4.25.2011 - The Beginning

Strung to her cross she waits. And though she has learned to walk a few tentative, clumsy steps, she still has no name.  

It has been four months since I had my first fleeting thoughts about making a marionette. I was at the Bauhaus Museum in Weimar, admiring a set of ancient Chinese marionettes. Since then the phrase, “marionettes are the hardest to control,” has crossed my path several times. “You are a fool,” it mocks me. You are at least 60 years too old for this.”

Hey, I know. That’s why I ordered a kit after I had chopped up a teddy bear for string manipulation, but was unable to manipulate him. He turned and twisted on his airplane controls. He wouldn’t walk – his legs dangled in the air and spun around. I named him P.K. - Pudels Kern – a name Goethe applies to truth in his Faust.

My P.K. is not about truth; he is about balance, or in his case about the lack of it. Seeking balance is more important than imparting truth to a manipulated object. At any rate, it is the more realistically appropriate concern. Not that I always consider appropriateness; my endeavors are subjective. They start with my interpretation. And apparently they can be out of balance.

So! Well! Before I interpret - I need a balanced puppet. It arrived on Saturday January 29. A properly balanced, loosely jointed marionette skeleton with red, blue, yellow, and green strings and its own stand. I immediately began to drape and wrap and cover to establish a connection. 

After two days I decided on black cotton for a dress and a red wig for the bald, wooden head. She required Walter Keane eyes to become the slightly melancholy wild child she decided to be. She accepted the purple scarf I knitted and, eventually, green and black striped stockings and a pair of shoes I had cut out and sewn from an old purse. Her sad face and bright hair make me happy. 

 

Next I bought several puppetry magazines. There are names. Important names. They influence the view of the builder, manipulator, actor, spectator. Tony Sarg and Bil Baird are two of them. Puppetry has its own language. I read the article “My Own Private Püterschein” in Puppetry International. Ronnie Burkett – himself a famous puppeteer – talks about a Sarg knee joint and a Baird turnbuckle. Burkett is a Püterschein defender – Püterschein Authority seems to be an inside joke, having to do with the Dwiggins theory of counterbalanced marionette construction. And though I am a bit confused, I learn many new terms.

Marionette Masters seem to have been seduced by puppet theatre around the age of seven or eight and have started their own shows at eleven or twelve. I myself owned a set of hand puppets and have played with marionettes as child, but I preferred small dolls for which I sewed clothes and decorated shoebox houses.

Puppetry International makes me philosophical, especially the article “Vertical Balance” by Irina Niculescu. She writes about strings – the connection between puppet and puppeteer. As she explores her relationship to marionettes she speaks of their helplessness, their “tragic-comic essence.”

When I prepared P.K. I tried to make the strings as invisible as possible. I had never thought of strings as lifelines. I was convinced that the manipulator should be hiding behind a curtain. Then I watched a video clip in which a marionette discovers his attachment to the manipulator; the manipulator even holds his hand for a moment, but the marionette is obsessed with freeing himself; he tears down his strings and collapses on the floor. It was at that moment that I understood the connection.

I studied the colorful strings attached to the wooden pieces of the kit. Color coding is designed to help the fledgling manipulator see which movement he is performing. I connected all the strings the morning after I had glued in the hands and sewn the scarf to the dress. But I did not try to walk her. Clearly I hadn’t found either form or balance or relationship yet; I was at the beginning of my journey.

My marionette evolves with each piece of clothing, each tug at her hair, each pull of a string. Most importantly, with each photograph. In studying light and shadow, color, shape, I see movement develop and backgrounds and props emerge. I recognize the question mark in the face I have painted. A faint proposal of essence.

One day I felt bold enough to command the first steps. Command, I write. Not a good choice of words. After a failed attempt to make her walk I came to my senses. I am not ready. A gentle lift of one green string – she waves good night. I hook her to her stand.

During the following weeks I engage her in occasional play. Nothing serious. A peek into the floor length mirror on a door. A short stroll on the kitchen table. A sit-down on a green bench.

She occupies my mind on Easter morning as I chase after memories of childhood egg hunts and the fleeing tale of a mysterious bunny rabbit. Yes, I mean fleeing t a l e, because the bunny’s  t a i l is painted into my heart with indelible brush strokes of white fur retreating behind a red brick wall, while the words that once accompanied the image have dried into fragments of their former glory. Who can sustain the tradition of a holiday when not only lack of religious belief has chipped away its importance, but changing health habits have reduced the egg from its decorated oval shape into a boxed, cholesterol free, pale protein blend? When the tale of the rabbit and the four-year-old who decorated a mossy nest with violets, has been bleached and brittled by time?

But I can’t allow ReadiEgg to spoil a good morning; the marionette needs a practice appearance. Her flaming red hair shivers in the current of the wall heater. My fingers play her strings the way a child plays her first instrument. I am undisciplined. But I am enthusiastic. We settle at my desk. In quick succession thoughts rise and crowd around the keyboard. My mother had red hair. Ariel, the mermaid, has red hair. The marionette reminds me of a gypsy child. What is the proper word for the gypsies who roam German cities? Are they Roma, Rom, Romany? Or Sinti? A name swirls to the surface. A combination of marionette and ariel becomes mariel. Not feminine enough. Mariela! Mariela who? Mariela Sinti! I say the name out loud several times before I commit it to the screen in front of me. Mariela Sinti, April 24,2011.

Something looks familiar. The initials. -  M.S. Marthel Schaffner.

My mother – marionette and mermaid -  manipulated and confined.

My mother - storyteller and painter of a parallel world. Free like a gypsy.

Tiny appendix - a - the alpha in her life – alexander - name of husband and son. Manipulators.

Tales rise from their graves. I light a candle. Sparks crackle along the invisible string of history. Old wounds melt into the sweet scent of purple lilac. Mariela Sinti and I celebrate the beginning of our connection.