Visiting Artist Michael Richardson Fascinates Students with Indonesian Puppetry
Entire Middle School at Work Creating Puppets, Stories

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The entire Middle School is currently engaged in making colorful shadow puppets with moving parts. But that’s only the beginning of an ambitious cross-curricular project integrating art, language arts, social studies, and music.

The project began with visiting artist Michael Richardson of Gulfport, Mississippi, who brought his Red String Wyang Theatre to CCES with funding from the Arts Guild. An artist with a particular focus on international puppetry, he has received several grants, including two Fulbrights, to study Javanese, South Indian, and Sri Lankan cultural story-telling and puppetry traditions.

Students were mesmerized by his shadow puppet performance of an Indonesian myth about the triumph of good over evil. The story contained all the elements needed to capture and keep the attention of middle-schoolers: doltish, evil monsters; a young, clever hero; and, of course, a violent battle resulting in total annihilation of the monsters.

Following the performance, he answered questions and demonstrated the beautifully colored puppets made from a translucent leather he described as “luminous” that allows light to shine through.

Later in the week, he also offered a performance of Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, “The Tinderbox,” using shadow puppets he had designed and made in the Indonesian tradition. It was an example of Richardson’s artistic desire to create “new works in a tradition that maintains continuity with an ancient past.”

“This fascinating art form is deeply tied to a rich and diverse body of literature from many cultures around the world,” noted Richardson. This linkage set the stage for his residency. Students began exploring creation myths and the folklore of other continents as springboards for their own puppet-making and storytelling projects. When art teacher Brent Roberts offered a Sumerian “origin story,” sixth-grade social studies teacher Caroline Bethel immediately saw the connections.

“The sixth-grade social studies curriculum focuses on ancient history, and in fact, begins with a unit on Sumer and the Fertile Crescent. We also look at origin stories from cultures around the world,” she commented.

Integrating Arts and Academics

Students looked into Sumerian history and culture in a bit more depth than usual. Then Ms. Bethel introduced them to the story of Gilgamesh, thought to be the oldest written story on earth. Now sixth-graders had their theme: they would create puppets and story-telling scripts for three episodes from the Gilgamesh epic that were retold in a trilogy of children’s books by Ludmila Zeman.

Enter sixth-grade writing teacher Diane Talbert. She is leading her students in a cooperative writing project to create story lines and scripts. Children will be constructing a character puppet in art class, then writing as that same character. Ever resourceful, Mrs. Talbert plans to incorporate this activity into her unit on “action verbs.”

Students in other grades are also working on retelling and illustrating stories through puppetry. Some of that work includes animating scenery, such as clouds, or any other non-living "characters" essential to the story-telling.

Fifth-graders are re-imagining two African folktales, “Elephant Learns Some Manners” and “Why the Giraffe and Oxpecker Are Good Friends.” Seventh-graders are also using an African story, “The Elephant and the Spirit of Rain.” Eighth-graders are working with an aboriginal creation story, “The Rainbow Serpent.”

“The students are delighted with their puppets,” said Mr. Roberts. “They enjoy figuring out which parts should be made to move and how to make them work.”

Instead of using costly translucent leather, art students are working with a clear, heavy acetate material known as Durolar. They color them with brilliant markers and manipulate the moving parts with straightened hanger wires. (The hangers, collected from faculty, were patiently taken apart and straightened by a dedicated group of volunteer moms, who sat in the back of the art room at their task for days!)

A Pre-digital Age Multimedia Performance”

“As part of his residency, Michael Richardson will return to work with the students and bring their performances together in the spring,” said art teacher Alice Ballard, who was so intrigued by the shadow puppets her students made last year for Mulan Jr. that she sought Richardson out as visiting artist. It is her vision to help the Middle School develop a library of shadow puppets that can be used by language arts students for years to come.

“We can take this project as far as we want to,” she said.

Stay tuned for part two of this story in the spring, when the students perform their re-interpretations of these ancient stories. It will be a pre-digital age multimedia presentation, filled with the voices of the students, their writing, their artwork, even their music.