Rob D’Arc has challenged me to “post-a-pic-of-a-puppetry-hero-every-day-for-five-days” challenge. Without question my number one puppet hero is Bruce D. Schwartz. He is an amazingly talented and complete all around artist and was a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellow in 1982. His research is excellent. He writes his scripts, speaks and sings live in his stage performances. He sculpts, designs and builds his puppets and staging. But above all, his manipulation is brilliant because of his amazing grasp of the movement of the human body. I saw him perform at the 1977 Puppeteers of American National Festival at San Louis Obispo, CA. He performed open with rod puppets in the Bunraku style. A mother singing to her child, a ballerina, a Japanese dancer and Pierrot were among the characters he performed with realism and delicacy…I am still in awe of his work. Here is a YouTube video of a Jim Henson interview of Bruce Schwartz from the first episode of “Jim Henson Presents the World of Puppetry” taped in 1983. https://youtube/watch?v=xpwEwoauxkU A performance of another of his works was featured in the 1980 International World Puppet Festival in Washington DC. Jim Henson created an hour long video shown on PBS that I recorded for the puppetry classes I was teaching at the time. In a scene from a longer work, Bruce Schwartz performs a hand puppet production of The Farmers Cursed Wife. Excellent design, construction, comic timing, manipulation, character vocalization and, oh yeah, he plays the double recorder while performing in a walk about stage! His excellence is still inspiring.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 04:17:37 +0000
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