A grab bag of various puppet related things that have caught my eye this month:

1. Neil Patrick Harris dreams in puppets.

2. A writer on the website Etsy finds an old Guignol puppet theater in Paris.

3. Our director Carmen found a video of dancers working with paper in a way that is very intriguing. This may not seem to be related to puppets but wait until you see more details on the second half of Kismet and all will make sense.

As you can maybe tell from all the books, I am deep into research for several possible projects, all involving mythology from Ancient Mexico. As I read (and re-read) legends from the Aztec and Mayan civilizations, there is one creation myth that I keep coming back to.

In the Popol Vuh, the oldest documented mythology of the Maya, there is a creation story in which the Heart of Heaven and the plumed serpent Gucumatz try multiple times to create people. On their third attempt they use wood to form men, while women are made of rushes. However because these wooden people lack souls and respect for their creators, the gods decide to destroy them in a flood. So far, this is relatively standard as a creation myth. But the Mayans weren’t content to just drown these early humans. As the story goes, household items such as water jars, tortilla griddles, plates and cooking pots rebelled against the wooden people as well and crushed their faces. Between the rain, the animals and their murderous utensils, there was no place of safety. The story of inanimate objects taking on a life of their own and becoming dangerous figures in other cultures as well and I was intrigued to find this early example from the Americas!

Telling a story can be a messy business, as evidenced by the floor of the studio as I try to work out a new storyboard for Kismet. I cut and glue, trace shapes onto a ground plan and try to visualize in my head all the different pieces and parts of this rather complex tale.

A writer who I find always has wise things to say about storytelling is Philip Pullman, the author of the series His Dark Materials. Pullman recently published a collection of his retellings of Grimm’s fairytales. In his introduction, he talks about various conventions and ideas of good storytelling and he ends with a personal superstition that I found delightful. He says:

‘I believe that every story is attended by its own sprite, whose voice we embody when we tell the tale and that we tell it more successfully if we approach the sprite with a certain degree of respect and courtesy. These sprites are both old and young, male and female, sentimental and cynical, sceptical and credulous, and so on, and what’s more, they’re completely amoral…the story-sprites are willing to serve whoever is telling the tale. To the accusation that this is nonsense, that all you need to tell a story is a human imagination, I reply ‘Of course, and this is the way my imagination works.’

I hope that the story sprite in charge of the story of Kismet is kind to us over the next several months as we try to tell this story to the best of our ability!