11 minute read
Some Quotes from Neville Tranter
NEVILLE TRANTER
These quotes are from Neville Tranter Q & A session which was taking place in Nukketeatteritalo Mundo, Turku 16.9.2010. Evening was hosted by Anna-Ivanova Brashinskaya.
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Neville Tranter worked in Finland while he was directing 3D. Photos from Q&A ewening from Nukketeatteritalo Mundo. (Roman Chauzov)
Early years
- I studied four years (in drama school) to be an actor and I learned from method acting system. In my third or fourth year of my studies I had an elderly couple who came to perform a puppet show in my drama-class. For all of us it was very first time ever to see alive puppet show. It was a children show with very traditional wooden puppets (Billbar Puppet Theatre). I had to help them to build up the set and break it down and when I saw the show I say ”that, that’s what I want to do with my life”. So I asked them and they were looking for a trainee, so they got money from the government to teach me and I trained with them two years. So I learned how to carve wood, how to carve puppets out from the wood, I learned to do voices also. This time I worked with voices on tape because they were elderly couple and they used professional actors to put all voices on the tape and they mix those with all sound effects. They were against professional puppeteers when this man retired he was a photographer in a local newspaper and his hobby had always been making a puppets. His wife came originally from Vienna, so she was the one who really inspired him to make whole plays with the puppets, and she found the actors. They became a professional puppeteers when they were 65. So they started a new career. I did it a four or five years and then that was it. At that time I knew that I want to be a puppeteer. We did shows for children and I developed my first solo piece with marionettes and that was for adults, and I knew then that THIS is what I REALLY want to do. So I moved to Melbourne which was 2000 kilometers away from where I was studying and then we begin the Stuffed Puppet theatre with an actor and a musician. We decided to do short piece; a cabaree, because we wanted to do it really fast. We decided I’ll make the puppets and we work together to make the scenes. Then we decided; okay, we put a show together and the musician he had (which was his brother) and I had a band so we had live music right from the beginning. And when we did the publicity we said: okay we gonna do political sketches, we experimented with songs satirical text and we noticed; okay we are not going to get any publicity for this because the journalists don’t know anything about adult puppetry. So what we did was we advertised as x-rated puppetry. X-rated meaning its even worse: it’s pornographic. And we got all the journalists come. And we had striptease acts and exhibitionist.. And it was actually very innocent it really wasn’t so pornographic. Then a man who saw the show invited to us to perform in his theatre restaurant together with a cabaree group and they were ‘’the first act ‘’and the puppets ‘’the second act’’. But this group had been in Amsterdam a year before, a great success, and in Amsterdam was a festival called The Festival of Fools, it was the biggest street theatre alternative festival in the world. I did not know that. We were invited to Amsterdam with the whole show with the puppets, cabaree and another friend who was a magician. We had one big Australian show. We came there and we had to work three months. we even lived in hotel for two months at the cost of the festival. I wanted to work only for adults and I had a great response from the audiences in Holland to the puppets, they react wonderfully to the puppets. I thought that I have to start somewhere, so I staied in Holland. But also from practical reasons: I didn’t have to travel to find an adult audience. In Holland you have also whole Europe. In Australia that was a problem and I don’t wanna spend all my life performing short pieces in nightclubs. I really wanted to make a whole play with puppets, that was my dream.
My first piece was “Studies in Fantasy”. Which was also once again all solo pieces in the booth and outside the booth. In 1981 I performed in Charleville for the very first time. It was my first international festival and in those days it was very badly organized festival. Every puppeteer had to pay their own festival pass to see shows, but in the festival there were thousands of puppeteers. First time of my life I saw people really fighting with their tickets. I thought that “they are really fighting to see a puppets..WOW!”. I was very nervous because I was performing at the end of the week and everybody in the audience
was tired. My first character came to stage and started talking to me as a puppeteer and said “I had to excuse him because he has seen a lot bad puppet theatre this week” and the audience just went like ‘’What?’’ and I exploded with laughter. Ever since I’ve been performing in Charleville. So in the last 30 years now and I’ve done 20 different pieces. All of except one are solo pieces. With large life-size puppets I have experienced many different directions and I wanted to find out how far I can go with the puppets. To find out where are the limitations, just how far can I go with the puppets and not only with the puppets but also with me as a actor. So in all those 30 years; in the beginning after doing ‘’Studies in Fantasy’’ I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere. I once performed for just to punks in Copenhagen and they loved it. And I thought if they enjoy it, everything is ok. But I wasn’t getting anywhere so people weren’t buying. I said I have to go throw myself into the deep and so I did ‘’Seven Deadly Sins’’. And that’s the style I still use today. I played the role of Mephisto and I had a golden mask, a half mask, and Faust was a naked puppet sitting in the first row in the audience. The other puppets were the Devil and the Seven Deadly Sins. With this play I finally broke through in Holland. All the newspaper came and it had great reviews. The best theatre critics of the land saw it and thought: “it was best theatre piece I’ve ever seen”. For me doors started to open. I though that after that I have to make sure that next one is good as the first one or even better. That’s how I started to develop all the shows. In the beginning the puppets, characters were so strong that I felt I cannot compete with them as an actor. In the beginning I kept my mouth shut. It took me a few years to get courage to speak with them. So I finally forced myself to do that. I explore relationship with these puppets and myself as an actor, where are the boundaries of this relationship between actor and puppet. - In early days when I performed to the drunken audiences. I learned how to tell a story in one minute. I learn to cut, cut, cut! To tell only the parts which are necessary and get their attention. If story goes too long, audience lost their interest. That means cutting. About puppeteering - I realised really quickly that puppets can be really extreme characters. Because they are archetypes, great actors, the best actors in the world. You know that it’s a puppet and it’s been made some materials. But when it really comes alive and audience believes in a character, in a creature. Then suddenly something happens. The audience goes with a figure and accept it. You are watching this creature “survive” on the stage. We are witnessing something and that makes it very special. We are almost like voyeurs. So if something happens between me and puppet, in our relationship, something very violent, audience experience it also very violent. Puppets are very visual and if you made him alive even adults accept it just like children. Audience is shocked because something is living on the stage and they know that it isn’t a human being. - During the time of “Seven Deadly Sins” I discover that it’s possible to have actor and a puppet on the stage and have relationship between each other. It’s fascinating. The whole world opens for me. How can I explore with all of these characters. - Puppets have something very wonderful: the way you can use puppets to deal with time on stage. Stopping time, making things stop because it has something to do with the fact of the puppet. When it moves it begins from stillness and makes a movement and then it’s back to still again. And this stillness is absolutely necessary when you are working with the puppets. So the stillness and the movement and again stillness... I’ve always felt the puppets have something to do with opera because it’s such a strange art form. And when I started to do puppets I wanted the puppet to sing, so that they have to actually sing. So every puppet is made for two people and I made everything to the minimum: no bodies, just heads with a collar and two hands on sticks. So you come right back to the very basics: the gestures in space. And it works. And not only that, its wonderful to watch because you are watching two singers, or me with a singer, ‘’animating’’ this puppet and it all becomes one. When the voice and the movement comes together and two people is one character it’s wonderful. And very, very beautiful at the same time. You are watching something alive, its happening now, people melting together with the puppet. - I trust puppets completely. Because of that trust, I let myself go with them, they show me the way. Let’s go that way and this way. Young puppeteers make always too many movements, you have to find just precise movements. Everything is absolutely precise. Puppeteering is always very choreographical and precise. Working with puppets is also like a theatre of suggestion , because you are working with imagination of audience and body language. - Maximum amount of characters what I work with is three (two puppets and myself), because I do dialogue with them. It took me years to figure out how to do it. - Focus. What do you want to audience to see
and what you DON’T want to audience to see. - One of difficult things to learn as an actor is how to be still. It has to do with breathing and listening. When I perform I listen reactions of the audience. Dialogue is not only between me and characters it’s also dialogue between what happens on the stage and audience. It’s a responsibility. When you learn to listen, you also hear yourself what you’re doing. Sometimes it’s like a third eye. It’s also learning how to take distance of what you’re doing. When you learn it, then you have better control to the things you are doing. It’s also about technique. That’s one of the things that young puppeteers don’t get. Technique is so important. You really have to learn techniques. - If I want to get people attention I have to know how to get their attention. I have always trusted my puppets, they gave me the courage to make adult puppetry. About Working - I started working in solo purely by economical reasons. You don’t pay puppets, puppets don’t need insurances. At the very early stages of my career I noticed that I have to work in solo, because that’s the only way how I can exist as a puppeteer. Be”I trust puppets completely” cause with four or three people it’s much more difficult to do it. - My first plays I wrote myself and after fourth play I started to work with a writer and later on with director. And then finally I started to do all the other shows with my ideas. I make the puppets, I think the story and invite other people: professional writers, professional directors. And then I work with many different directors because I also want to learn from them. I work with many different writers also to learn from them. - When I start a new story I’m thinking what characters I need to tell this story. They’re all archetypes. - I’ve never had my own theatre space, I’ve always travelled. What I did last year in Torino, Italy, They have a festival there. I was invited to come to work with 5 young puppeteers. And what I did was I directed Frankenstein and let the 5 puppeteers perform my performance with my puppets and we used the same music in the show. But now I could do different stuff as I had 5 people. Which was really nice. These days I teached also and I directed. I’ve already directed 2 shows in Switzerland. It’s a totally new direction for me.
