- [Announcer] Live from your public media studios, WVIA presents Keystone Edition Arts, a public affairs program that goes beyond the headlines to address issues in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

This is Keystone Edition Arts, and now Erika Funke.

- Welcome to Keystone Edition Arts and the wonder and whimsy of puppetry with three guests who are rooted in traditions from here and around the world.

You were invited to join the conversation by calling (+1) (800) 326-9842, sending an email to keystone@wvia.org and on social media at #keystonearts.

Paul Lasar paves the way for our discussion.

(logo whooshing) - [Paul] We all know how puppets have been used to entertain and amuse from Howdy Doody to Lamb Chop to the Muppets even appearing on Broadway in "The Lion King" and "Avenue Q," but they've also been used to inspire and motivate us as Pinocchio does when he reminds us not to lie.

According to the World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts, puppets have been with us for thousands of years first appearing as part of religious rituals in cultures from Africa and Asia to India and pre-Colombian North America.

Clay and ivory puppets have been discovered in ancient Egyptian tombs and historians have found puppets from the fifth century B.C.

in Greece.

Puppet styles are associated with specific cultures and countries.

Marionettes in Central Europe, hand marionette, rod and shadow puppets in China and in every country with children, soft puppets make an appearance.

Along with entertaining, puppets educate, celebrate a culture's heritage and support or protest ruling parties and politics.

For Keystone Edition Arts, I'm Paul Lasar.

- Just one studio away from us here is the welcome center for school children visiting WVIA pre-COVID for tours.

They flunked their backpacks and coats on the tables and look up in amazement, there's "Sesame Street" at the far end of the room.

There's a huge mural of their friends with Big Bird leaning on the stoop and Elmo swinging round a lamp pole waving to them.

Inevitably, one bright little one will call out, "But where's Big Bird?"

A very big question.

They're seeing right there before their very eyes, a life-sized Big Bird inside the building that sends Big Bird into their lives every day.

So where is Big Bird?

The answer might just be, Big Bird is in your heart and in your imagination and will likely always be.

That's the wonder and the magic we want to explore as we welcome three special guests and even more, as we'll see, you're invited to join the conversation by calling (+1) (800) 326-9842, sending an email to keystone@wvia.org or on social media, that hashtag #keystonearts.

Hana Gorman is a multimedia artist from Wayne County who was born and raised in Prague in the Czech Republic, in a family of artists and puppeteers.

She's an active member of the Wayne County Arts Alliance and she offers classes in puppet making and much more.

Hua Hua Zhang was trained as a puppeteer by the age of 14 and spent 20 years as lead performer for the Beijing Puppet Arts Troupe.

She founded the Visual Expressions performing arts company in Philadelphia and she works as a rostered artist with the Bradford County Regional Arts Council.

And Calista Hendrickson of Wyoming County who began designing costumes for the Muppets in 1977 with "Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas."

She moved on to design several seasons of the Muppet show and movies including "The Muppet movie" and the "Muppets Take Manhattan."

With Miss Piggy's rise to stardom, creating her wardrobe in style became a full-time job.

Welcome to you all.

And, Hana, we'll begin by welcoming you and asking you how you learned your craft and where you learned your craft.

We have some of your amazing creations with us.

- Well, I grew up with puppets because both my parents are puppeteers and my dad studied at art school and his specialty was puppetry and animated film.

And my mom went to performing arts college and she was in the first class that had puppetry as a specialty.

They just opened the puppetry department and she was member of the first class.

And then when my dad left college, his first job was art director for a puppet theater and he did, you know, all their posters and programs and sets and all that.

And that's where he met my mom.

So if it weren't for puppets, I probably wouldn't be talking to you.

You know, when you are a child of puppeteers, they do magical things for you.

And when you think of puppets like why, you know, we were talking up till now about magic of puppets, why should it be so magical?

And puppets are really the original special effects when you think about it because if you are an audience and you go to see a show, you want to see somebody doing something well.

And as a performer, if you wanna match that, you do something even better.

And then maybe it should be also a little dangerous, like high wire or, you know, flying trapeze.

And then how do you top that?

Well, you top it by showing them something that's not only hard but impossible.

And that's where you are into the realm of magic.

And, you know, you'll have magicians and you have special effects in movies where superheroes fly through the air and there are creatures that can't really be, but they, you know, like dinosaurs or all kinds of critters in "Star Wars."

But film has only been here for roughly 100 years, but mankind has been here a lot longer and being that whole time from beginning of mankind, film was invented.

The only special effects were really puppets, because when you think about it, the magic, it's the ultimate magic you take, a piece of wood or, you know, inanimate object and you give it life, you make it seem alive.

And that's, you know, like playing a God a little bit.

And even though people know that it's a trick and we go to great lengths to hide the puppeteers, not in all traditions, but in most traditions you hide the puppeteers.

And so it really looks like they are alive walking there.

And I think even though people know it's a trick, they love the illusion because, you know, we just love the illusion from the tribal times, it's just in us.

- Well, let's meet them, let's meet someone.

- Well, I brought you few of them.

This is an ogre.

And I mostly brought this so I can show you how it works, because we don't really have time for a show.

- [Erika] Right.

- But this is the traditional CZech control which has a rod and four strings.

And just by swiveling this thing, you can make it walk.

And then when you need to use the hands, you just reach in the middle and work the hands.

And then the rod works the head.

And that's the simplest possible control you can have.

And that was done because traditionally in traditional folk puppet theater, the troupes were very small, usually of family members.

So they had few puppeteers, so they had to be able to work two puppets with two hands, you know.

So you can get the most action with the fewer possible people.

And then as all this developed further, they eventually lost the rod and became only strings in the puppet theater, that was like more professional eventually.

So they had it more and more strings and eventually there has to be two puppeteers maybe working one or, you know, more.

It gets more complicated.

- Now, is that related, is that ogre from a folk story?

- Well, actually the traditional puppet theater, the CZech puppet theater had usually a set of characters.

There was a group of the good guys and group of the bad guys because they did mostly folk tales.

So there had to be prince, princess, queen, gesturer.

And then there was a group of bad guys, which was usually the magician and the witch, and traditionally also devil, death and a waterman.

Waterman was the guy who was in charge of drowning people.

And he would save their souls in little cups.

And the more affluent the water man, the more cups he had.

And so there was this set of characters because these traveling troupes, 'cause, you know, pre-film, you had to travel where the audience was.

So there were traveling troupes that worked to sort of like circus troupes.

You know, they were usually families and went on for generations and they would travel from place to place and they had to be able to put on any show.

So they had set of good guys, set of bad guys.

So you can put up pretty much anything on any story.

- Well, this is fascinating and we'd love to know about the Faust connection there, but we move to Hua Hua, and say thank you so much, Hana.

And thank you all for coming to join us.

Hua Hua, welcome.

And we were seeing at the end of the rack that Hana has a dragon and that leads us so nicely into your work, Hua Hua, now you're aiming to honor your ancient tradition, but also to push it into contemporary times.

So we welcome you and we ask you as you are here with us, you're in your studio and just a little bit, give us a sense of the tradition, Hana gave us a sense of her tradition, what about your tradition?

- Yeah, in China, the traditional puppetry has many form.

And for instance, this is a hand puppet tradition and that you will see the design and then they stylized the puppet, beautiful and also very small and performing in a temple.

And also I have traditional, this is 100 years ago, the shadow puppet.

The shadow puppet is also very, very traditional art form in the telling the story.

But for me, when I was in China, I mostly studied the traditional is rod puppet.

And this is rod puppet, this (indistinct), I ordered this puppet that is a smaller size of rod puppet because everybody can see that rod puppet, why we call?

Because look at the arm, if I move the arm, that I have movement with the two rods, and my finger is twisting.

So we say traditional performing rod puppet, you need to have a three stack.

You need to have skill to twist the movement that we see throughout.

And then you need to have wrist, like a wrist skill because your puppet see, think, that is all because of your wrist movement.

The third, because the rod, if you look at the puppet, does not have a feet, the actor, puppeteer, give the foundation of the puppet, his feet.

I have to move, stand up, look here, if my puppet is going to be like a dancing, look, look, I am moving, my feet is puppet feet.

If the puppet pause, look, we are performing very stylized, and me, my body need stylized to give the route for the puppet.

So puppet has very, very strong stylized movement.

So part of my feet is very, very important.

That is why we have to train in, rod puppeteer have to train in as theater performing.

So we take movement class, dance class.

We take acting class and we have to understand the puppet, the soul.

If the puppet is slow, from me, everything, the energy of the puppet coming from my feet and through my body transform to the rod puppet, because in rod puppet, you have to hold up and we have a stage traditional.

Audience is not going to see me traditional.

So that is the puppet.

But this rod puppet style has also inspired me when I come to America and to really, I take rod puppet really beautiful part, stylized movement, and very dramatic pause into my contemporary puppetry.

And because a rod puppet so large, this is small one, some rod puppet is just like me, pretty big.

And then there're a lot kind of this puppet.

I want to show you, this now will be my puppet.

Because I have this movement, so my puppet still can be large.

And then my body, my movement and wrist in my puppet and the puppet to look, to think, and the puppet can flow and graceful because I am training as a dancer too.

So all of this very, very long time, it was to become rod puppet, oh sorry, oh my puppet.

I have to let their life down, okay.

So entirely training is very, very complex, but I love traditional training.

And then that has inspired me to integrate now day by puppetry.

- Yes, yes, and you were asking us in your contemporary pieces, what kinds of questions in your contemporary work?

- Yeah, because I come here, I have background in China, I come here, I see so many things.

And most of the question I want to ask the people is discover their self, who are you?

Which means who I am.

Because of we're living in the contemporary timing and the changing society changes so fast.

We have more material comfortable here, but I feel we are getting more anxiety and confused or your inside is not peace.

And we lost the balance.

We're doing things too extreme, aggressive, and that is the message I want in my show.

Send it to our audience.

Please slow down, give us time to think, to take a breath, to ask a question who I am, why I'm doing this, how I can bring the balance and peace for our society, everybody, and be wonderful, love each other.

So that is my question and the message in my show.

- Well, it's wonderful to hear you say that and to see you describe, Hua Hua, how from the bottom of your feet, up the soul comes into the puppet itself.

And, Hana, you talked about the magic of actually taking a piece of wood and creating it and making it alive.

And, Calista, we welcome you and want to say the very first question coming out of these questions that we've just discussed, what and who is Miss Piggy to you?

Do you think of her as a being of sorts?

Did she come alive?

Is she someone to you?

Welcome.

- Well, she's somebody I got to know over the years, you know.

She grew exponentially after stepping out of the chorus line of "The Muppet Show" and she was a wonderful opportunity for me to, oh, there's that picture of her now.

I love that picture because she's looking at the camera, not me.

The development of a character working in a group like the Muppets it is the writer, the performer, the designer, the builder of the puppet, all are working within the same environment.

So everybody's contributing.

And when I started working for the Muppets, it was for this show, the "Emmett Otter," that were full body puppets.

So I was dressing a full body and it was after this, the first season of "The Muppet Show" that we did that show and Jim asked me, well, what would I like to do if I joined the Muppets and I said, "Well, I think you need a costume designer.

You've got a variety show there with the Muppets, 'The Muppets Show,' and we can have a lot of fun dressing them up."

So we did and the first costume that, I had to talk Frank Oz into changing Miss Piggy's first costume, which was a gray set and dress.

And I said, "Look, she's backstage, she's an actress, she needs a robe, she needs a Kimono."

So he agreed that she'd have a backstage robe.

And I made a robe that was trimmed with marabou trim and he loved it and everybody loved it 'cause it moved and she could be very expressive with it.

And we moved on from there.

- And I loved when you talked about, yeah, the 40th anniversary of "The Muppet Movie," you talked about that scene where Miss Piggy sees Kermit the Frog for the first time and there's that montage of costumes.

And you wind up with that beautiful scene, that really triggered a lot of, as you suggest, the costumes that she came to wear.

- I think was the beginning of really the Miss Piggy fantasy that grew to great heights.

But that was the beginning of these images of her first in a sort of filmed war outfit and then as sort of "Tom Jones" wench, I'm thinking "Tom Jones" the movie, not the singer.

And there was several different images of her that just, oh yes, and then prancing through the field with Kermit chasing after her, that (laughs).

- [Erika] That's beautiful.

That's beautiful.

- But yes, that really sparked a lot of the fantasy about Miss Piggy and I, for me in dressing Miss Piggy, I felt that she was always doing her version of somebody else.

And a lot of it was based on old Hollywood glamor.

So, you know, she would put herself together in such a way to satisfy her fantasy when she looked in the mirror.

So I tried to put some humor into it.

I don't know how many people saw that, but I had fun with it.

- Well, we were speaking about "The Muppet Movie" and I also wanted to ask in an interview about the movie at the 40th anniversary time, you talked a very touching way about Edgar Bergen, the great ventriloquist and how he made a cameo and then he passed away not too long after that.

And you said that the puppeteers stopped and went to the funeral.

Could you tell us a little bit more about what you think that was about?

- Yeah, it was very touching because he had just been with us and we grew up being in awe of Edgar Bergen and Mortimer Snerd and we listened every night on the radio and imagined what our imaginations were doing as children.

We knew we'd seen pictures of them, but we weren't seeing them, we were just hearing them and, you know, seeing them in our minds, which was extraordinary when you think of how television has taken over the visual side.

But we just, it was a very touching day when they decided they would just stop shooting.

It was just, it came on very quickly.

He died, there was a funeral to go to and the puppeteers felt they must go.

So they stopped shooting and came back, as I recall, they came back to the set to continue and then said, no, we can't, we're taking the day off.

I might have that wrong, but it was very moving.

And I was new to puppetry really when I joined them up, let's say being a costume designer and I made puppets as a child, I loved puppets, but I really didn't have that much experience and I learned an enormous amount and Jim always encouraged anybody in the workshop to make puppets.

In fact, he wasn't too sure about the costume designer role for me, but I felt strongly that it would add to the show and I did it.

But I also made some puppets while I was there.

And the one, let's see if you can remember any of them, there were the babies in Bobby Benson's Baby Band, these little, I started with the soft foam to give that kind of, you know how a newborn baby's expression changes about every three seconds.

It was possible with these puppets to play around with that.

So I did that and I did a few others.

There was a billy goat, I think, in the Julie Andrews show, she sang the song from sounded music and it was a really good puppet, I think I made that one, I know I made that one.

- We need to, you know, about in terms of TV shows and you know we need to draw to a close but we love that you were each with us and I want to thank you, Hana, Hua Hua and Calista, and you all for watching.

For more information on this topic including links to our guests and resources, please visit wvia.org/keystone and join us as you can each week at online.

Hana, would you be able to dance this out, please?

(soft music)