By way of Andrew Young, I came across an article in the National Post, called “Puppets Ahoy!” The tagline is “Against all odds, the googly-eyed are making a cultural comeback.” It’s true, certainly, and it’s a reasonable encapsulation of some of the current spots where puppetry is blooming, but it seemed a fairly superficial rundown to me.

There’s a brief historical reference, and a mention of the Puppets Up! festival occuring this weekend in Almonte, ON (which I had been planning to go to, but for an unfortunate set of deadlines coupled with a lack of a place to put the dogs up). Then there’s talk about how puppetry, not just Jim Henson-related, is hitting the cultural scene, but just about everything discussed after this involves Henson properties (there was a mention of Avenue Q, and also of the recent film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which featured a puppet musical at its climax, but those puppets were made by Henson!). Even in the very furtive mention of puppets online, focus lay not in the plethora of puppeteers and puppet enthusiasts putting out so much great content, but in the Muppets videos that have been coming out for the past few weeks. It’s great stuff, to be sure, and a nice return to form in some ways, but hardly indicative of the state of online “googly-eyed” content.

What you’re probably thinking right now, and you’re right if you are, is that I was expecting Hoggworks generally, or dotBoom specifically, to get a mention, and you’d be right. It was something of a critical hit, and certainly it’s the largest scale puppet-based production online (that I’m aware of, though Apollo’s Pad looks pretty intricate in some places). Did it get a mention, though? Did anything other than the Muppets get a mention, really? What about the excellent puppetry-troupe the Wippets? What about Jigsaw? What about the Johnson brothers and all of the content they produce at Swazzle? What about the JibJab puppet eCards? Heck, what about the Potter Puppet Pals? It’s got to be the most popular online-specific bit of puppetry out there, and it didn’t warrant a mention? (I am forgetting a large number of people, and that’s part of the problem — there are so many great bits of puppetry being made online today, I couldn’t possibly list them all!)

I may be sounding a bit bitter for not rating inclusion in this article, and that’s a fair consideration, and perhaps I am, to a small extent. But we’re just one group among an increasing number making great content online using puppets, taking part in our small way to bring puppetry back to the forefront, not to make it relevant again, but rather, to show that it’s always been relevant. Whether or not our specific work deserves a mention in a National Post article, surely the author of the article should do research enough to learn that even though they’re still quite popular, the Muppets aren’t the only thing online?

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One last thing: Ronnie Burkett, referenced in the article as Canada’s most prominent puppeteer, said:

Puppetry has always been the domain of the loner weirdo, and certainly in my day you did it in your basement alone.

Now, sure, when I started dotBoom, it was in the basement, but that’s just because it was the space I had to stage it in, and I chose not to do any live performing. Despite that, the intent was never to only do it for myself, and I’d guess that most people are working on their puppets and puppeteering because they want to perform, and to perform, you really need an audience.

I question his assessment that an inherently public art would be relegated to the sublevels. Perhaps he was going for a good quote, but it doesn’t seem a very accurate statement, to me.