20. Proscenium and Puppets--Identifying the Alien On Stage
When I was, perhaps, eight years old, I was invited by the mother of a friend from school--Teddy Bryant (how could I possibly remember the name?)--to go to 'the theatre.' I had been to Stratford, yes, but otherwise, to the best of my memory, I had not been to any other live performance--if we don't include church. So it was Teddy Bryant's mother who was responsible for my seeing my first non-Shakespearean theatre in a proscenium-arch-like theatrical venue. And responsible for an image that is forever burned into my memory.
The three of us drove to Central High School in Burlington, which had an actual theatrical space, with raked seating, a stage with curtains, and (I guess) lighting and sound. I had never been in anything like it--and I was never in anything like it for many years afterward. Certainly the High Schools I knew had no place like a theatre; instead, all assembly areas were combined spaces, the 'gymnatorium' for the most part, a gym space with a modest stage at one end, or (my favourite) the 'cafetorium'--which might have been a nice lunchtime theatre venue, except for the mind-crushing sterility of the design. But that's a different discussion.
I remember sitting dead centre in this strange new space, a theatre where all members of the audience sat facing in the same direction. I remember the audience as very well-behaved, though that might be false, since I recall being completely focused on the full view of the stage, and the anonymity of my position facing it. I was invisible--and I was facing what was perhaps my very first curtain--an immense piece of fabric from floor to ceiling and wall to wall.
I don't recall having any idea what it was I was going to see--I was just along for the ride. So I sat and watched as the curtain parted just partially, strangely revealing another, smaller stage in miniature sitting on the larger stage. The larger curtain completely surrounded and masked the large proscenium opening, and all we could see, when the lights went down, was this miniature stage.
The performance began when a wooden figure--though 'wooden' is a guess--came out onto that stage, the strings that operated him clearly visible, and began speaking to us. Another joined him, and another. And a story began to be told by these characters.
I remember nothing of the narrative. I remember very little of the performance, except for one vivid image. There was a moment when a marionette was speaking to us from this small stage, and this character was joined on stage--accosted and threatened and frightened on stage--by another character, much larger than he was, otherwordly, unsettling. That character was clearly played by a human being, dressed in a black cape. It entered from the puppet stage wing on the audience's left, cape draping across and falling from the front of the puppet stage, part of the cape drawn across its face. It threatened to fill the stage so completely, was so at odds with the space, that the poor puppet looked (to me) like it would be overwhelmed and driven away. There were words, there was a scene, no doubt the narrative was moved forward in some way, and then the figure left.
That is the end of my memory of this event.
Context: First of all, it appears that my first experience of a traditional 'proscenium' theatrical space was a narrative performed not by people, but by marionettes. I may have wondered if this was normal, or unusual, but I don't think so. If my only experience of live performance was actors in doublet and hose speaking words I could not understand in a space I observed from the side, nearly from the back--that was my normal. I may even have thought, for a moment, that all 'other' theatre was puppet theatre. I may have thought the only live actors were at Stratford. Or perhaps I didn't think, because, after all, I was eight years old.
I can still see that one figure on that stage. I can almost take you to the seat I was in, and I can almost act out the hunched-over, cape-drawn-over-the-face, melodramatic-villain performance of 'it.' I was, I'm sure, frightened beyond measure.
And why? Because I had just been presented with an extraordinary theatrical effect. I believed that the miniature size of the stage and the wooden-stringed-figure of a character were both the way of the world, and that the human being that invaded it was the artificial, false, disruptive figure that might destroy it. My way of seeing the world was, for a moment, topsy-turvy. The inanimate object was alive, the world was small, and there was this 'thing'--the real world--that was out of joint.
That may seem like over-reaching. But is it, really? I oh-so-quickly entered into an agreement with the artists that what I was watching had a consistency to it that was believable, and so I believed. The invasion of something that was not--theatrically--a part of that world disrupted my newly-formed belief system, took me out of the performance, and yet at the same time didn't take me out of the performance. It isn't that I said--'oh, look, that's a person and now I'm only thinking about the fact that this is false.' No--honestly, I'm quite certain my response was 'oh, my God, a grotesque and dangerous monster has invaded the world, and humanity is doomed.' The physically present body--the body like mine--was unreal to me, the bricolage of wood and string was me.
I knew that the theatrical space was not a part of my world. It was always and remains a visit to another planet.
On the farm where I grew up, in my older brother's bedroom there was a wall of science fiction paperbacks he had purchased over the years from the drug store. A complete wall. I would sneak into his room and thumb through these works, looking at the risqué covers and reading parts of the adventures they contained, of frightened explorers and frightening bug-eyed-monsters (BEMs), myself always listening for the sounds outside the room, knowing these works were off limits to a boy my age in a Methodist house. It was an exciting part of my life, these secret visits to other worlds.
And that is how I felt...at the puppet show. And, if I'm honest, at the theatre. In no sense was it my world, but another's--not my class or culture or language or belief system or costume or set or character or.... Puppet show or Elizabethan poetry, proof of the wonders of the alien planets we might or might not have a chance to visit.
