above: Rehearsing on the Campion Hall lawn are, from left, Kopacz, Donnelly, Purcell, Bell (with planting puppet), Kearnan (shouldering “Maathai”), and Movius. opposite: At the performance on Stokes Hall lawn, Donnelly (obscured) operates an environmentalist-women puppet, as Kearnan and Purcell animate Maathai.
while hidden behind her skirt. As Purcell, with a bamboo pole in each hand, stretches his arms, Maathai’s arms extend to the wingspan of a hang glider. “It seems like she wants to dance more,” says Bell. He teaches the students to not control the object but “figure out what the puppet wants to do.” “In an open, childlike sense, you have to play,” he says. Purcell tries clapping Maathai’s 18-inch-long cardboard hands together. “Too hokey,” Bell decides. Kearnan tries raising and lowering Maathai’s body. “Too rigid.” Then, as Kearnan gently tilts the body forward, Purcell glides the arms out, and Maathai looks like she’s about to embrace an entire audience. “Brilliant. This is what she wants,” Bell says. A few minutes later, as passersby stop to watch, Donnelly determines how to operate the police puppet, who arrests Maathai. “In jail you will learn to be a proper woman who respects men and stays quiet,” Movius narrates offstage, as Donnelly shakes the puppet in front of her. “Can he be more threatening?” asks Bell. “It’s commedia dell’arte: You create your character with
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your gestures.” Movius repeats the policeman’s line, but this time Donnelly seesaws the policeman and swings his hinged arm toward Maathai, as if relishing his authority. “As an actor,” says Movius afterwards, “you’re very aware of what your body can do, because you’re in full control of it. But when you’re operating puppets, you have to discover their kinks.” A week later, during dress rehearsal on Stokes Hall lawn, Donnelly (controlling the planting women) and Purcell (the government) rehearse an exchange. As Kopacz bangs a tribal tambourine offstage—Purcell’s cue—Purcell turns toward the women to harass them, revealing his body and breaking the puppeteer’s illusion. “We need a menacing gesture that works in two dimensions,” he says. Donnelly and Purcell experiment with eight different movements before landing on a duet. The government quakes in anger and slams diagonally toward the women, and the women cower diagonally downward, creating what amounts to a representation of the gender-bound Kenyan hierarchy that Maathai worked to flatten. “What a tableau,” Bell shouts. n