Puppeteer to lead classes at BC3
Some people use their hands to express themselves when speaking, but that applies literally for Darlene Thompson.
Thompson, who lives in Sarver, has been making her own puppets and using them to act for about 25 years. She received puppets as gifts when she was a child, and using them to create characters and stories has never left her.
Despite puppetry not getting as much attention or prestige in the U.S. compared to other countries, Thompson said, it is still a fun way to be creative in multiple ways, from crafting to writing to acting out stories.
“It's fun, it's educational, it's a hands-on activity, everyone can do it from children on up,” Thompson said. “It's a chance to be something different from what you are.”
Thompson performs around the Pittsburgh area whenever she can, and recently performed at Butler Little Theatre for Musical Theatre Guild’s Butler’s Got Talent on Feb. 7.
Thompson also started her own organization, Puppets in Performance, through which she creates puppets, writes and acts in videos and in live settings. She also teaches arts involved in puppetry through the organization.
Thompson is originally from Minnesota, and lived in California, Iowa and Virginia before moving to Butler County about 10 years ago. It was in California that she got into puppetry, and began making it a passion project that she has been working on for decades.
“When I was in California, my then-husband and I went to a bad puppet show and for some reason we looked at each other and said, ‘We could do better than that,’” Thompson said. “We had no money, so we did it all from scratch, read some books, made puppets, made a theater, started going to churches and things.”
In Iowa, Thompson honed her craft. She attended “No Shame Theater” in the state, where the only three rules were performances had to be less than five minutes, everything had to be original and players couldn’t break anything. For the first sketch Thompson performed there, she put one puppet on each hand and told a story about a missionary being eaten by a lion.
“It became part of what they called ‘Best of No Shame,’” Thompson said, “I started writing puppet pieces for No Shame, then I started writing longer pieces.”
Thompson is scheduled to teach a few classes in March involving puppetry at Butler County Community College through its Lifelong Learning program.
Paul Lucas, director of Lifelong Learning at BC3, said the program offers classes for adults who want to take specific courses that don’t involve enrolling in college or gaining credits. He said Thompson approached the college with a pitch to teach puppetry.
Instructors don’t necessarily need a degree in the topic they teach through Lifelong Learning at BC3 — Lucas said their experience and often portfolio examples help the organization select classes to host. Thompson’s experience and pitch to the college made it a good choice for the college to host.
“She came to us about her class and after interviewing her and seeing her work … Seeing that made me interested in this,” Lucas said. “We're very much trying to figure out the audience for the class and trying to bring a new audience for it.”
It’s the first time the college has hosted a puppetry class, and Lucas said the fact that Thompson is teaching everything from crafting puppets to writing stories offers a unique opportunity for people looking for a new hobby.
Thompson said she even sometimes directs other actors or puppeteers in scenes she wrote, with puppets she crafted.
“Most puppeteers are not writers; they focus more on making the puppet and maybe do a fairy tale,” Thompson said. “I write all my own stuff, I guess I've always been a writer. My bachelor's degree is in acting and directing. I have been in a number of community theater productions.”
Thompson has done some 10-minute plays, hour-long musicals, short films and even a feature-length film using puppets.
She has amassed a collection of more than 200 puppets, which she keeps in her home, and catalogs each and every one of them so she knows where to find them.
Having that many puppets wasn’t intentional, Thompson said — she often needs to make a certain kind of puppet to accommodate the needs of one of her scripts.
“A lot of times it starts with a story idea. Last year I had an idea for a conservation piece about polar bears,” Thompson said. “So I decided to write a story about a polar bear who is stranded in Greenland, and he meets a seal who doesn't want him to be there and wants to get rid of him. I thought of that and I had a polar bear puppet but I didn't have a seal puppet. So I made a seal puppet especially for that show.”
Having that many puppets also means Thompson has an in with some stories. She will sometimes write a sketch based on a puppet she hasn’t used in a while, or add a new feature to an already crafted puppet to give them a new character trait.
Thompson said puppetry also lets a person act behind a character that isn’t themselves, which can let a person explore different kinds of personality and adjust to audience feedback. It’s different from being a human actor playing a scene — audiences are more likely to suspend their disbelief when watching puppet characters, because of their cartoonish voices and the lack of limitations based on the human body, Thompson said.
“Puppets can do things that humans can't do. They can fly, they can say things that you probably wouldn't get away with in real life,” Thompson said. “The sarcasm and the violence, you can't always get away with that in live theater but puppets can get away with it. It is very much like a cartoon.”
Thompson said puppets can create different moods for a story compared to human actors. While in Vintage Coffeehouse in Butler Feb. 14, Thompson demonstrated how two puppets can make even a simple scene more comedic or even sad through exaggerated voices and actions. She used a farmer puppet and a sheep puppet to act out a scene that juggled several tones.
“Like if you've got a guy with a sheep, he tells the sheep to go away, the sheep doesn't want to go away. Then he pets the sheep, 'Good sheep.' Then it smacks him, 'Bad sheep, go away.' 'No, come back, I miss my sheep,'” Thompson said. “They can interact in ways that humans never could.”
For more information on Thompson’s classes at BC3, visit bc3.edu/programs-classes/lifelong-learning.
