Last summer, I applied for a small grant through the Carbondale Arts/Artists Fellowship program which disperses funding to four different artists annually. The proposal was to create a marionette show to be performed in the local libraries and in schools. I altered my ambitious idea of many performances as I felt that trying to schedule so many was asking too much of the puppetry “troupe,” a group of people that I was pulling together for the first time. I ended up narrowing the number of performances down to three, one at the Waldorf School and two at the local library. The library performances included one in English and one in Spanish. 

I settled on the story of The Girl and the Chenoo, a Passamaquoddy transformation tale that Janene Ping generously sent to me. Although I initially was uncertain about it, as I worked with the story, I grew to love it and felt that it was perfect for the children and the time we are living in. It is a story of fear and bravery, of relationship and kindness, and ultimately transformation. The Chenoo (a cannibal monster) was such an unfamiliar character for me that I skirted around the idea of him to begin with and made the other characters first, leaving the Chenoo until last. As I started to create him, I grew to love him. He and the sister are the central figures in the story and through her goodness and love he goes from being a terrifying, man-eating creature, one who only takes and destroys, to one who gladly gives and does most of the hard work of providing the food for the three hunter brothers and their sister. The story underscores that we are all related to one another, even to the monsters, and that with love and nurturing, transformation can take place. 

Toward the end of the story, the Chenoo asks the sister and brothers to build him a sweat lodge, which is the vehicle for his purification/transformation. I made the sweat lodge of covered willow branches and it was a feat to have the Chenoo crawl into it. After he was inside and the door was closed, we had him crawl through the back covering to complete the transformation with the grandfather being the one to emerge. The puppeteer moving him said that it really felt like he moved through a birth canal. 

I introduced the performances by speaking of when I was young and sometimes was afraid in bed at night, thinking there might be a monster under it, and, of how I would close my eyes and pull my feet up away from the end of the bed. There were a lot of nodding heads in agreement from the children in the audience. I told them that this was a story about a girl who didn't close her eyes although there was something to be afraid of and how instead, she thought, she made a plan, and was very brave. We have a high percentage of Spanish speaking immigrants in this valley and I thought that mentioning the emotion of fear was to the point and timely.

The storyteller was the only one of us who spoke Spanish and we were a bit anxious about performing the Spanish version as we had only done one rehearsal in Spanish although we rehearsed many times in English.  I have found that when one is living into the story, it works to perform it in another language, especially when there is interspersed music to act as a roadmap and, luckily, that proved true again this time. We used a tung drum, Koshi chimes and a Native American flute for the accompanying instrumentals.  .The Waldorf school and the library staff were very appreciative and it felt great to all of us to offer them and the children this nourishing gift. 

April 9th was our last performance. Although in the beginning of this project I was afraid of asking too much of my fellow puppeteers, after our final show they all want to do more puppet performances and it looks like we may have the beginning of a puppetry troupe!