When most people think of puppet shows, they think of felt hand puppets and themes geared toward kids. Audiences with this in mind will be in for a shock at the puppet show “The Long Christmas Ride Home”, which Butler Theatre will unveil on Nov. 11 at the Schrott Center for the Arts. The show will run at 7:30 p.m. from Wednesday through Saturday, as well as at 2 p.m. on Sunday.
Show advertisements even recommend that attendees should be 18 or older, as the production grapples with ideas of acceptance, growing up and what to do when death comes knocking.
“The Long Christmas Ride Home” combines live human actors with puppets inspired by bunraku — a traditional Japanese style of puppetry that does not hide the puppeteer. Bunraku puppets typically range in size from two-and-a-half to four feet tall, meaning that the child characters in the show are properly scaled.
The performance follows three siblings as they remember a dramatic ride to their grandparents’ home for Christmas dinner. It switches between the perspectives of the adult children as portrayed by human actors and their younger selves as puppets voiced by the same actors.
Professor of theatre William Fisher is helming the production as director. He appreciates the unique ways humans are integrated into a puppet show, especially in regards to playwright Paula Vogel’s vision.
“We see the devices of puppeteering, and it’s not something that we are supposed to ignore,” Fisher said. “Paula Vogel says [to not] hire puppeteers to do this play, [but to] have actors learn about or engage in puppetry … Some of the scenery or the props and the other visual elements [are] a kind of puppeteering as well — what’s sometimes called object theatre.”
Puppets and people share the stage seamlessly. Photo by Faith Delamarter.
“The Long Christmas Ride Home”, despite its name, was not written to be a Christmas story. Rather, it largely follows the build-up and aftermath of a dramatic Christmas dinner as the siblings shift their focus away from the actual event and towards the journey that got them there.
The siblings are also not the only narrators, as their parents often take on that role during flashbacks. These story-telling quirks and non-linear structure all lend themselves to a show that drip-feeds information and emotion in an engaging way.
Though the actors portraying the siblings also voice them in flashbacks, they are not the puppeteers. This means that they must match their own lines with the puppeteers’ actions, providing a new layer of impressive synchronization. Adding a line in rehearsal is not only something the speaking actor must account for, but another motion that the puppeteers must find to fit it.
Emily Gray, a sophomore theatre and middle secondary education double major, portrays the youngest sister Claire, and described how the cast overcomes the challenge.
“In the original process, we were puppeteering the puppets as we were learning the lines, and then that switched around,” Gray said. “Honestly, it just takes a lot of listening, paying attention to your surroundings, understanding when your lines come and what’s going on in the entire thing.”
Because “The Long Christmas Ride Home” focuses so heavily on the characters and puppets, set decoration is minimal and no separate crew is needed. When the setting changes, the actors themselves reconfigure benches and pallets for seamless transitions.
Little is needed for this simplistic story. Photo by Faith Delamarter.
Senior theatre major Kaleb Kiester is the show’s assistant director. He described the transition from rehearsing in the Lilly Hall Studio Theatre to Schrott’s much larger stage as taxing, but rewarding.
“It definitely is work, but at the same time, you get to work with all these people that you’re good friends and collaborators with,” Kiester said. “Getting to take that step by going from a rehearsal room to the actual stage where we’re going to perform is going to be a very strong leap forward in figuring out staging, how we can maneuver in the space and what’s going to be the best for the audience there.”
Tickets for “The Long Christmas Ride Home” can be bought at the Clowes Memorial Hall box office and online with student discounts available.
Multimedia editor Reilly Byron contributed to this article.