Consummate Coach Tim Murphy’S Formidable Game Harvard2 Cambridge, Boston, and Beyond

Daniel Aaron • Max Beckmann’s Modernity • Sexual Assault November-December 2015 • $4.95 Consummate Coach Tim Murphy’s formidable game Harvard2 Cambridge, Boston, and beyond 16B Extracurriculars Events on and off campus through the end of 2015 16D The Art of Juxtapositions Lorraine O’Grady’s outlook 16M Winterland Nature walks and talks at the Arnold Arboretum 16N Dinner Without the Din A little quiet...please! 16J Life On a Tabletop An ancient art form thrives at the Puppet Showplace Theater 16P Picking Up a Hobby The Fuller’s fine folk art PUppET SHOWPLACE THEATER Harvard Magazine 16a Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 EXPLORATIONS Life On a Tabletop An ancient art form thrives at the Puppet Showplace Theater by nell porter Brown END, a solo perFormance by Brad Shur (above) performing in his theater artist and puppeteer Kimi new show, Cardboard Explosion!; Kimi Maeda in Bend (right); and puppeteers Maeda, tells the story of her father, receding in a scene from Anna B who crossed paths as a boy with Fitzgerald’s Reverse Cascade the sculptor Isamu Noguchi at a Japanese- American internment camp during World War II. (Robert Maeda later became an tor of the Puppet Showplace Theater, Asian art history professor at Brandeis, fo- in Brookline, Massachusetts, cusing much of his research on Noguchi, where Bend plays in February, who had volunteered to be interned.) On artists like Maeda are using the stage, Maeda creates images with wooden ancient art form “to explore pro- blocks and drawings in sand that are pro- found humanistic questions.” jected, along with 1940s archival footage, on Many people think of puppetry a large screen behind her. She also uses arti- as “dolly-waggling,” she adds, facts, like a leather suitcase from which sand “which is what we in the biz pours, as if in an hourglass, as she walks, call bad puppetry: ‘Oh, I’ve got and plays audio clips of wartime news re- a puppet on my hand. I’m going ports and personal narratives spoken by her to wave it around and put on a MINE ER and her father, who now has dementia. Her show.’” What excites Myhrum, T artful animation of a painful slice of Ameri- also president of the Puppeteers ICHARD ICHARD can history and its effects on both men is a of America, is how the theater R meditation on loss, identity, and the fluid- encompasses everything from Slams” and more conceptual pieces like ity of memories. sock puppets, Muppets, and marionettes Bend “that push the boundaries of visual For Roxanna Myhrum ’05, artistic direc- to passionate amateur acts during “Puppet and object theater.” 16J NovemBer - DecemBer 2015 Photographs courtesy of the Puppet Showplace Theater, unless otherwise noted Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 HARVARD SQUARED STU ROSNER Clockwise from above: Roxanna Myhrum with the unflappable star of Robin Hood; Michelle Finston telling Fairytale; a scene from Bonnie Duncan’s “poignantly silly” Squirrel Stole My Underpants; students engaged in the art of shadow puppetry; duking it out in Sherwood Forest Puppetry” and “Furry Monsters 101” for adults. In 2013 Myhrum reconfigured the theater’s incubator program to support MINE ER T new works by local emerging artists, and RD RD has since premiered six new shows. Resi- ICHA R dent artist Brad Shur also gives about 60 Her role at the Brookline Village non- performances a year and has eight original profit, she says, is like running a church- shows in his repertoire, including Janu- cum-start up: “Our theater is a cathedral ary’s interactive Cardboard Explosion! of joy and wonder—and the audience is But the majority of performances at the our congregation,” and yet “so much has theater are by outside artists—local, na- changed economically for puppeteers, tional, and international—and are geared A native of Springfield, Massachusetts, and we are in danger of losing this unique to younger audiences. Bonnie Duncan of- INDER L IZ IZ L Myhrum began acting lessons locally at art form. It’s a huge priority for us to re- ten combines puppetry, dance, and acro- The Drama Studio in third grade, then dis- cruit new talent and support innovation batics in original works like Squirrel Stole My covered puppetry. At 15, she had a “mind- and experimentation.” The theater was Underpants (about a girl’s imaginary jour- blowing experience: telling the story of the founded in 1974 by the late Mary Putnam ney to reclaim a beloved article of cloth- universe and of Chinese totalitarianism— Churchill ’52, who first began using pup- ing), to be performed on November 27-29. with puppets” as the youngest person cho- pets to engage students when she was a The holiday season also brings Margaret sen to work on Hua Hua Zhang’s The Bell, reading tutor. During 23 years she built Moody’s The Monkey King (December 10- based on mythological Chinese characters, the organization from a few weekend 13) and the National Marionette Theatre’s at the National Puppetry Conference at shows to an internationally recognized Peter and the Wolf (December 31-January 3) the Eugene O’Neill Theater in New Lon- puppetry center; there are only a handful “We are often children’s first exposure to don, Connecticut. Myhrum also directs like it in the country. live theater,” says Myhrum. It’s electronic- and produces opera and theater and has A cozy space, it seats 95 and offers more free and often interactive, thereby stimu- worked as a puppetry director or coach at than 300 shows annually, along with edu- lating imaginations, role-playing, and the almost all of Boston’s regional companies, cational programs in schools, a summer practice of storytelling, she adds. For Su- in addition to serving as resident stage di- youth camp, and year-round classes and san Linn, Ed.M. ’75, Ed.D. ’90, a ventrilo- rector of the Lowell House Opera. workshops like “Introduction to Shadow quist, children’s entertainer, and pioneer Harvard Magazine 16K Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 HARVARD SQUARED in the use of puppets in psychotherapy, the der to enjoy themselves. The puppet the- pantomime than to theater (where she has also performed) is ater is a whole different experience.” traditional theater, she a critical forum for children and adults to At a recent performance of The Swan, adds, because it read- Visit harvardmag.com to view several puppet “experience human creativity, firsthand,” an original, wordless work by Quebec’s ily conveys universal performance videos. free of the onslaught of commercialism Théâtre de Deux Mains, puppeteer Lou- experiences: “Psycho- and technology. “Puppeteers are swim- is-Philippe Paulhus played all the parts logically, puppetry demands an engaged ming against a cultural tide,” adds Linn, amid an intimate stage set with hand- audience. When a puppeteer is doing her who also founded the nonprofit Cam- made trees and a pond (in fact, a monitor job, an inanimate figure will activate our paign for a Commercial Free Childhood. that changed colors) inspired by a Tiffany hearts, minds, and imaginations. It’s the “So many children are immersed in the glass window. After the show he answered audience’s job to bring the character to mainstream culture that’s basically run questions from the preschool audience. life.” As they process what’s going on, at- by three or four companies like Disney, “Was the water real?” “What is the bird tendees are drawn into perceiving action Nickelodeon, and Fox...Frozen was a good doing now?” “How do they talk?” To that, on a metaphoric level, using their “pup- movie, but then there is Frozen everything: Paulhus gently answered, “When I make petry sense,” she says: “a sensory capacity video, apps, video games, zillions of toys. the mouth move, I have to make the sound that is different from the verbal language And so that creates an unfortunate norm at the same time.” of human actors’ theater.” for what people think children need in or- Like many puppets, the swan emitted The intimate setting and often minia- not words but raw vocalizations that re- ture scale of the productions—from the verberated emotionally. That ability to portable stage set to the cast of pint-sized engage in nonverbal communication, says “actors”—signify “small and vulnerable,” Myhrum (who, like all serious puppeteers, according to Myhrum. “Puppet shows had to learn the art of speaking gibberish) trigger the part of us that says, ‘Care for makes puppetry especially accessible to pets, care for small animals.’” On the flip children and useful in therapeutic con- side, “characters can also be over-the-top, texts and cross-cultural communications. invincible,” she says. They can even be sub- The art form is more akin to dance and versive or negative, hence the common use of puppets to engage in taboo subjects and political satire, or as a way to help those suffering from illnesses or as victims of trauma voice their experiences. Linn calls puppets “a valuable tool for expression because they are simultaneously ‘me and not me’”: puppets are like “a psy- chological screen. We don’t have to take responsibility for what we make them say—for that reason they are incredibly dis- The Monkey King (top left) features traditional Chinese puppets. At the Puppet Slams, almost anything goes: witness Dentist (Lindsey Z. Briggs), Minimo (Edgar Cardenas), and the “old man” who stars in a work set to music by Erik Satie (Brad Shur). 16l NovemBer - DecemBer 2015 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine.

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