Puppet Pro-Wrestling

Mark and Joni talk about the creation and development of a Puppet Pro-Wrestling show and how they want to make something special for teenagers.

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TRANSCRIPT

Joni

So, let's talk about Puppet Pro Wrestling. Where did that idea come from? So, right before started doing Pluck, I did a project which was for sort of an older, older audience, but also was not for hospitals, or not specifically designed for hospitals, which was puppetry and wrestling, you know. And I did sort of like a bit of research and development in what styles of puppetry really work for the sort of the storytelling of wrestling. And my friend last year got me really, really into wrestling. And it’s… I'll try not to talk too much about wrestling in itself, but it's a form of theatre. It's theatre and, you know, and sports all smushed together, and it's, it's amazing. So I had sort of wrestling on the brain. I had puppets that I had just sort of finished off with, and we had been talking about, what can we do for teenagers? What can we do for adolescents?

Mark

Because a lot… one of the things we thought about is that when we go around different rooms, when we go into see different patients, and say, “Oh, we have a show.” It's like harp music, and it's puppetry. A lot of, if you say puppetry, puppet shows, to some kids of a certain age, they initially just assume it's baby-ish. Whereas a lot of them, it's not, because there's loads you can do. So, having “would you like to see a Puppet Pro-Wrestling match?” Suddenly that appeals to an older… it sounds just more, it sounds silly and funny and fun, but it's, it's not Sooty and Sweep sort of puppetry. It’s not little glove puppets doing a -

Joni

You know, there's, there's a big difference between asking, “do you want to see a puppet show about a penguin?” and “Do you want to see Puppet Pro-Wrestling?” You know, there's, something quite curious about it.

Mark

And it’s riskier as well, because wrestling is violent. It's performed violence, but it is people just fighting, So it's that was sort of taking a bit of a risk for what we can do, changing the tone of it. Very different to a penguin who can't fly, to just two characters trying to destroy…. like, trying beat each other up!

Joni

And there was part of us was like, “Is this too risky? Are we going to be allowed to do this?” But, I think the more we spoke about it, the more that we were like, you know, if you think about, sort of, children's cartoons, like there is with superheroes and stuff like that-

Mark

A lot of these children will have been in Spider Man pyjamas, and Spider Man is just, it's just pure violence.

Joni

Yeah, just kicking criminals in the face and flying away. So we knew that there was, we could definitely sort of explore that. And with the puppetry, you know, it's, it's not, you know, we, we can do something that is quite similar to that sort of cartoony violence, where it's it's almost, it's the reactions. That's the important thing. You almost never see them being hit. You see the reaction of it. You see the storytelling of it.

Mark

Yeah, and it's because it's in a puppet form and there’s harp music. It's quite funny. So like parents laugh along and the kids all laugh, yes, no one's worried about who's getting hurt. It's just, it's just funny. It's a safe… it's bringing that sort of more physical, dramatic, violent bit in a safer way to do, in a safe way.

Joni

It’s interesting because it's, it's wrestling, is that, like you said, performative violence, performative fighting. And then puppetry just takes it that one step a little bit further where it's like, but it's just puppets. So no one's actually getting hurt. No one's you know, although… I was about to say, what if a puppet breaks? But all my puppets are laminated so they're not likely to break.

This is probably the one that I'm most sort of inspired by other puppet companies about. There’s as puppet company called Manual Cinema that make almost, it looks like a movie, but it's all done through shadow puppetry. And they sort of do these marvelous edits within the shadow puppetry that look like, you know, like a movie, where it would cut to another scene and all of that. And it wasn't something that I'd be able to do by myself. They have a big team that do that. But I knew that it could be cinematic. I knew that it could be dramatic and dramatic and epic and and, yeah, could tell, could tell a bit of the story.

Mark

I think the epicness brought with a puppet element makes it quite it makes it funny. But ultimately, if people are engaged and it may musically, it took on a different vibe as well. Because when you think of a harp, you think of just like it's very gentle and the spaceman's very sleepy and the penguin… but it was playing, it's more like metal riffs played at the harp. There's a section in it, where it's just percussion on the harp, and it's like a tribal drums for a fight, and it's sort of, it's where it's taking it tonally, to different places you'd expect. which is the whole point of the show, because it's taking the whole tone of what we do to a slightly different part, to appeal to, yeah, slightly older Children who are harder to reach.

Joni

And, I mean, you know, the way that you sort of took that idea of that of the wrestling and made music that made sense through the harp, I still can't believe you did it, because I was just like, you know, “how's this going to work?” Some of the music you’ve come up with was just so, like, rocked so much harder than I ever expected a harp to but again, I guess it just shows like, how much we were sort of pushing each other forward with this. And I love it. I love the music you’ve come up with. I think it might be my favourite music,

Mark

Thank you! To be honest. It all just feeds from the visual. So I I don't sit and notate things or anything like that, because I'm I just watch the show and jam along to it. Yeah, try and try and do what the show is doing in sound. And so that's where it just naturally happened. And it was so cinematic, and it's really, really cool and bad, bad wrestler -

Joni

The heel! That's the technical (term) the heel!

Mark

Buthis face, like, whenever he's, like, his first angry face, everyone laughs. And it's like, this big angry guy. And so it's great, yeah. It's actually brilliant. It's really, really fun. And we've done it for younger children as well, younger children sometimes choose it. And the first time you both kind of looked at each other. “Oh god”

Joni

“Oh no”

Mark

But they were laughing all the way through it. The parents loved it. And we should say it's all shadows. There's no 3d puppets

Joni

No, there was a point where we almost did but it it just didn't work. And I don't know how I'd have made another couple of 3d puppets.

Mark

No this works. And I think because it's all in that same world, it's you really get you really embedded in that world. I think, and because it's cinematic, and there's a point with the percussion where the visual it does, we do time, we do chime in to that bit. Visuals change on the same beat with music. And it's really syncopated, really well, yeah, it's almost like a video game as well. I guess that's, it's quite computer gaming.

Joni

And I think sort of, what I got from the from the music, was the, like you said, sort of the timing of the visuals and the music, which we don't do a lot of actually. But for this one, it really worked, but it really made me think about how to sort of be dynamic with it. Because I use… I use a torch to light the puppets, but usually the torch just stays in one place. But for this, I start to take the torch out and use it, as you know, putting a spotlight on the puppet pro wrestling title. Or we found that if you move the torch, it moves the puppet in a way, sort of animates it a little bit, which was a very exciting thing to sort of discover. And so I sort of was thinking about the music and listening to the music and trying to time those movements really well, or even just that, the epicness of of the of the of the music is, how do I then use the torch to be epic, and with so, I think I probably follow the music a lot more sort of hit points, and I think it really works with it being more cinematic. And also, just like, you know, if there's a punch or if there's a reaction, it kind of needs that coming together a little bit more, doesn't it?

Mark

Totally. The way it's so synchronized. Because people's not that they are not synchronized at all, the other ones. But it is a bit looser. We can play with it, if the penguin wants to walk around for a bit longer. It's fine, and the music will adapt. And, but with this one, it is very much each wrestler has their own sort of theme, and then there’s the percussive part where there’s the match. But they still have a choice, the child chooses who wins. And it gets to the point of “who do you want to win?” And then you've got a you've got an A and a B, sort of ending, haven’t you.

Joni

And sometimes I get them to name the wrestlers as well, which is really fun.

Mark

We’ve had some fun names

Joni

Some really fun names. But it's, it was interesting, because in that moment, I remember going, because at first we didn't put a lot of… it was just the images. It was just the music. There was a little bit where one of the wrestlers spoke to sort of go, “I'm the champion.” That's not the voice that I do! “I am the champion!” But then when it's sort of like, “oh, we need to do this for slightly younger,” in that moment, I then started doing a little bit more talking, a little bit more sort of explaining what was happening, but making it a little bit clearer, but also doing more sort of vocal like oofs and grunts and all of this. And we realized that sort of really softened it as well, and in a way

Mark

Yeah, the sounds add to the puppetness, a bit of it Yes. So it becomes- Yeah, it was softened, it's violent, but it's not really violent, yeah, but, I mean, it's not -

Joni

We keep on using the word violent, but it's not, you know, it's, it's, it’s-

Mark

It’s fighting, yeah, but it’s very much a ‘U’.

Joni

And I think, I think one of the things that we need to sort of play with is maybe getting a bit more interaction with the with the patients. Because I remember we performed it to a patient, and there was a staff member who was sort of monitoring the patient, and she started cheering, she started clapping. And it was like, “oh, that's, that's what we need a little bit more of.” And I think we need to sort of… because I guess with wrestling, that's there is so much cheering, there is so much you are allowed to make noise. And it would be so nice to give like that, permission to the patients, to go within, within reason, you know, because sometimes they're sharing spaces, but they can make noises, they can cheer the person that they want to win, and all of that.

Mark

It can be a bit rowdier, which is something that you don't really get…

And the weird thing about wrestling, one is it is quite rowdy, but also quite relaxing at the same time, I think the way, because it's all in shadow, that's quite mesmerizing. And although the music is a bit punchier, it's still a harp plug. I don’t plug in an electric guitar. It's still got a gentleness to it, which is interesting, really. It's an interesting sort of juxtaposition.

Joni

I feel like it really sort of pushes more the… it gives it, it makes it a bit more emotional. You know, it's not just like, you know, fighting and punching, there's some, it gives it a little bit of, no, they’re both fighting for this title. I think it just gives it a bit more soul, which is really interesting, because that's my favorite bit about wrestling, is the stories.

And we have performed it to a teenager, and they really liked it. It's still been a little bit hard to sort of engage the teenagers, but we know that there is something that we can offer them. But also, luckily, some of the younger kids have enjoyed it, and the parents…. I worried about the parents being like, “Oh, what's this?” But they've actually really enjoyed it as well. So, you know, it's, it's nice that it, you know, with those little adaptions to just soften it a little bit.

Combining these two, two things, you know, and they sound like they don't work, but then they kind… but they do, you know, you want to sort of give it a chance for it to work. And I think wrestling as a term is… is it sort of bypasses, like you were saying, like, this isn't a sweet, gentle little puppet show, which, you know, the penguin is and space dog is, and they it really, really works for for what they want to do. But Puppet Pro Wrestling, it's got that little edge to it, which I think is, yes, being able to sort of introduce it as that is, is really helpful.

Mark

I think being sporty is quite good as well, because a lot of children, younger people, sport can be a big part of the life, even like just because not many adults play sports, but there's lots of it in schools. There's always teams in this, so to have something that's a little bit sporty, it's sort of quite nice to have a little tie into that, which is, you know, that competitiveness.

Joni

Because, I think, you know, it's often like football's really, you know, really, (what’s the word) popular, and it'd be great if we could do puppet footballing and I think at one point we thought about it

Mark

There was going be a puppet penalty shoot out

Joni

Maybe we can do an epic puppet football match, but we'll see.

So I think that's sort of what, what we've kind of done there, where it's, you know, the wrestling, especially how we do, like little close ups and again, sort of using the language of cinematography and all of that and film, we kind of, yeah, make make the puppets more more epic, make puppetry a more epic thing to watch.