Interview with Doug Holder
Recently I caught up with Faye Dupras--a puppeteer -- based here --in the Paris of New England. I asked her about her life and work.
How has it been for you as an artist moving to and living in Somerville?
I moved to the US in 2001 to pursue an MFA in puppetry arts at UConn. I planned to return to Montreal after my studies. However, during this period I met my now husband who is American.
It wasn’t until I moved to Somerville in 2011 that I felt truly at home this side of the border. I recognized immediately that I could find like-minded people in terms of social action and in artistic practice. I also liked the cultural and economic diversity in the city.
Having said that, the demographics of the city have changed a lot since I came and many of my friends and peers have been priced out of the city.
I love how the city and the Somerville Arts Council works hard to try and support the arts and local artists.
A huge asset of living in Somerville is having access to Vernon Street studios. When I first moved to Somerville two Vernon Street studio artists allowed me to display my puppets in their studio during open studios. This was a great way to introduce myself to the community and kick started meeting other local artists and future collaborators (like longtime collaborator Jason Slavick of Liars and Believers.) I now rent my own studio at Vernon which has accelerated my practice.
The puppets you use are beautifully rendered. Their faces almost seem like texts from a story.
Do you create your own puppets? If so, what is the process?
I was drawn to puppetry because it’s a multidisciplinary art form. I could be a visual artist, performer, script writer, and producer under one umbrella discipline. I started as a designer builder / builder but now I work more as a writer/producer.
Who builds the puppets?
The puppets on my fayedupras.com website are designed and built (or co-designed & built) by me.
The puppets on my cozyarts.org website are designed by Puppet Kitchen (a NY based company run by a friend of mine) My mentor, Noreen Young’s, way of training an apprentice was to employ them. She hired me to costume puppets. They expanded to puppet props and puppet bodies.
She worked in television. I was grateful for the opportunities she gave me but decided to move to Montreal to go to Concordia and pursue a BFA in “Drama in Human Development” This program combined my love of puppetry with my interest in the social applications of arts (drama in education, drama therapy, community-engaged theater)
I was very influenced by my time living and working in Montreal. In the late nineties the arts scene was very interdisciplinary and experimental. I worked with dancers, instillation artists, and electro acoustic sound designers.
It was an exciting time to be an artist! I was very attracted to the idea of imaged based theater as a vehicle for metaphor and the power of puppetry (see uncanny valley below)
Perhaps this is why you see the poetry in the puppets because they are designed in direct relationship to the story, the research, and/or the emotion we are trying to solicit in the audience.
Is there a point in your art when you feel like a puppet—and the actual puppet is telling you what to do? I know in writing poetry, when you are in a groove—the pen or pencil seems to take control-- and you become a tool.
Once you’ve learned your puppet (ie how it moves, breaths, thinks, etc.) and your lines and/or blocking, it is easy to get into a groove where it can become unclear where you end and the puppet begins (or vice versa). This is especially true for me when performing more poetic puppetry forms with no spoken language. With language-based television puppets this can happen, but it’s often very silly and playful rather than poetic and surprising.
W hen devising image-based puppetry theater this often happens. The artist becomes a vessel for the story to emerge from. I should mention that by the time I am in the rehearsal room working on my feet to create the story I’ve spent up to a year researching the project, writing about the project (grants) and working with a team of artists to think deeply after the project. The experience of letting go of self and being swept up in the creative process is fueled by equal parts inspiration and preparation.-
I can relate to getting in a groove in your work. I very much relate to this sentiment when building puppets. When I was doing more design work, it was a common experience to look up after a couple of hours of work and discover I’d actually been sculpting for 6+ hours.
My brother Donald Holder was the original lighting designer for the " Lion King" on Broadway. Was this play an inspiration for you?
First of all – very cool!!
When I first discovered I wanted to be a puppeteer I read “Playing with Fire” by Julie Taymor and decided I wanted to be the next JT. I was also very influenced by Philippe Genty, Robert Lepage, and Ronnie Burkett
It was hard to figure out how to be a puppeteer in the 90s – no internet to find tutorials and only a handful of institutions around the world where you could study it. (I was lucky to find a mentor)
The Lion King did a lot for us puppeteers in the late 90’s early 2000’s. It opened up the general public’s understanding of the art form. Before then, when I told people I was a puppeteer people would say “I love Jim Henson!” or “Can you perform at my kid’s birthday party.” It was hard on a young serious artist’s ego to have to explain that this isn’t what I do. Ironically, after years of creating metaphor image-based stage work I am now branching into TV style puppetry (Cozy Arts project).
Do you think puppets could pull off a meaningful performance of say... A Chekov play, or would they—pardon the pun—be too wooden?
Puppets can enhance an audience’s ability to see past the text and tap into the heart of the meaning behind the words because of their uncanniness. The "uncanny valley" in puppetry refers to the unsettling feeling evoked when puppets or dolls appear almost human, but not quite, causing a sense of unease or even revulsion. This phenomenon, rooted in the psychological experience of something familiar yet unsettling, is closely related to Sigmund Freud's concept of the uncanny. Puppets, with their blend of the animate and inanimate, can trigger this unsettling feeling, highlighting the human tendency to project our own desires and anxieties onto objects.
Because puppets can do things people can’t, like come apart into pieces, or appear in multiple places at once in a variety of sizes, they can be more effective than live actors.
Tell us about your work with children. What do you explore?
Our collective humanity, our resilience in the face of trials, and how we recognize and nurture our inherent capacity for love and justice. In my work with children, I mostly focus on the 3rd question.
I explore this through the lens of “feelings, friendship, and fairness” and children’s capacity to contribute positively to community building.
In school settings this means supporting the Social Emotional Learning curriculum.
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