May 27-June 2, 2004

art

Life's Rich Pageant

STRINGS ATTACHED: Tracy Broyles (bottom left) takes the Spiral Q reins from Mattyboy Hart (bottom center). Photo By: Michael T. Regan

The founder of Spiral Q Puppet Theater passes on the banner.

by Juliet Fletcher

There are precious few occasions in a city's lifetime that you'll see houses scuttling down a hill to rebuff the oncoming bulldozers, but Mattyboy Hart is glad he's seen it once, three years ago. "There were hundreds of little people -- under 6 years old -- as cardboard houses, chasing giant cardboard bulldozers out of Clark Park."

"The whole crowd was screaming, grandmothers were taking pictures of their grandkids," he remembers, plucking one memory of one Peoplehood -- Spiral Q Puppet Theater's annual all-city parade -- from 10 years of work. "And the kids knew their role; the images were perfect, everyone was there. A part of the beauty of pageantry is when everyone understands what's going on. And the reverse, when everyone, together, doesn't understand."

Hart's name is synonymous with the organization he founded when he was 21, as is his determination for this collective to reach higher. "I hope that our organization will continue to be an instrument for those who build it and run it day-to-day," he says, alluding to the company of artists, administrators and volunteers who collectively present more parades and public-art spectacles than there are months in the year. Because the concerns of the city are what turn into colorful neighborhood pageants, however, he knows Spiral Q has an opportunity to deal with those at the top. "The government is made up of people," he explains wryly. "So some offices and people are wonderful to us; and some are not. And I think that's the general experience of most Philadelphians."

A totem for the movement that brought discussions of gentrification, free speech and gender equality to thoroughfares usually boxed in by Hummers and honking cabs, Hart says his public activism began as a personal expression, through the "transformative organization that allowed me to transform." They've fought encroaching developments and gun violence and, at the 2000 GOP convention, in the most widely publicized local incident besides W.'s nomination, were closed down by Licenses and Inspections, who seized their protest puppets. "Many organizations would have just dissolved [after that]," he remembers. "We had to manage that attention as best we could to focus on the value and benefits of the theater and less on the spin and allegations." But, he continues, "it's hard to gauge how great [Spiral Q's] impact has been, because I've been doing it."

The reason for reflection: Mattyboy is moving on. "He was smart about it," says board member Heidi Warren. "But when the moment came, it was still, "Ooh, here it is.'"

Hart is heading to Europe, first to be on a team organizing the opening and closing nights of the Athens Olympics, then to continue his Temple cultural anthropology and urban studies in Rome and lastly to assume a theater residency next year in northern Italy. ("How do I pack one bag?" he wonders aloud.) But back here, there's a new arm hoisting the banner: It belongs to Tracy Broyles, a collaborative performer whose tale of how she ended up in Philly is worthy of an epic pageant, with many parts.

Born in Louisiana, Broyles studied in Virginia, where she first saw Bread and Puppet Theater. "I fell in love," she admits. "I started a puppet theater company with a couple of friends, called Tiny Town," a nickname given to a Charlottesville neighborhood.

Working artistically and in outreach have been joint constants for her: She founded a youth arts camp, Garrett Square Kids, while volunteering for After School Kids (ASK), a D.C. alternative incarceration program. When ASK's funding was slashed in 1995, she joined the Big Apple Circus, as a horse handler, and was on the road for two years. While it was enjoyable, Broyles found "patterns of hierarchy that were echoed in this microcosm even in this rather alternative lifestyle." Subsequently she worked in Jim Thorpe, on a wilderness training youth program, and penultimately in Cleveland, where she was part of a physical theater ensemble, Wishhounds, and worked with Cleveland Public Theatre's ongoing youth ensemble, STEP.

"Whenever we toured, I would drive the bus, and the kids would arrive and introduce themselves to the theaters, do everything themselves," she recalls. "They had full ownership of the tour." From the start, at Garrett Square Kids, her philosophy was "not to try to teach these children art, but trying to conceive of them as artists already."

Broyles visited Philly with Wishhounds, who took their piece The Hidden Twin to the 2001 Fringe, and moved here in early 2003. As Hart begins his travels, she will take over on June 1 -- no more itinerancy for her, she promises. She seems happy to become part of a group that collectively understands, or at least is working it out together. "Spiral Q has changed over the years, even with Matty at the helm. It's one of the strengths of a community-based grass-roots organization, [that] things are coming from the outside, saying, "This needs attention.'"

The departing puppeteer, who had a teary, open-house sendoff last month, concurs: "The theater part -- the pageants -- are practically unmutable. My hope is the organization will remain malleable to change." Then he exits, pursued by giant puppet.