Bryn Mawr Students Bring Puppet Circus to Goodhart During Theater Festival’s Second Week

A few years ago, Flora Shepherd '07 thought she was pretty much over puppets. She eschewed drama school in favor of Bryn Mawr, and she never darkened the door of Goodhart's green room until this semester. But when she read the call for proposals for the Third-Ever Bi-College Student Theater Festival, her unusual family history began insistently tugging at her strings. This week, Shepherd will contribute a very grown-up puppet play, set in a circus complete with trapeze artistry by Rebecca Hahn '07, to the second week of the theater festival.

Shepherd, a native of New Orleans, spent a substantial portion of her childhood absorbing the fine points of puppetry. Her mother is a puppeteer; her father, a musician. She thinks she gave her first public puppet performance at about age four.

"During the summers, my brother and I didn't go to camp," she says. "We toured with the family puppet show."

After high school, Shepherd had the option of attending drama school, but she decided that she "needed a break from performing all the time." At Bryn Mawr, she flirted with a physics major and helped develop an interactive physics demonstration show for school children. No puppets were involved. Eventually, she settled on an independent major in gender and sexuality studies. She plans to graduate in December.

Last year, Greasepaint Productions, a Bi-College student-run musical theater company, staged a production of Little Shop of Horrors. A leading role in the play is that of a giant carnivorous plant, and Shepherd, realizing that her expertise in puppetry would be valuable, volunteered for the show. After its very successful run, she began thinking about proposing a puppet play for the theater festival.

"I like puppets because they are unequivocally artificial," Shepherd explains. "All theater involves characters or situations that are not real. Puppetry just emphasizes that to a disturbing and humorous level, pushing the audience to embrace the reality of the show."

This year, she submitted a proposal for a play that she adapted from a story by Paul Gallico that was the basis of the 1953 movie Lili and later published as a novel; the several versions of the story differ significantly in their outlook and emphasis, Shepherd says.

"Puppet Love," Shepherd's adaptation, is "a dark comic story about the relationship between a girl who joins a circus and the cruel puppeteer who runs it."

Several different kinds of puppets — of various sizes and manipulated in different ways — appear in the show. Shepherd built them all, with the help of cast members Eva DeAngelis '07, Laura Kelly-Bowditch '10, Rachel Goddard '10 and Anne Miller '08. She trained the cast in puppet manipulation and also plays a leading role in the play.

All of the characters in the circus are played by puppets except for the acrobat, who is played by real-life acrobat Rebecca Hahn '07, who like Shepherd, is a native New Orleanian. By day, Hahn is an archaeology major who recently curated an exhibition of Cypriot pottery from the College's collections. In her spare time, however, she pursues her gravity-defying acrobatic avocation.

As a child, Hahn was a gymnast. She then turned to sports acrobatics, and she began taking courses at the now-defunct New Orleans School of Circus Arts at 15. At NOSCA, she took classes in static trapeze, acrobatics, juggling, tight-wire and balance. She also performed in an acrobatic troupe and on trapeze, stilt-walked in parades, and taught juggling and balance workshops. Since coming to Bryn Mawr, she has continued her training with Shana Kennedy of Air Play Trapeze in Germantown.

"Puppet Love" will be part of a double bill with "Back and Forth," a vaudeville-style musical written by Mariel Rosati '08 and choreographed by Sheerley Zinori '08, on Goodhart's main stage. Performances are on Thursday, April 12, Friday, April 13, and Saturday, April 14, from 7 to 9 p.m.

The second week of the festival also includes Charle's Mee's "First Love," directed by Haverfordian Jorge Rodriguez '07, to be staged in Goodhart Lobby on Thursday, April 12, Friday, April 13, and Saturday, April 14, at 9 p.m.; and "'Thus Spoke Zarathustra,' F. Nietzsche," characterized by its creator, Masha Kapustina '07, as "Cheap Theatre Installation/Silent Auction on Great Ideas." The installation will be presented on Thursday, April 12, Friday, April 13, and Saturday, April 14, from 6 to 7 p.m. in Goodhart Music Room.

To reserve tickets to any of the shows, e-mail theater@brynmawr.edu/

<Back to Bryn Mawr Now 4/12/2007

Next story>>