Returned yesterday from Atlanta, five days at the biennial festival of Puppeteers of America, 18 performances, workshops, six hours of open-mike cabarets, and mingling among some of the immensely diverse world that’s American puppetry.

So, back into the grind. Today I finished the hair for Sebastian and Alonso, started the lettering on the set (fragments of text on appliques glued to the sweep of the canvas), and began some private work on Prospero. Two rehearsals coming up at the end of this week. I felt quite anxious being away from the worklist, but it gave me a chance to step back and get some perspective on the whole project.

Several European puppeteers spoke of their work as a kind of circular transaction between actor, puppet and audience. The puppet is a transmission pathway from actor to audience but is also an active instigator, as if the electrical conducting wire not only transmitted the impulse from the source but also called forth that impulse. And the audience is not only the recipient but also—if the channels are open and the actor fully present to them—the fertile center of this erotic flow.

Which leads me, naturally, to The Tempest. Prospero’s epilogue is a curious thing. In a way, it’s so much in the tradition of “Our play’s done, folks, please applaud,” that some producers have cut it entirely and replaced it with “Our revels now are ended.” To me that’s not only a grotesque misreading of the “revels” speech but a failure to see the profundity of Shakespeare’s very simple statement.

Gentle breath of yours, my Sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please.

What does it mean, “to please”?

To post-Romantic artists bent on self-expression, truth-telling, provocation of thought, farting in the face of the bourgeoisie, the notion of “pleasing” the audience conjures up the saccharine blare of The Sound of Music. To many serious artists, “pleasing” is synonymous to “pandering.” So do we take Prospero at his word when he says that the whole purpose of this masterpiece of redemption, forgiveness and resurrection was “to please”? Is The Tempest merely a tap-dance?

Well, no. Though I love tapdancers and wrote a play about one. Prospero’s epilogue, summarizing the play itself, is about freedom.

As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your Indulgence set me free.

So to put these two things together, if I can. How does “pleasing the audience” connect with freedom? We tend to think of it as a binding, an obligation, not a freeing.

Actors, musicians, athletes know when they’re in the groove—and probably more often, when they’re not. Lotsa writers drink lotsa booze to get there and stay there as long as they can. “In the groove” is outside yourself, outside the self who’s writing his own reviews, who’s chewing that old cud of karma, who’s plotting revenge, who’s rehearsing his acceptance speech, who’s grieving for the lost lost lost lost years. “In the groove” is flying free.

Then to the Elements
Be free, and fare thou well.

The black desolation of Caliban is one with Prospero, and so is the flight of Ariel.

The audience then—my forthcoming audience—I ask to give me their hands, their presence, their breath, to free me from this barren island of self. Prospero relinquishes, as we all must, his staff, his book, the ecstatic adrenalin rush of the mage in full power. At the outset, my power is infinite; at the end, my power is zilch. And, weirdly, my victory is in my toilet flush.

And what this grotesque quiz-show consolation prize leaves me with: my freedom. I ask you to clap your hands. You do. I thank you. We are one.

What do they get from it? What pleases them? Infinite answers to that one, but a couple of universals: they want the familiar and the new, the safely dangerous. They want the excitement of the journey, but they want to be protected: they need to trust the guide. Whether we’re going into the jungle, the sewers of Paris, or Disney World, the trip can please us if that trust is there.

Being now 67, I have my stock repertoire of grievances against the world, my little toy-theatre revenge plays I’d perpetrate if I could. I need to understand Prospero in this context. desperately struggling against his worst instincts, seeing his life as a wasteland of confusion, seeking freedom. And finding it.

In the hands and breath of his audience. If, indeed, he can give himself to them.

Peace & joy—
Conrad B.