In the spirit of college student experimentation, they gathered to try something new. Katy Perry’s song, Dark Horse, echoed down the shadowy and vacant halls of the IMRC Center in Stewart Commons where the xx University of Maine students huddled around a table in the corner of a studio. Armed with old socks, empty toilet paper rolls, tape and some imagination, they worked in earnest for two hours under the watchful eye of Sarah Hollows. The puppet master.
Hollows’ hand puppet workshop drew fewer participants than expected, but that didn’t deter those attending. The friendly, fun-loving atmosphere was punctuated with laughter and crazy conversations, brightening the cold, lonely, after-hours atmosphere of the sleepy building.
As Hollows instructed, socks became bodies — and then miniature personalities. All the while, the topics of discussion ranged from the best burger in town to President Carter’s letter to aliens.
“I really value spending this creative time with the community and I think it’s a pretty valuable way to spend a Friday night,” Hollows said.
While the jokes and sarcastic comebacks that these conversations spawned kept the workshop busy on a social level, the multitasking minds of the participants were busy at work. Hollows moved her students through the various stages of crafting their puppets. Slowly, amid the ambient noise of crinkling newspaper and the scratchy rip of masking tape, miniature puppet faces took shape.
This is a stage in hand puppet production that Hollows loves. She says the creative and free-minded nature of this process represents what her workshops are all about.
“Sometimes you just have to let go and let things work themselves out,” Hollows said.
But don’t assume that hand puppets are all cute, cuddly and whimsical.
Among the many unique creations starting to take form was one by Rachel Nelson, a second-year graduate student in the IMFA program. After sculpting a slender, bony face, Nelson shaped a second head, protruding from her creature’s temple. The beautifully bizarre and nightmarish creature was endowed with long strands of black string for hair, giving Nelson’s creation a striking resemblance to the ghost from The Ring.
“Whoa, that’s creepy,” said one of her workshop mates.
Nelson drew laughter when she announced that she expected the name of her puppet “to come to me in a nightmare.”
Some of the other puppets created took the forms of a cloaked ninja, a mustachioed man with Aviators and a deformed monster.
After a couple of hours, as the workshop was drawing to a close, Hollows decided it was the perfect moment to teach her pupils and peers how to perform with their new creations. She demonstrated how to gesture with puppets, using the wrist and fingers. Quickly, the seemingly lifeless objects began to move and take on personalities of their own. Some puppets crawled around the table, while others merely practiced pointing and moving their heads. As the movements became more evolved, the giggles and silliness increased. Some attempted to fight each other with pencils, while others began to interact with the tools and environment around them.
By the end of the workshop, the performing puppets had assumed their own personalities and their new puppet masters discovered a new sense of creative fulfillment and entertainment.
Participant Kris Mason, whose puppet bore a slight resemblance to the Monopoly Man, seemed to appreciate Hollows’ enthusiasm for a new source of creativity.
“It was a really nice way to spend time with people and learn a new craft,” Mason said.