Puppet shows are jolly, bright affairs, right? So why does veteran Canadian puppeteer Ronnie Burkett have a reputation for darkness?
That would be because his shows are made for adults and feature some grim subject matter. Czech puppeteers risking their lives to present politically subversive performances under Nazi occupation was the true story that inspired the first show Burkett brought to Melbourne more than a decade ago, Tinka’s New Dress. Then there’s the world’s end, which is the setting for the fourth show he’s staging here, Penny Plain.
“When people refer to me as dark, I think they’re responding to a feeling they have about the show or the characters or the ideas – and that’s fantastic,’’ says Burkett. “But I don’t think I’m a very dark guy; I have chandeliers! I have puppet books!”
Burkett and I are sitting beneath those rather grand, old-fashioned chandeliers in his Toronto workshop. Just as a wickedly camp sense of humour lights up his shows’ dark themes, these twinkling fixtures are dashes of whimsy in a predominantly utilitarian space – including shelves for 1400 neatly arranged puppetry books.
“I’m attracted to angels and demons in people. I’m interested in either a premise, like in Penny Plain, where there’s something awful going on that people have to rise up above or give in to, or characters that have either light or dark inside of them. But, yeah, in terms of puppetry I am sort of viewed as the dark lord of weirdness,” Burkett says with a laugh.
An internationally renowned dark lord of puppetry. Could Ronnie Burkett be the inspiration for John Malkovich’s transformation into an acclaimed, if kooky, puppeteer in Being John Malkovich?
Burkett admits he doesn’t know, but in any case identifies more with the film’s busking puppeteer than Malkovich’s “art puppeteer … because I’ve always been working. I’m always schlepping stuff around and doing shows”.
“Always” is no exaggeration, as Burkett has been a professional puppeteer since he was 14. It was inevitable for the boy who had discovered puppetry in an encyclopedia seven years earlier, and boldly announced that this was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
Little Ronnie’s fate was sealed when he saw The Sound of Music soon afterwards, and was entranced by The Lonely Goatherd marionette scene – the creation, as it turned out, of a man featured in that fateful encyclopedia entry, Bil Baird. “I stalked him through my childhood, and he finally relented and hired me when I was 19,” recalls Burkett. “I knew there were people with the information I wanted, so I was relentless getting it out of them.”
Another puppeteer who has greatly influenced Burkett is Josef Skupa, the inspiration behind Tinka’s New Dress and its companion piece, The Daisy Theatre, which recently made its world premiere in Toronto. “He died three months before I was born, but I feel a constant kinship with him,” says Burkett. “I’ve made it my work over the last 15 years to know everything about him that I can find.”
Learning from the past is something he encourages young puppeteers to do. “They need to find a dead mentor,” says Burkett. “They need to fall in love with some puppeteer from the past who inspires them, and then find out everything they can. Because nothing is new. There was more sophisticated puppetry going on at the turn of the 20th century than there is now.”
This puppet master is not against learning from the living. Burkett has formally shared what he admits is his “encyclopedic knowledge of puppetry” at institutions such as the Victorian College of the Arts. He taught a series of workshops there in 2007, when puppetry chief Peter Wilson described Burkett as “one of the great puppetry artists of all time’’.
During his VCA stint, “the puppetry community in Melbourne just grabbed me and dragged me out”, says Burkett, who describes the city’s puppetry scene as huge. “Also, one of my best friends is a performer from Melbourne, Meow Meow … so I feel I know some of the theatre-music-cabaret scene in Melbourne through her.”
With connections extending from his first visit here in 2002, which he fondly remembers because of Tinka’s enthusiastic reception, to teaching a Melburnian now performing in King Kong, Burkett can feel this city tugging at his strings.
Now the dark lord of weirdness returns, with an apocalyptic tale told by a blind old landlady, her rooming house tenants, and a talking dog or two.
“I’m itching to go on the road again,” says Burkett, who has – unusually – been in Toronto for more than a year. “Watch out, Melbourne!” he declares, grinning broadly, eyes gleaming with the same enthusiasm as the boy who discovered puppetry five decades ago.
Penny Plain is at the Arts Centre’s Fairfax Studio, August 8-18. For bookings, visit artscentremelbourne.com.au.
