftwood was made of because I know people are always curious about that the driftwood pieces are made out of they have sort of PVC tubing inside of them which is like a bone and then they have clips attached to the ends of the PVC tubing so that they can clip together and be reconfigured into different shapes and then that is built out with indeed with cardboard so that's given bulk and then the skin of it is covered with a not healthy material which is we use polystyrene batting that you would find kind of inside of a quilt or something and then we destroy it with a heat gun so that it twists and curdles and has this fantastic organic quality but it is really a stinky toxic process and then we cover that with a lightweight resin to fix it in the end though what happened though is that this is a constant problem for myself and I'm sure for everybody on this panel and the puppetry world is that you start with an idea you make something and as you start to go it gets heavier and things get heavier it just happens and I knew of course you always know it's going to happen you try to plan in for it the thing is this figure got heavier we tried to work him on sticks like a big parade pageant puppet and it was too heavy I have like one really strong puppeteer and I was like he'll do it but when I couldn't do it I knew that it was not feasible and dangerous to do so we had to make a big change in the middle of all the craziness and the changes that kept coming down the line which is that this puppet would need to be suspended from ropes and it changes significantly what kind of spaces you can be in but pretty much any space you can figure out some way to put a pulley and hang a rope so the puppet became a giant marionette over the course of its life and if you see the show it's really moving when the puppet is actually assembled before our eyes and the singers help with that the singers help assemble the puppet and then the puppet gets hooked up and comes to life and has kind of his life cycle on stage running after a paper lantern which represents the sun and over the course of the show he falls apart and it's beautiful but that's what the initial how it started was with a junkie cardboard prototype and just keeping all those ideas intact even him falling apart that's beautiful okay great so in your story you covered all of the four questions that I have to tell but did you want to say anything about the other images that you sent me sure I mean I just this is another picture of Kwafu the giant and when he starts laying down and that's my team of super duper puppeteers behind him getting him ready this is a picture of you can see the singers the Ars Nova singers and amazingly so they needed to surprise they needed to hold their sheet music in front of them and I thought how are we going to do this how are they going to are they going to be always papers falling all over the stage and you know they use iPads to read the music and it actually has this really wonderful side effect too that it lights their faces so it creates this sort of there are these glowing faces in the dark that comes from this this horrible dilemma that showed up they needed to read their music they have it on an iPad and the iPad lights their faces and you can see that here also there's a big piece of silk so we use silk exactly as we did in the workshop I have a lot of silk in my arsenal I just brought it with me eventually we got a specific piece of silk made for this show but the silk represents as it often does it represents water and this is a scene where they go under the water so the silk gets lifted up over them which meant more rigging which like the giant that's kind of the trick thing whenever we go into a space is how are we going to rig the giant and how are we going to rig the silk and this needs to be here in the Studebaker Theater it's operated by it connects into the boxes in that beautiful theater and then the upper boxes stage hands have lines and pull the lines up for the silk to be suspended and I'm glad you said the word pulley because in the first panel I gave a pop quiz on the six simple machines and that's one of them so is this a projection onto the silk or is it printed on there no it's a projection so we have there are sort of super titles as well as the singers are singing in Chinese and also an ancient Chinese and also a sort of language so the story, kind of a very light explaining what's going on is projected as well as the entire Chinese libretto is projected and we end up using it end up becoming more than just super titles it sort of became an element of projection design and using it as a visual most audiences that we've shown the show to I can't read the Chinese symbols so to me it just looks like it was a sort of a design element and the show is extremely elastic in its approach to time I'll say so there are long passages and having being able to project something else was a great benefit as a designer it was interesting when we went to China and did the show and people could read what we were projecting and I had to change it in a way because I was projecting it too fast or projecting it at the wrong time so so we've had it's just funny how this show has changed and demanded how it needed to be along the way and that links back to how the panels kind of coalesce so yesterday we had Dr. Claudia Oritstein talking about her book reading the puppet stage and she showed us a diagram where she's outlining the relationship of sort of three dimensional figures that we recognize as puppetry and then visual design flat forms like illustration like animation and what is the relationship between those things and so your screen here with the Chinese that works one way for an audience that can read it and another way for audiences that can't is a good example so I'll bring that up to Dr. Oritstein okay let's move on this is the scene of the water above the water so the scene just before was under the water and the story that's told here is the story of there was a princess who was swimming in the sea and she was she refused the advances of the dragon king in the undersea kingdom and so she was transformed into a bird and then she spends the rest of her life trying to fill the ocean with sticks and twigs for revenge and it's sort of her endless driving impossible mission to fill the ocean with sticks and twigs and so that story of course used primarily the silk and the figure that you see on the pole represents the bird and we'll also say in English there was a bird to be clear I liked using these more abstract shapes and then there's a similar shape that's used under the water that's a fan with silk on it that's beautifully manipulated by one of my puppeteers Rosa Douglas and so we go tell the story both under the water and above the water and then under the water the dragon king is represented with the sort of assemblage of the same driftwood that is used for the other figures now is this the sun lantern this is one of the sun lanterns so that's the third piece which is the suns appear throughout so I really tried to find ways to include these elements the silk the paper lanterns and then the cardboard that had started the driftwood that had started as cardboard in the workshops in each of the stories just so that those things were used you could see them all being used in the third movement that's really where we lean into the paper lanterns because they are the ten suns that the story is that there were ten suns that would all live together in a tree and they would take turns coming out to represent the day and then come back to the tree one of the time but one day they all came out and it was catastrophic because the lakes dried up and the crops died and people were at risk and so there's a hero who came and shot down nine of the suns an archer and hence there's one sun that remains this was a very interesting section that we were doing with the singers because it was early on in that first workshop I always like to because you can with puppetry you don't have to be stuck on the ground however you can get up higher is wonderful and so let's put these lanterns on poles and it creates a vertical image and the composer saw that saw us working that way and loved it and that informed the piece that he wrote which ended up being rather long it's really incredibly meditative but unusually like it was unusual for me to work on something and a piece of music like that and he said no I loved the suns on the poles I loved them so much I wanted more I want to make the piece longer so it was really amazing experience for me to work with a living composer who was responding to me and what I was doing so things get longer and heavier yes this is one of the first in the first section which is the section about the creation of the world so sort of where we start kind of setting up the kind of rules of this world and it begins with a face there's a face figure which there's a picture of as well there's the face so that's Pangu the giant who sort of the world was created from his body so his as described in the book of mountains and seas when he when he died then his his his teeth became mountains his blood became the rivers his eyes became the sun and the moon and we do exactly that in the show as we start with this face we present this face and then on stage we disassemble him and reassemble him to create the mountains and the seas and the sun and the moon in the previous image so yeah that's all the images yeah so that's book of mountains and seas this show that's part of the festival okay thank you so much thank you okay so I need to get into my email because we sprung this on Yael at the last minute privileged and honored and so she has been able to send me images and things at the penultimate moment just now and I know the message is there but I didn't have this tab open there it is okay so first I will I pulled the bio from your website so born in 1983 in Jerusalem Israel Yael was trained primarily as a classical singer and went to study theater design in London she began developing her unique theatrical language at the school of visual theater in Jerusalem where she specialized in directing puppetry and design and graduated with excellence since 2006 Yael has been creating independent theater works and performs at leading international festivals throughout Europe the United States, particularly this one the Chicago international puppet theater festival South America and the Far East Yael's theatrical language is based on a multidisciplinary approach combining different forms of theater puppetry, visual art and music so we're going to see that in a minute welcome please and once again I'll start with the same question what did the puppet need to do and tell me which of these to open so we can see the puppet first of all the last one okay great beautiful you are prepared I just sent it so I think we're going to get oh great take you quickly through my artwork but if we're speaking about the puppet and the puppet and the technique and what we're looking for and I can say that for me it really depends on the individual project and like some people and some puppeteers here that really have developed aesthetic and manipulation language and then they go deep into that and expand that then for me it's really been okay what does this show about what does it need or kind of chance encounters and a lot has been based on limitations you know for years well I don't have like a studio where I can make things and when I graduated from the school of visual theater in Jerusalem I didn't have waitressing and didn't have a studio and so I thought it's easy to travel with and I can cut it in my apartment and for example or I would discover an object and be like I don't know what it is but you know or I would see a show like I saw Chaika some years ago in Cheleville and it just blew me away and I thought oh why not so for me it's kind of it's also like about the metamorphosis and like discovery and what the individual show needs and it's a big headache let me tell you because you kind of have to invent the wheel every time and but it's just the way that I work so if you can just keep like some images well this is my family yeah it's all about the family and yeah just to say oh wait just stop on this I grew up between Jerusalem and Toronto and then Seattle so I kind of got exposed and I moved between like 10 schools in 12 years moved around a lot and had to reinvent myself everywhere and also this kind of clash, schizophrenia that I definitely experienced even more so today between like living in a country in war perpetual war and and very violent and you know many things that have to do with Israel and then seeing another kind of life Toronto it's kind of the most extreme from Jerusalem and Seattle and having to like hold these two worlds languages, perspectives inside and and also it really like I think one of the elements of my career has been that I've wanted to get as far away as possible from the place I come from which is Jerusalem so that's been like a main propeller and still is I have to say you know but we can only run away far and you know it's always I carry it with you and but I definitely wanted to like puppetry was something I actually discovered where where Basil studied in Charleville-Mesière at the World International Puppetry Festival and you know as you heard before I was a classical singer and I wanted to do acting and this but I couldn't find myself in anything and I hated auditioning and puppetry kind of said oh I can write my own rules also as a woman creator and you know I don't have to sit and wait by the phone I'll invent my own show, my own character and I will be able to build the team with the artists that inspire me and I won't have to choose between the different art forms I won't have to choose between design and stage and music and I can incorporate everything because that's what puppetry is at its basis and I really ended up in a crazy special way in Charleville-Mesière next festival is September 25 write it down and go there it will change your life start saving and book your Airbnb as soon as possible and so I just saw for 10 days when I was 20 like every day I saw maybe 5, 7, 8 shows a day of some of the biggest artists in the field and also little shows in pubs Romeo and Juliet with tomatoes and cucumbers you know just like and I thought ah I can have my own show and I can put it into a suitcase and I can travel the world and so I had this image Jerusalem and studied there you can keep going and then I made paper cut when I came out of school which is I've been performing in over 30 countries now and ah and you know ah you can just keep showing some images so you know I was this is the paper I tried to develop a language of cinema in low tech and ah and then like so I'm just showing you like very very different extremely different ways of design this is the house by the lake a show that we're hoping to bring to Chicago ah three sisters in hiding during the Holocaust and ah and again like this show was inspired by like dolls that children um can keep going that dolls that children had in hiding ah children that were Holocaust survivors that we met and told us about the objects and toys that saved them in years of hiding and ah and ah so this is a show that's been touring for 14 years I either make a show that tours for 14 years or that plays three times ah um so yeah so this show we really thought like each sister three sisters and each one will have like a puppet that is her double ah her doll and as the time goes by and the situation worsens they turn into the dolls themselves also as they escape into a world of imagination and to keep surviving um and ah so I think a lot of my work is based on trauma and like for me creating is about survival um and like survival like in my life and the things I want and you know it's like enabled me this touring life I've been doing for almost 20 years now has enabled me first of all just to meet incredible people around the world and collaborate with wonderful artists and um yeah I can keep skipping so this is like the house by the lake can go a little faster on it this is um and then um and with this show bon voyage and other lies I collaborated with an Israeli very famous author at and there I was like okay I'm gonna develop like the language of paper theater even more so what if it's like like in this show for example you can just keep that it's like this is how um you know this language of paper theater enabled me to be to play like a character of a woman of a man of a baby like very fast uh transitions so you know each project is really like uh that's me blonde finally uh it was all happening on a plane um heading towards disaster and kind of uh different stories and identities um Shelly what a character this was like really an animation film uh in live on coke it was really like the uh finally we discovered we tried to develop so many techniques of like invented these hats to put this paper on to this finally we taped two magnets on our forehead and we had like 30 masks that were just like and also you know you couldn't turn or anything if you had to go off stage you had to just like pray and go right and reach out your hands to grab you um yes um this is the twins story of two twin sisters have fallen in love with two twin brothers and uh it ends of course very badly in betrayal and uh so we could develop further the language of pop up and this is me as the mother on the plane and also it's just it was a crazy crazy challenge to enter it was also like a very masochist language because like it worked perfectly if you had but if you moved it like an inch nothing work like just you know if you want to invent traps for yourself um but like since this show everything else I do is like so zen um so that's a show that like years were put into it played very little but because it also like Basil said it got bigger and bigger and bigger and then I couldn't afford to tour it so that happens and I think that shows also you know they have a fate of their own and this is what I wanted to really focus on which is the trilogy who knew it would be a trilogy but it's a trilogy um that I started when I was still a student when I was 22 which is about violence towards women and children and sexual violence and survival from that and um and so this was my first ever show how lovely um that was me and this cello case that was like when it was open it was the two parents in the story that send the little child off to her music lessons and when the case was closed it actually became the predator and uh and and I made this show and then I made this puppet also not knowing what it was gonna be for it's made out of broken musical instruments viola violin pieces and uh and and yeah and I started touring it when I was a baby I was 23 years old uh it was based on my own personal experience and like through this work I actually this is long before me too and it was actually how I found out that um this is not only my story and it resonated with so many people people will come to me after the show and say this is my story and like and and I knew that like I have this privilege to be telling this story also through visual theater and uh and and theater of images and music that we can get to talk about places in the soul that words are not enough and uh and and this was a 20 minute performance I just want to put it out there that I'm a strong believer in short performances also it's not easy to sell so you can team up with your friends but I always say and I say to my students like start with a 15 minute 20 minute show and um and and then I I toured it for like 10 years at the same time that I was doing also other shows and much more much lighter themed shows and um and uh and I found that um uh it was like heartbreaking for the audience as I felt really guilty performing it as people would come and they would start laughing I'm this funny character and then suddenly you know rape and like shock and then the show ended with uh the child like the vicious cycle continuing and you know the lights faded out you wanted to die you know and I thought no like now I'm it was already like in my early 30s I was like I want to talk about the next level I want to develop the aesthetic language of the show but also like who does this child become the woman that this child becomes to start talking about trauma and post trauma and uh and and the beginning of healing and reclaiming your voice um and uh and this was back in 2017 and while I was actually working on this show I went through another attack very severe um in the middle of nowhere and um um and I actually kept going on this show but had to put it aside uh for several years and uh and finally managed to complete it in 2021 um and this silence makes perfect they'll be performing in France next year um you can so uh it was kind of like we reworked the first part of the trilogy uh but this time with the world famous classical pianist that plays in Carnegie Hall and I have this obsession about collaborating with classical musicians and getting them to do puppetry uh beware good morning and uh but I was extremely lucky because a meet turned out to be an incredible partner in helping me tell this story and uh um so the puppet became we entered more into like this masks of conscious world uh this is kind of the technique we worked on that was actually 3D printed masks we would scan the face of the performer the designer, Randoniel Coppiler would um create these um and then we would print them and I would paint them um and yeah and I mean it's uh it's extremely rewarding um to be able to you know it took years it took five years to put on this show um and um and managed to get to that place I wanted to get to of reclaiming your voice um and still to accept um to be in darkness that's where I still was at that point you know but um and like the audience we always have audience discussions after the show sometimes I think I do the show for the audience discussions and and uh and to do the show like to tell you know people that see it um that you know you're not alone this is not uh this is experienced by so many women and children and men um and uh yes you can see um so really every time um I find I discover a different language um with my collaborators and then I want to talk to you yes um about the last part of the trilogy um that I've just previewed in Norway um which is oh you can see some more masks here uh it started as a show called Burning Blue I worked on it for three years and then I censored it um so the third part of the trilogy you can skip these this is another bigger production I made in Corsica but it was also part um because when the third part of the trilogy um the third part of the trilogy is the experience that happened to me in 2017 um that's great here so um that I was actually kidnapped on my ride home organized for me after a show and I actually and I managed to survive and save myself from this experience that lasted several hours and I it's a crazy story but the reason I'm still here is that I used everything I learned on stage um at this moment of survival in life and I managed to also sing to save my life and uh and the songs that I was singing at first it started like American swing jazz music which is my repertoire but very quickly I realized that I have to move to the French repertoire and to the songs of Edith Piaf that really uh helped me keep going so in my experience also like art has saved me in the most physical sense and then um I was offered and uh can go back on I was offered an amazing opportunity to go to a tiny fisherman village in the north of Norway uh Stam Sund they also have an international puppetry festival it's called Norland Visual Theater check it out you can apply for residencies there um and they allowed me to go there and develop this show and it's taken again years and uh and part of the process of making this show I also turned to actually Natasha and Tita and we did a workshop together because I was looking for the language of it and uh and finally I found it so I work I guess I use shows to work with artists I love also so this is Yaelin Baal an amazing puppeteer um from Israel um just to show you some names and google them um kind of the foam puppets that she's worked with if you know Duda Paiva's work so Yael was one of his teachers and uh an artist he worked with at the beginning of his career Eduardo Felix he performed here in the festival a few times from Brazil from Pygmalion um you can see some of Eduardo's amazing work also very diverse and all he creates Polina Borisova I think maybe she also played here an amazing so I really just like invited people I love and that I admire to work with me and uh and uh and we worked on this show that was called Burning Bluth and then uh and Neville Tranter please google you can see a lot of Neville's work Neville does Muppets I never thought I would do Muppets in my life but then uh I I I I realized that for this show this is me and Edith already this is prototype number three I realized that I couldn't tell this show without Edith with me on stage to really um to help me and to keep also a level of humor as I walked into the darkness and um so you can see us here together uh I I'm I'm just training and like I'm a student I'm learning um how to work with different prototypes with different languages with rhythms uh Neville Tranter came and worked with me on this I want to just show you the last things like the other lots of different this is uh um I want to oh can you maybe open the go back to the email I just want to show you who she and the three from the last yeah this one and if you can just go down here yeah down down down yeah like to this guy yeah and open the slideshow and go back one so this is actually a character I made oh can just skip quickly uh that character I made in Natasha's workshop as I was looking this guy as I was looking so this is you know the language of Natasha and Tita with the collage and this is me so and call this becoming your predator um and uh it never made the show it was cut um but I tried this aesthetic also for a while it was too realistic and too real um and uh but it was part of the process and you can just for the end you can keep skipping yeah forward this is the end of that that's the end well um and if you want to see what this developed into come on Sunday you'll be able to see Edith what she turned into and also tonight um I might be showing a scene I will be showing a scene at the cabaret she's beautiful oh she is really beautiful maybe on this one um but I really want to encourage people to try different techniques that you know nothing about and uh and you know and also I want to encourage people to be like okay um I'm a puppeteer I'm an object theater maker you know just say it and then you know and then do it and and and if you find an artist that you love their language then you know think into that and see what works for you there are a million reasons not to create you know but like I want to encourage you also to start small and in your living room if need be um and uh and I'm really really happy to be back here I've been teaching here in Chicago the last two summers um and uh and I love this festival so much and I have to also say that thanks to this festival I have a a US working visa for the next three years thank you so uh you'll be seeing much more of me thank you so much Yaya thank you um at this point we can open the floor for questions please wait for Anna Diaz-Riga to bring the microphone to you because we're live streaming and we yes there's a gentleman already in the back there hey this question for Basil hi when you were in the workshop with the singers and then they were working with the puppet and then you went on that you know and it progressed I'm wondering did that initial experience with the singers manipulating the puppet inform anything either just the rhythm or their presence or the music around the puppet or is that something that you had experienced before um well it it was keeping it simple because they weren't trained puppeteers so just really just like making a puppet walk just like the very essential simple things and um and then that informed what the final piece is puppet else is still just very simple actions um and uh anyway I think that came from you know it's amazing for me to go back and look at the videos that I made with those singers um and how much it's all there um and how much I tried to stay true to that even though then later I had the opportunity to make things out of something other than cardboard and to make and to work with you know skilled puppeteers still what was um that essential uh that essential element of like creating in the room with some people who were sort of novices to the craft um is what stays in the show it's just refined but it's the same element okay there's a question down front this is for Basil I'm really curious about the whole process uh of creating with non-puppeteers did they actually help you did you say okay here's a cardboard here's the silk here's uh and have them or what happened how did you do that one two you mentioned video do you video each and every rehearsal and what you learned from it and then go back and play with it what is that whole process like so the so I had in the process in the making process I had some I had one like buddy who's a kind of jack of all trades maker with me supporting and I also had two local puppeteers because I thought oh yeah I'll use singers but we must have there have to be at least two hidden puppeteers making it look like they're doing the work so the things like making a making the giant I actually don't remember if the singers may have helped but it was very it was like take this piece of cardboard roll it into a tube and put a piece of tape around it that's a leg now here's another one this is an arm now tape them together okay so it was very it was very simple and I the singers may have been involved in that because it was that simple and but the the essential kind of you know making of okay let's let's now make this face turn this face into some mountains and I had just made some jagged cardboard cutouts and they did that work but I do I I'm glad that somebody actually I don't always you know I'm not always on it with documentation so for me generally if something sticks if something is right it sticks in my mind I actually I know I was prompted Blair said do you have drawings or images that we can share we're wanting to do an exhibit of and I don't know where my drawings are it's mostly that I'll work it out in the room and if something sticks you know it and then if you have to do it again you'll make it again out of cardboard so but I do use video frequently as a tool to film and I got an iPad mostly that I could film things and show them back to people on the spot because it's it's the best tool for people to be able to see what they're doing and then I have all those videos still here and then we won't forget you there in the back we'll get you next I was I was really interested in the 10 moons and how the pictures are made the piece longer so you know when I watch puppetry it's so interesting all the subtle ways the puppets can move but did you find you were stuck with repeating a lot of the same motions was that hard to extend it or how did you work that out I am other shows of mine I tend to be like I need a different I have sort of ADD and I need something to change every three seconds to be tons and tons and tons of puppets and objects and things and this was not that show so I and a lantern on a stick only has so many moves you can do so you I just really had to lean into the music you know I mean there was an experience of really leaning into the music being with the music letting it be about the music that it's about the music that it's a it's an extraordinary piece of music it's a group of extraordinary singers and there's also some beautiful visuals that are accompanying it is kind of the spirit I had to approach with it and I I mean I was the piece of music with the 10 suns it's a very long piece it's very slow I wasn't sure how can I do this this is not my style but when he assured me no I wrote it because I loved what I saw I loved what I saw and that inspired me as a composer I had to just go with that and trust that because I was working with this that was my collaborator and now I that piece of music is when you get to the end of it it's pretty extraordinary to have sat with that and there is some we change the lights the colors change within the lanterns and we found ways for variety but it is very it's very spare and it's very simple it's a very extraordinary collaboration with that composer and those singers okay thank you back here is this working okay I think so thank you all for sharing about your work my question is for EIL I'm curious sort of how you came to the idea of having the cello case as a character in the first show in your trilogy and also sort of what it was like working with the character that sort of embodied both the parents and the attacker I would just love to hear a little bit more about that process and that character if you're comfortable sharing thank you well I think you know sometimes I think that all we can do is show up for the work and then be receptive to the miracles of discovery that that's really our only responsibility you know like and like to show up and then be receptive and so that was I had a friend who was a violin maker and he said well I'm throwing away a bunch of stuff come you know and I took like a lot of stuff and then I played around like the space of playing which is really like it's very child plays you know like I think the whole work is to move the critic out of the room and this is why I love working with music in improvisation like I would go into a space and put some music and if I remembered documentation and the camera so I remember what I did later and look at it with love we try and and you know it was just it came out of this moment where I agreed to be a child and play with the object and actually at first I made like a little skit for these two characters they were like actually like a couple that were like were late for a movie and the woman told the guy that she was pregnant and it all happened in a cinema and this like it was something completely different and then it suddenly when I agreed to look inside and and and agreed to go into my pain then it came in this way and I think that um the fact that you can you can use one object to become so many things and to metamorphosize and you know like Basil was saying this less is more element and when I think about it today I think that you know violence is also like you know a traumatic experience is something that has so much resonance on so many circles you know what happened is not just um your own pain but also the pain of my family and my parents who experienced this and and also how everything was you know linked and intertwined and um so I think and yes this um this possibility of metamorphosis from so few elements you know and I think that's a wonderful um exercise a wonderful exercise I would really propose when you're discovering a puppet or an object you know is to go into space and put music on maybe different kinds of music and just improvise very freely and see what happens and with text without text just you know like you could get more done in 20 minutes of this then you can for weeks when you're like let's try it like this let's try it like this so to get to that intuitive place of discovery and then appreciating what you discovered ping-ponging from the back to the front again yes thank you very much so I want to talk a little bit about my experience of this panel right so I came into it thinking about what you think about the production right and the product and who's a vision is it that um that you're executing against right is it the puppet is the vision the puppeteer the vision the design or is it the music is the vision and then the puppet is the um sort of how it gets executed but really what I'm hearing in all of this is the co-creation and that's sort of what I'm taking away from it is that and the co-creation could be the music it could be the trauma it could be the medium right but it's all about the that's the co-creation concept right and that's what I'm hearing that that moved me in this in this panel so I want to thank you very much because it sort of took me to a different place than I started and that's really what I would think that you'd want anyone to come out of from a panel right you know you started here but when it ended you're in a different place so thank you very much thank you thank you sir in the theory of puppet performance we have gone deep into the relationship between the puppeteer's human consciousness and the negotiation that happens with the material so that idea of collaboration is central to what we think we're doing with the puppet thank you okay there was a question over there and then we'll come back to you isn't it a question for Yael in the realm of discovery we're talking about and also with sort of appreciation for your urging of short form content 15-20 minute pieces I was curious about your sort of journey in the the shorter pieces of the both development and in performance of those pieces like how do you find how have you found like effective impactful stories to share in like a shorter time and then how do you kind of gone about presenting those you're not going to like book the Studebaker and be like 20 minutes be like alright thanks guys but sort of like how what is sort of your journey been in creating and sharing those kind of like quicker shorter pieces and ways you found like success through success like fulfillment through those kind of works okay thanks for this wonderful question so like one possibility for example because I feel like sometimes we only have materials for 15-20 minutes but then we make an hour show like we know we all know this feeling and and and I think like one way is really to to make your 15-20 minute show and then collaborate with other people who have their own 15-20 minute show and and that's what I did starting off even with how lovely with this show I teamed up with two other performers and it's amazing like when you look for things threads in common you will find them and then we let the work simmer a little bit into each other and and we had we you know but we put this night together and then we also made like a scene together to wrap it up but there we had it and and one example but when it's like my own show I always think I like working in stages I can't handle the one big deadline at the end it's too paralyzing so I will always make you know I will I will break down the process and I will show 15-20 minutes to my friends sometimes you know in someone's living room or in a little theater and I will just force myself to have little deadlines and I really look at the show like I look at the show like okay it has to be there have to be like maybe 12 scenes that each one has to be like wow of its own you know or maybe seven or eight yes and so I really try to look at it also like that like almost as cabaret numbers in a show and then a lot of it is you know letting things simmer and revisiting them but yes like forcing yourself just saying okay a month from now I'm going to invite these 10 friends and I'm going to show them work and you give yourself like that deadline and you can invite other people to also show their work but you know I think that it's a really necessary way forward and then it becomes the wonderful era where you have to kill your angels, babies, sweethearts I don't know when you have like too much material you know so I think as some of you know the book of the artist way it's very inspiring to me I highly recommend it and the author says we're responsible for the quantity you know like then trust the universe of quality you know but like just make material you know like painters here in their studios so many sketches just whatever you need to do to go out of your head and make stuff and then show it as much as possible in the stages this is what I need for my process great thank you so back over here and then King Kong back you have one blue shirt here and one will be another blue shirt yes you hello all thank you so much for being here I have a question for anyone who is inclined to take it but it's really about the relationship between you and your creations and your art I know as artists all the things we make are going to have little fragments of us in them even if it's not intentionally put there and so I wonder as performers how you feel the relationship is with your puppets with your creations and how that may change if you are the one performing with it and separating this as maybe a different character or watching somebody else perform with your work and releasing the parts of yourself to let them add by performing with them if that makes sense would you all like to take that Natasha and Tita they're still explaining the translations coming so she does things on stage and Natasha is watching and they're recording so then they watch the recording and they try to figure out where Natasha sees herself where Tita sees herself and where they can find like that they are both seeing themselves and intuition during the whole creative process they're really actively making their intuition work like Yael was saying they generate a lot of material since they work based on play text they actually begin their process by discussing a lot before generating a lot of material and then this text becomes their anchor that they can go back to whenever they have questions so sometimes actually at the end of the process the show that they made they can actually understand the relationship that they had with that text so for example Chaika is a very concrete example that they didn't know why they had chosen to show the story from the perspective of Arcadena who is not a main character in the text so when they started writing the text to present the show they realized that both of them had lost their mothers really young so they had these kind of need to meet their mothers when they were old because they never got a chance to interact with their mothers as old women but they didn't think about that when they had started creating the show so we're down to the last two minutes and so I wanted to give the gentleman in the blue shirt back there the opportunity to ask the last question and of course you might catch up with people afterwards but our live stream is in a certain time slot so we end on time so as a young artist who spends a lot of time with many other young artists I've often found that a big part of the work we do in making our art is not just the art itself but making the ends meet so that we can do the art I was wondering if you folks could comment a little bit on how you've been able to make your passion your career and put food on the table while also doing the things that you love can I? I love this question yes we're talking about limitations before that and but I'll put it like this I find that my biggest job in my art which is the same as in my life is to be my best friend and supporter and my lifelong lesson is also learning to put myself in priority even before the work shocking I know and also the well-being of my team members that's been really I really had to learn that because it really changes all the dynamics in the room when people know that first of all you've got their backs in that you are understanding that we're all fragile in our different ways and we all go through the process and of course it's sometimes easier to do it with other people than doing it with yourself for me it's been like what do I need to be able to create really and some of these things are the basics sleep, eat and have a safe environment to work in and I think if we all list all the reasons we have for not creating we can buy many notebooks and and I think it's like a lot of it is connecting to like daring to connect to your inner passion like your stories and not be confused by like falling into other projects that may be nice and understanding when you're operating from your mind like oh it's going to be very advantageous for me to work with this person on their creation all this reasoning you know and when it's like no this is what I want even if it's going to take me seven years this is what's really burning inside me and to find that kind of because once you tap into that well then it's really it will take you on the right journey thank you so I'm sure that our other panelists have a wealth of wisdom on that topic and maybe you can catch them they leave the room persistence pays off but unfortunately we're at 1202 thank you so much for coming out thank our wonderful panelists for all of their insight