Medicine Hat playwright, actor and designer Ronnie Burkett shares what he knows about puppet shows
Who: Ronnie Burkett
Age: 53
Experience: Considered one of the world’s greatest puppeteers, this playwright, actor and designer from Medicine Hat has been doing puppet shows since he was 14; he has his own company, Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes; it previewed with with Alberta Theatre Projects in 1986; his elaborate and provocative puppet shows for adult audiences have toured worldwide; he has lectured on puppetry at universities and colleges across Canada, Europe and Australia; in 2009, he won the Siminovitch Prize for Design in Theatre; he has one of the largest libraries of puppetry books in North America.
- “The World Book Encyclopedia started this whole obsession for me when I was seven. There was a diagram on how to make a marionette. I went downstairs and took a saw, cut a broom and jointed it with some screws. I got a really good spanking for cutting the broom up, let me tell you.”
- “When I started, it was just about building puppets. I think that’s why a lot of freakish children get into puppetry. They like making things, not leaving their bedrooms, and it’s a nice, controlled way to manipulate the world on a small scale.”
- “I was relentless in writing letters to old puppeteers as a child. While other kids were learning to smoke and make out in the back of a car, I was doodling knee joints.”
- “At the age of 12, I was very frustrated that I didn’t have my own personal puppetry style. My mentor, Martin Stevens, said to me, ‘Style isn’t something you set out to get, it’s something you get when you set out.’ He encouraged me to copy everyone. He was a complete and loving bully.”
- “In ordinary theatre — as puppeteers call it — actors are always evaluated on their height, their gender, their race and you’re sort of cast within roles that match those things. Puppetry is a form of theatre where I’m not held to my age, race or gender. I can be anything I make up.”
- “I don’t build one puppet, finish it, string it up, set it aside and start the next one. If there are 30 different characters, I’ll sit there for six or seven weeks and sculpt the 30 heads, then I’ll make all the moulds and carve all the legs.”
- “The Christian puppetry movement is huge. If you go to any puppet festival, there are dozens of good-natured ladies with their Jesus Muppets. The Puppeteers of America maybe has 1,800 members; Christian puppetry has far more.”
- “I have a rule: no matter if I have the most beautiful puppet head sculpture in the world, if I can’t do the voice for it while I’m sculpting, it won’t be a character in my show.”
- “The last two generations have grown up watching Sesame Street, and that’s puppetry to them. In the last five years, I’ve noticed a lot of young puppeteers doing interesting stuff like shadow puppetry and little table tops with sculpted figures. There’s a new generation of puppeteers who understands it’s theatre. It’s not just about building puppets and jiggling them around.”
- “I have a stripper puppet in the Billy Twinkle show. It’s done with three snaps, a safety pin and four strings. I know how to do the strip act now, and I’ll probably not do it again, ever.”
- “I don’t like offending the audience in the first five minutes. I usually wait 20.”
Post new comment