25^th April 2003

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Mirijam report

Place: Between Donner and H&M

The reason why I wanted to cooperate with Carla was in a way very selfish. I was interested in how I would find it to go out with somebody else’s work. In not having any of my own specific any goals I could just go and see what happened. If I do something with my own work I always have a specific goal and sometimes I am curious about howI would analyse it if it wasn’t my own work.

The place I chose has much to do with the day and the weather. Because it is warm but not sunny it is not really a typical swimming day. Because it is Friday many teenagers are early off school and go the shopping centre and I was curious how they would react. That’s why I chose this spot.

First thing was, ‘ok, how do I put this thing up?’ I did it with Carla a long time ago and it took me quite a while to get it straight alone. Then I sat down and watched. In the first few minutes people where looking at me and then to the puppet theater, but after a while people didn’t make a connection between the theatre and me. I found that comfortable. It was fun to see people stopping and watching, going on and talking to each other using their hands in manner of a puppet master. People were laughing and looking at the puppet theatre.

What do they have in their heads? Is that important to me? Isn’t it enough that they see the theatre platform and puppets and make an image in their heads how it would work? Then I couldn’t help thinking about Carla and I decided to stand up and start asking people if they would like to play. One child was interested, but first of all wanted an Ice cream. The other people I asked all said no, and I found it harder and harder to ask people.

In a way I asked myself: what will they remember; me or the puppet theatre? After a while I got so tired of breaking into peoples’ private space that I just went back to my first spot and continued just looking and waiting. Again people looked, watched, stopped, laughed, walked away, looked, watched, stopped, laughed, walked away, and so on. But one thing that really touched me the most, was that half of the people who walked away were playing with their hands and talked to their friends in this puppet way. After a while I was beginning to ask myself; ‘isn’t that the same as playing in the theatre itself?’ They use the body language, the voices, and the characters given.

This is a strange result but no, it’s not the same, because it isn’t public, it’s in the private surrounding of friends; in a way it wasn’t open for others. Then all of a sudden a group of teenagers came in, exactly the kind I was hoping for (15/16 years old). They began playing for each other for quite a while. The boys for the girls and the girls were giggling like hell. Another thing that was fun to see was the boys were telling each other about the puppets and who was what kind of person, so it was some kind of lesson about society. Other people where also looking towards the boys’ play and a small audience gathered. When the boys stopped the audience split into in people who where going on again and people who wanted to see the puppets more closely.

After this moment passed it was again just people looking, watching, stopping and laughing. A little girl and her brother played with Saddam and Bush, but not for long. The fun thing was that after this they sat next to me. In a way it was great to so how they hadn’t made the connection between the puppet theatre and me. Again looking, watching, stopping, laughing and again the wonderful playing of people’ hands; I enjoyed that so much.

Then suddenly something strange happened. Some punk kids ran up to the theatre, played for only half a minute and then went on running. In the first instance I thought that maybe they took the puppets, but that was not what happened. A few seconds later a woman ran next to me screaming: ‘Houd de dief!’ Something like: Stop the thief! The two punk boys stole her purse and were running and laughing. This affected me very much, not because of the purse, but because an object like this puppet theatre easily stopped them but nobody, nobody human stopped the two punk boys. So a puppet theatre can, and a person not? I sat there for a while and enjoyed people playing with their hands again when things were a little more realxed again. But, yeah, I just felt that I had to go then.

My conclusion from the afternoon is that I didn’t like that I would remain in the memory of people when they thought of this little event. I felt it was more sincere to leave the puppet theatre alone, even if this means that not many people are playing with it. But, in a way, people were playing with it in their own private surroundings of friends. And for me it wasn’t important that that playing was public; their laughs, their thoughts maybe but their hands said enough.

Mirijam