HARVARD SQUARED inhibiting.” Puppets, Myhrum asserts, “can say and do things that human actors [and audiences] wouldn’t dare. That’s what makes them so pow- erful.” And not just for kids. Although care- givers can and do enjoy shows with simple themes, the theater’s “Puppets at Night” events, like Jonathan Little teaching “Furry Bend, are strictly for adults. The bimonthly Monsters 101” (for adults); and an “On-Camera Puppetry Intensive” Puppet Slams (the next falls on January with Ronald Binion (at far left) 16) offer a wide range of acts, including a bloody trip to the dentist. The theater be- wood, or clay. In 2014 the theater premiered ist flails and flops, trying to gain control gan the slams in 1996; the movement has the adult show Reverse Cascade, by Anna of her body, which is fragile because it’s since expanded across the country and is Fitzgerald, a wordless story about circus composed of scarves. Through a slow and financially supported by the Puppet Slam performer Judy Finelli’s struggle with mul- painful process she manages to pull herself Network, founded by Heather Henson, tiple sclerosis. Several black-clad, nearly in- up to balance on aerial circus rings, but daughter of the Muppets’ creators Jim and visible puppeteers create “Finelli,” the only soon those rings become the wheels of her Jane Henson. character in the play, by tying together four wheelchair. “The audience sees that this The Muppet Show and Sesame Street were a silk scarves (the type jugglers use). The au- woman has knots in her leg because she has popular catalyst for the development of dience sees “her” miraculous circus tricks, knots in her leg—the abstraction becomes American puppetry in recent decades. But the scarves moving in graceful arcs and real,” Myhrum notes. “A puppet is a visual the art of animating inanimate objects has dance steps, before her lithe body starts to metaphor for a human struggle that takes ancient origins across the globe, and at fail—terribly. Cello music plays, the art- place on this little tabletop stage.” one time was restricted to a culture’s heal- ers and religious figures. “There is always something profoundly sacred about the ALL IN A DAY: The Arboretum’s Winterland puppet, dwelling as it does on that indefi- nite border between life and its absence,” Winter is the best time to get out and see New England’s trees in all their naked curator Leslee Asch, a former executive glory. The Arnold Arboretum, open year-round, offers just such forays with “Fall Into director of the Jim Henson Foundation Health” (November 21), a brisk walk along lesser-known paths, and a “Winter Well- and now head of the Silvermine Arts Cen- ness Walk” (December 13), when the landscape is, perhaps, at its boniest. Those ter in Connecticut, wrote for the Katonah preferring an unguided jaunt followed by a stint inside to view nature on paper and Museum’s 2010 exhibit, The Art of Contem- canvas might enjoy Drawing Trees, Painting the Landscape: Frank M. Rines (1892-1962), porary Puppet Theater. “Puppetry serves as on display through February 14. Lectures and classes are also on tap. Writer, de- an extraordinarily powerful means of signer, and historian Kathryn Aalto reveals the magic, at least in the mind of A.A. giving form to the internal or invisible.” Milne, of England’s Ashdown Forest in “The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh: The The willing suspension of dis- Forest That Inspired the belief, Asch continued, allows Hundred Acre Wood” the audience to engage and (the topic of her new accept that the created actors book) on November 15. are “real.” Puppetry is so often And on December 8, relegated to children’s enter- MIT physics professor tainment, she laments, because Frank Wilczek explores “sadly, in our society only “A Beautiful Question: children have been allowed to Finding Nature’s Deep maintain the capacity for won- Design.” Check the ar- der, awe, and fantasy.” boretum’s website for Myhrum agrees. Puppetry’s full details. vN.P.B. “magic” is seducing an audi- ence into identifying with char- The Arnold Arboretum acters composed of papier mâ- www.arboretum.harvard.edu ché, cardboard, cloth, plastic, Harvard Magazine 16m Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746.