Show of Hands

Robert Smythe and Mum push puppetry to its potential.

by Deni Kasrel

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Published: Oct 10, 2007

GET THE HORN: The truth is told by what you do, not by what you say," says Mum Puppettheatre founder Robert Smythe (top). Below: John Lumia in Rhinoceros. Laureen Griffin (CLICK IMAGES FOR LARGER VERSIONS)

"There's no point in using text if text is unnecessary, if there's a way to do it without speaking. Because ... the truth is told by what you do, not by what you say," asserts Robert Smythe. He's explaining why the plays he mounts frequently contain silent scenes, and why some are wordless from start to finish.

So goes his theatrical aesthetic. Offstage, Smythe is a voluble fellow, a veritable fountain of words that flow fast and easy, if not necessarily in a linear fashion. Aware of this tendency, he tells me, "I always feel like you ask a question, and I go off into this whole other territory."

Yes, well, Smythe is definitely a take-the-path-less-traveled kinda guy. When he founded Mum Puppettheatre in 1985 there was nothing like it in the city, or elsewhere for that matter. And while there are currently an increasing number of performing artists delving into puppetry, no one does it quite like Mum.

That singularity has everything to do with Smythe, whose fascination with puppets emerged when he was a wee lad. But where most youngsters grow out of their puppet phases, little Robert's interest deepened till it became his life's work. He started constructing puppets at age 5. In third grade, he "made a puppet show and toured it around from classroom to classroom." At the Phillips Academy boarding school Smythe met Peter Sellars, a director now known for his modern takes on classical opera and plays, but back then Sellars was a high school senior teaching a class in puppetry. "Peter told me I was looking at puppetry like human theater in miniature instead of its potential to be something else. ... It should be about an idea that I want to tell you. So we would do stuff like animate a dot and think about how does meaning and emotion come out other than being told directly," recalls Smythe.

From that point on Robert set about creating a style that went beyond standard-issue puppet shows. He studied theater and art at Wesleyan University to hone his acting, directing, playwriting and artisan skills. "The tendency in puppetry is to think of it as somehow different from everything else," he observes. "But to me, puppetry is to theater as watercolors are to art. The principles are the same, it's just another means of expression."

The early days of Mum were slow and not always steady. Smythe worked a series of jobs while also building puppets and set pieces, sewing costumes and doing whatever else was required to make shows that were then presented in schools and arts centers. When Smythe made his first adult-oriented production, The Fall of Icarus, Smythe was sure he "would take audiences by storm," but alas, he admits, "It was awful." Undeterred, he continued to sharpen his vision, and that play eventually morphed into From the Ashes, an acclaimed work that "put Mum on the map and went on to tour the world."

While Smythe's work has been lauded enough for him to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts and six Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Solo Performer Fellowships, he says one of his biggest obstacles remains: getting people to accept that puppets can be the stuff of real theater. And not simply as a special effect, but rather an element that has as much depth and emotion, and can be as integral to a play as any human actor. He says that's partially because "the field of puppetry has been populated by people who are not theater people, so they're not out there advocating for it." An open mind, he says, is all you need to recognize the art form's potential. "We just went through a summer at the box office where the top movies were all fantasies. There's people doing magic, people flying in the air. So it's clear that people are interested in looking at views of the world that are different from the real world. They want an element of the fantastic. Then you go to the theater and what you tend to see are our human lives reflected back at us. Puppet theater is a lot closer to the idea of the human experience being kicked up a couple notches."

Over time Smythe has developed his aesthetic so that most of Mum's productions now feature both actors and puppets. Pew Charitable Trusts Deputy Director for Culture Greg Rowe has known Smythe for more than two decades and says that "Robert's vision has evolved such that his man-made objects seem like they are living; or at the very least they have a dramatic presence in the story he's trying to tell. They're as real as the people are."

It's an innovative and provocative approach that's been employed for a multitude of original scripts as well as works of others, including classics (A Midsummer Night's Dream), modern central-European tragicomedies (The Visit) and musicals (The Fantasticks, which took home two Barrymores last week).

Smythe crafts a very particular relationship between the live and handcrafted actors for each production. Still, Mum puppet designer Martina Plag observes an ongoing modus operandi. "With Robert there's a constant play of scale in order to reiterate what a play is about to begin with. It's not just to be cutesy, or because we have the word puppet in our name."

Martina goes on to explain how, under Smythe's collaborative guidance, she constructed a variety of puppets for season opener Rhinoceros that allegorically amplify the play's underlying themes. To say much more about these creations would spoil the fun; suffice it to say that even those familiar with this Eugéne Ionesco absurdist work will experience something new.

As with other Mum productions, this one will offer what Smythe calls "super-focused theater."

"I hate to make work where there's a feeling that if you looked away you wouldn't miss anything," he says. "I want every moment to count for something."

(d_kasrel@citypaper.net)

Rhinoceros, Oct. 17-27, $25-$30, Mum Puppettheatre, 115 Arch St., 215-925-7686, www.mumpuppet.org.

 

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