No strings attached for puppets in the latest production of 'The Tempest'

Shakespeare's "The Feast: an intimate Tempest" opened Tuesday with a cast of only three. So what of the other characters? Hand-crafted, wooden puppets are used by the actors to represent many of the people and spirits in the tale.

Rick Boynton, creative producer of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, discussed the out-of-the-ordinary use of puppets and silhouetted imagery in the production. The play, a collaboration between Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Redmoon, will run until March 11.

Q: Why did you decide to use puppets and silhouetted imagery to tell this tale?

A: In this play the cast has been synthesized to just three, and Ariel and Caliban have to tell the story of "The Tempest" at Prospero's command. The only way that they can do it and embody the other characters is through puppetry, mask use and through the imagery.

Q: What kinds of materials were used for the puppets?

A: All the puppets are hand carved out of wood. Some of them have different attributes. One of them, Miranda, has eyes that blink. Ferdinand has eyes that go back and forth; some of their mouths move.

We felt it was really important for them to be able to express a tactile experience and so Frank Maugeri, the artistic director of Redmoon, designed each of them to have an arm and the expressive nature of an arm — how one reaches out and how one can signify with that. And the other thing is they don't have backs. We wanted to keep the mechanics of them very much in view. We see the puppeteer manipulating the fingers.

Q: So these aren't puppets with strings to move them?

A: No. Most of them are heads, carved heads. There are handles inside the masks. Some of them have glass eyes because those, sort of, windows to the soul are so key when those characters need to connect on an emotional level. Having those eyes sparkle was really important. In addition to character puppets there are a lot of things that come out of the table. There is an enormous table at the center of this play, a mysterious table. There are two-dimensional objects that come from the table, there are three-dimensional objects that come from the table, and there are some surprises that I wont tell you about that emanate from the table.

Q: How was the silhouetted imagery created?

A: There were, I want to say, 150 silhouettes that were meticulously carved — the feathers of a bird, a tree or leaves of a tree, a hand. All of those of images, were projected on overhead projectors and manipulated by hand. Then we filmed that. There are 75 artists represented when those images appear up on the wall.

They were made out of paper, dense black paper. It appears on four different screens and it often reflects a heightened state, a sense that they are under Prospero's control. Sometimes it comments, sometimes it is literal in its representation; often it is to express the essence and the guts of a scene.

Q: What were the challenges in terms of direction when you decided to incorporate puppets and masks and silhouettes?

A: Normally when you're doing a new work, you read your first draft at a table read and you have an idea of where the script is. Then you go back and you re-work. But this play was different, the imagery and puppetry are such an integral and important part of the show that to divorce words from puppetry or puppetry from words, you would get half a script. So the process was about introducing rudimentary objects - where would they be, how could they interact? From the very early stages, we would be doing a reading and we would call out 'wall comes to life' at a certain point because without that you couldn't get a good sense of where it is.

Q: With the technical aspects of a play becoming more and more intricate, how much technology is too much technology? When does it start to take away from the staples of a production such as the acting, script, etc.?

A: If the technology is conscious of itself then it will take you out of the play and will not, I think, serve the right purpose. One always has to be reinvesting in storytelling, one always has to be reinvesting in character and relationship. If technology is serving that then it should be used.