Puppets

Failure
I wanted to connect my experience with the sock puppet show I participated in on Wednesday with psychoanalytical criticism, since sock puppets seem to frequently pop up in therapy sessions as tools to help express the inner psychosis of a patient by giving him or her access to an avatar that allows one to speak openly about inner turmoil, but I could not find any professional work on the subject. Therefore, I will give you my experience with the puppets without the benefit of a professional source.

My Puppet and Me
I played Romeo, but I also got to act like George Baily and a dancer at a gay club (unless Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" is playing in straight clubs now). I did not play more than one character, Janelle simply fused a few things together in our script. Before we even began filming, I put my puppet on to see how he looked as he spoke. I practiced moving his mouth by reciting a few lines from the script. The person in charge of bringing the set was running a little late, so those present began conversing. I joined in this pleasant conversation, forgetting about the fancy sock on my hand. Suddenly, some of the people I was conversing with began laughing, eyes centered on my puppet. When I looked at my puppet (mid sentence) I noticed that my hand was automatically moving with my mouth. It was terrifying. I couldn't help but wonder if I was speaking through the puppet, or if the puppet was speaking through me (dun dun duuun).I also noticed that while I had that puppet on, I had way more confidence than usual, and I said things I would usually deem too argumentative. This behavior was prolonged past the filming of the play. Just wearing the puppet, and moving his mouth with mine, does something to my brain. I am not sure if this counts as a link to psychoanalytical criticism (perhaps my id used the puppet to express itself) or if it is just weird, but I thought it was worth blogging about.



History of Puppets
Having failed to find an academic source for puppetry and psychology, I figured I could at least find an adequate source for the puppet part of the performance. This one gives a few examples of theaters that used puppets to perform Shakespeare in the second column.

Conclusions
Though according to my citation, my group was not the first to perform Shakespeare using puppets, I think we might be the first performers to fuse Shakespeare with "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Born this Way." This experience let me learn about yet another media that can adequately express Shakespeare. This has made me wonder: is there a media that cannot, by any means, express Shakespeare's plays? This question has helped me narrow my thesis for my manga focus. I want to prove that manga and anime can express Shakespeare within the Japanese culture (which I have already done) and can enhance the text with its various methods of presentation (I plan on mapping out within the next few posts).