Tag: Puppets

  • This is What Dad Does

    I got to do something last night with my daughter that I have been looking forward to for years. We went to a presentation of four works-in-progress puppet shows. The venue was Dixon Place down in the Lower East Side, and the showing was part of their Puppet Blok series. And, it was a school night, so this was a very special occasion. My daughter got to experience the world of puppets that I had been in, and meet some of the people I have been working with for over 15 years.

    The kid has known since forever that puppetry was the “thing” that I did in New York, but for most of the time when she thought of Dad and puppets, she was thinking “Muppets.” Slowly, as she’s grown, and I have shown her videos, and pictures of the type of work I was involved in. Some of it was traditional puppets, and some of it was mime, and other shows were more about movement and physical theatre. I never did marionettes because that is a hard skill to hone, and those guys are crazy.

    Last night, the kid got to have her first experience in seeing what it was that her father did. And I was especially happy that we chose last night because two good friends were showing their work, and both of them are very talented women who I have worked for. I wanted my daughter to see women being themselves, out front, creating art, and leading their projects.

    I was also a little nervous that the kid would get bored with the show. I learned a while ago that just because something is important to me, doesn’t mean it will be important to her. I’m not looking for her to want to become an artist or a performer. I just would like for her to have an appreciation of the arts, and the creative process. And works at this stage can be rough, very much “in progress,” and still a ways from a final form.

    But I needn’t have been concerned. She got it. She was into it. She was a great audience member as well. All four of the pieces engaged her, and lead her not to ask a bunch of questions, but to tell me how each piece made her feel. At the talk back after the show, she was a little shy to give her comments, but she whispered them to me, and I spoke up for her. Yeah, she got it.

    And it was a late night. We were riding the D train home, and she snuggled up next to be with her show program in her hand. I’m pretty sure she had a good time. I got what I wanted, which was to share a part of me with the kid.

  • Walking Around New York

    I don’t get to walk around New York City like I used to. The advantage of having a job in the City, at least for me, was that it would take me to a different neighborhood than where I lived. On lunch breaks, I would go for a walk.

    When I used to work off of 54th Street, near The Ed Sullivan Theatre, it was fun to walk among the Broadway houses and Times Square. There were a bunch of tourists, but it was fun to watch people from all around the world be amazed at the buildings and signs. I liked walking around on matinee days, and seeing chorus members out running errands. You knew they were in a chorus because they had normal clothes on, but their faces were made up in stage makeup. Another cool thing about being around the Ed Sullivan was that, depending on who was a guest on Letterman, you might see that celebrity walking around the area before the show.

    When I was down on 18th Street, that wasn’t too far from Union Square, and if I felt really adventurous, I could walk down to the north end of the Village and experience the tree lined streets filled with Federal styles row houses. Unions Square was great for people watching, as it wasn’t filled with tourists, and more just local people. Especially on Farmer’s Market days, when there was a great mix of local upstate farms selling all kids of produce. But walking on the Village streets was always a calming experience for me. I would look at the brick homes, and the converted brownstones and wonder what it would be like to be able to walk out your door, and have everything you need only being three blocks or less away.

    My other favorite memory of walking around the City was a long time ago in the Fall, when I was in a puppet show in the Lower East Side. It was a three-week run, and we did a double show on Sundays. The show wasn’t very long, about an hour, so we would have a long break on Sundays, and when we did get out at night, it wasn’t too late. I loved zigzagging through the named streets, and the converted tenement buildings. There was miles of sidewalk scaffolding for inaccessible condo towners that shot up like weeds. It was a cold Fall that season, and everyone was bundled up, and walking hunched over. Some nights, the cast would get a drink together, and then I would wander around, a little drunk, hearing the laughter and shouts falling and spreading out of the bars onto the narrow sidewalks. It was like hearing a million possibilities and adventures calling out.

    I tried this morning to walk a bit. I dropped the car off for an oil change, and I took the long way home. Hell’s Kitchen on a weekday morning isn’t exactly the hive of excitement it was ten hours earlier, but it was a nice change from West Harlem. The Supers were out spraying down the sidewalks, and piling up garbage bags. There was a buzz about the people moving along to where they were going, as there is always something to do, or needs to be done, around here.

    It’s not a perfect place, but I do love living around here. I have begun to think I might not live in this town much longer. So on days like today, I try to enjoy the simple act of walking the city.

    (SAY! If you enjoyed the blog, then please give it a like, or a share, or leave a comment. I can only take over the world, one “like” at a time, and I need yours!)

  • A Night of Theatre and Being Out

    Last night, I went to see my friends in a puppet show. It was titled SORRY ABOUT THE WEATHER and was performed at HERE, as part of their PUPPETOPIA puppet fest. I loved the show, but my view might be a little biased. Sure, it was a puppet show, I love puppet shows, and it was created and performed by my friends. The subject of the piece is about a woman with dementia, and is an “interpretation of what is in her weather mind.” It’s also about losing a loved one to a disease, which struck a deep chord with me. I found myself reliving the feelings I had during that week in hospice, slowly watching my mother slip away in a haze of painkillers, only to become a husk of a vital person that she was. It made me admit again that there are issues of her passing that I still need to uncover and unpack.

    After the show, I got to see my friends and talk to them briefly. The last time I saw them was back in September 2018 when we did a puppet show together, and I missed being in their presence. It was a nice chance to have a hug, and say it was nice to see you, and to have contact again with people. For such a bittersweet melancholy show, it was a nice that I got to visit with them, and have an honest fulfilling smile as I made my way out of the theatre.

    And this was an evening for me. The wife and the kid were having a mother/daughter night, so dad could go out, and have a break. So, I walked up Hudson Street with this crazy idea that I would go to The White Horse Tavern, as it was a writer’s hang out, and good ol’ Jack Kerouac got kicked out of the joint so often that it was a joke to tell him to go home. But what I thought would be a low-key Wednesday night turned out to be a very happening night in the West Village. All the restaurants were full, as were the bars, and there was no room at the tavern for me.

    But, it didn’t bother me, as I was happy to be out in the City again. Sure, I was in a rich, swanky part of the City, and not exactly my crowd, yet there were people out and walking and talking and it was good to see, or I guess, remind myself of what I liked about the City. It was a pleasant not too warm Spring evening, with conversations floating around and bumping into each other, not unlike the people standing and waiting to get a table or seat at the joint they were in front of.

    What I did was make my way back to the subway, and headed for Harlem. I knew that the chance of me getting seat at one of my local bars was better. And I was right. I was able to camp at a corner seat, so I could watch the Mav’s get crushed by Golden State, and I could also hear a guy complain about his job to the bartender. I had my beer and a bourbon neat, and the windows were open in the place, so the sounds of the City could come in. A nice reminder why I like living in this place.

    (Say, don’t forget to like this post, or share it, or leave a comment. I got bills to pay, you know.)

  • What I Allow to Define Me

    Lately, I started to observe something about myself; When I meet someone new, the question of “What do you do?” comes up, and I say, “I used to be in theatre, and arts administration.”

    Now, I haven’t had an arts admin job in two years, and I haven’t worked in theatre for three and a half years, and though I did use the pass tense, I still use these jobs to define me, to explain who I am. Maybe, subconsciously, I think I’m going back to these fields, but I am no longer sure that I will.

    I am self-conscious of where I find myself now, and I am not sure how to describe it to others. I am a stay at home parent, and I have trouble saying it out loud. Part of it is that I feel like I defaulted into this position, and the other part is that it doesn’t cover the whole picture. I am a stay at home dad because I became unemployed over COVID, and I started taking care of the kid, and her remote schooling because my wife was working remotely and she needed to focus on that. What started as a temporary fix, until I found another job, evolved into where we are today.

    I am happier than I have been in a long time. Sure, I still have stresses and worries about the future, but what I have noticed lately is that I no longer dread getting up in the morning. I don’t hate the day before it begins. I don’t fear going to bed, because what the next day will bring. I see now that I had lived so much of the past ten years like that; angry and frustrated at every place that I worked.

    I do have to take some responsibility here. Yes, the jobs were toxic, but I also made the choice to go to work there, day after day. Maybe I thought I could change the people and places that I worked at. Maybe I thought I couldn’t find a better job. The bottom line is that I actively made the choice, for a long time, not to find a way out.

    The only thing that kept me from imploding was the theatre work that I did over those ten years, and the friends I made from it. And the overwhelming majority of the work was in puppetry. Every time I got a job, I would throw myself into it, just commit and do it. It was rewarding, confirmed the reason I moved to NYC, and also validated my existence, at least on an artistic level.

    And here I am, years removed from both, and still I present these titles to people, as if they are relevant to who I currently am.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Job Hunting, St. Ann’s Puppet Lab, and Super Bowl Halftime Show

    (Stuff and other stuff.)

    This morning as I was doing the Alt Side Parking Dance, waiting for the sweeper to go by, on a whim, I decided to see if there are any theatre job openings in the City. For the past year, anytime I looked for a theatre admin job, it just ended up turning my stomach. But, I also know that we are just getting by financially, and getting ahead would be a better situation to be in. Hence why, on a whim, I decided to see what was out here. And I saw something that didn’t turn my stomach, and was also kind’a right up my alley. I’m now thinking about submitting my resume. If I did get the job, it would mean a huge change to the life we have been leading for the past two years. But, getting out of debt would be nice. I don’t know yet. I’ll take the weekend to think it over.

    One thing that I do need to get on top of is figuring out if I can make it to St. Ann’s Warehouse for Puppet Lab next weekend, 2/17 to 2/20. I got friends who run it, and I also got friends who are in it. That right there makes it totally worth going. Then, there is the fact that I haven’t seen a live show in three years, which I would like to remedy. A long, long time ago, I took part in a piece in the Puppet Lab – I think it was the first theatre gig I got when I moved to NYC – so I have a soft spot for this series. The Puppet Lab is a two-year program where puppet artists create and develop work with support from the people in the program, as well as St. Ann’s Warehouse. The performances are the culmination of this long process, and showcases inventively creative and experimental puppet works. Shows like this I find exceptionally inspiring.

    And this year, we will introduce our daughter to the world of nachos and hot wings, commercials and halftime shows. But most importantly, she will learn that Prince’s halftime show was the greatest halftime show of all time. It’s a fact.