iv. fieldwork report on spiral q puppet theater
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Introduction IV: Fieldwork Report on Spiral Q Puppet Theater
This report is developed from a fieldwork project. It illustrates my capability of conducting
communication researchto participate and observe - and my skills on academic reports. My fieldwork
report mainly emphasizes giant puppetry and its connection to political ideology and community-building.
I include an introduction (that presents my research questions and how to address them), fieldsite and
methods (that describe the fieldsite, participants, context of research, and the methods used to conduct the
research), findings, conclusion, and bibliography.
Fieldsite and Research Questions
I chose Philadelphia-based Spiral Q Puppet Theater (http://www.spiralq.org/) as the ethnographic field
site. Spiral Q is one of these puppet theaters and non-profit organizations that use giant puppetry and
pageantry to promote social and political change. While performing fieldwork at the Spiral Q, I addressed
several research questions such as: Why do people want to work in spiral Q? How do they think of their
jobs? Do they have any political ideology? Is Spiral Q a radically political puppet theater? Do their
projects always have to be involved with political protest and dissent? What is the power they believe in
that puppets and pageant could have in a community?
Methods
I conducted this research through participation, observation, field notes, and open-ended interviews over
five-week. I spent about three hours a week volunteering at the studio for four weeks, where I helped to
do paper mache, cut cardboard, paint, and braid puppets hair; I also spent a day outside to be one of the
marshals protecting the kids from traffic in the Feltonville parade. Data were collected primarily through
the field notes of my observation and participation in the everyday work and through open-ended
interviews with all the staff in Spiral Q. Finally I built my analysis of the social phenomena within the
field site and identified broad themes of what I found during the ethnographic research.
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Fieldwork Report on Spiral Q Puppet Theater
Introduction
Puppetry is a very ancient art form. In human history, the forms of puppet and puppetry
varied within and between cultures, such as finger puppets, hand puppets, carnival puppets,
stick puppets and shadow puppets (Wikipedia, 2010). Though no matter how diverse it is, in
almost all human societies, puppetry is used both as an entertainment in performance and
ceremonially in celebrations such as carnivals (Bell, 2000). As Oscar Wilde (1892) wrote, There
are many advantages in puppets. They never argue. They have no crude views about art. They
have no private lives. These characteristics make puppetry a flexible and inventive medium,
which has been used since the earliest times to animate and communicate the ideas and needs
of human societies (Dugan, 1990).
Some evidences showed that puppetry can be traced to 30000 years B.C. in India, where
stick puppets were used to perform epics stories; while sacred texts were used as the dialogue
for the shows, entertainment is the main purpose (Ghosh, Massey, and Banerjee, 2006).
Centuries later, large puppets were so popular in Japan that Japanese puppets were slowly
replacing human actors on the stage (Bell, 2000). Chinese puppetry is more commonly known
as Chinese shadow theater (Bell, 2000). In Europe, puppets were also very popular. From 600
A.D. to 16th century, puppets shows were used to act out Bible stories in service to the church
(Blumenthal, 2005). A turning point came in the 15th century, when puppets were used in the
morality plays featured with vulgar humor; thus, the puppets were banned from the church and
delivered into the hands of the people (Blumenthal, 2005).
In 20th century puppetry have gained advances in the United States. Marionette
puppetry started to be combined with television program. In 1960s the puppeteer Jim Henson
created the famous children's TV show Sesame Street, which inspired many imitators and are
highly recognizable today (Bell, 2000). Around roughly the same time, the movement of
political puppetry began when German artist Peter Schumann came to the U.S. and founded
the Bread and Puppet Theater to work in protest of the Vietnam War (Brecht, 1988). As the first
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politically radical puppet theater, the Bread and Puppet Theater developed the political and
artistic possibilities of a puppet theater in a distinctive and powerful way, and thus it greatly
influenced the world of political puppetry today (Brecht, 1988). Since then people started to
associate giant puppets and political or radical puppetry with political protest and social
movement.
My research mainly emphasized on the giant puppetry and its connection to political
ideology and community-building. Thats the reason I chose Spiral Q Puppet Theater as the
ethnographic field site for my study. Spiral Q is one of these puppet theaters that use giant
puppetry and pageantry to promote social and political change. At the beginning of this
research I hypothesized that people working for Spiral Q will have a certain political ideology.
During my experience of volunteering in the Spiral Q I addressed several research questions
such as:
Why do they want to work in spiral Q? How do they think of their jobs? How is theworking atmosphere?
Do they have any political ideology? Is Spiral Q a radically political puppet theater? If it is,how radical are they? Do their projects always have to be involved with political protest
and dissent? Whats the uniqueness and advantage about puppetry? How do they think of using
puppetry as a tool of creating social event? What is the power they believe in that
puppets and pageant could have in a community?
Fieldsite and Methods
The Spiral Q puppet theater was founded in 1995 by Matthew Hart in Philadelphia
(About Spiral q, 2010). At the age of 22, when Hart was traveling around the country, he was
inspired by the street pageants produced by the Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont (About
Spiral q, 2010). He was deeply impressed by the potent images created around progressive
social themes in a way that engaged people and the environment, thus he went back to
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Philadelphia and founded Spiral Q as a shadow puppet theater, performing at local events and
benefits (About Spiral q, 2010). Social change groups started to approach Spiral Q to make
puppets and banners for demonstrations and education campaigns (About Spiral q, 2010).
After some successful outdoor performances, they felt the power that giant puppets and
pageantry could have in a community setting; then they began to focus on neighborhood
projects and community activism (About Spiral q, 2010). Over these years, Spiral Q had a
dramatic growth in the number and scale of projects and a great development of its
organizational structure (About Spiral q, 2010).
In 2000, Spiral Q moved to a new space in East Mantua at 3114 Spring Garden Street.
Today the core staff in the administration include (About the staff, 2010):
Executive director Tracy - she is in charge of creating and managing arts programs. Shehas a lot of experience of creating after-school and arts program for disadvantaged and
adjudicated youth; she is also a visual and performing artist.
Program director Ted - he is an organizer, educator, community facilitator and artist.Before Spiral Q he worked to facilitate support groups for children with parents in prison
at many Philadelphia public schools.
Productions manager Liza - She has a lot of experience in parade building, such ascreating costumes, masks, and giant puppets.
Communications coordinator Alice as a Philly Fellow/AmeriCorps VISTA member, sheworks on communicating with members, community partners, collaborators, interns,
and volunteers.
Apart from these four full-time employees, there are 7 board members and about 20
part-time interns. Most of them are students from the local colleges around
the Philadelphia neighborhood. I have met a couple of interns who are from
the Art Institute of Philadelphia, Drexel University, and University of
Pennsylvania. Their jobs are ranging from art making in the studio to paper
work in the office.
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The place Spiral Q is located used to be an old two-stored warehouse. From the small yellow
front door its hard to tell that the interior space is actually very sizable. Through the doorway
there is a narrow stair directly going up to the second floor, where
an office, a puppet museum, a studio, and facilities have occupied
the space. The office is at least
capable of having 10 people
working there. The museum is
called the Living Loft Museum that
opens to the visitors by
appointment. It features many of
the giant puppets, six-foot human heads, birds, fish, costumes
and other giant creations used by the theater in the past pageantries. With all kinds of parade
artworks decorating the wall, the studio is the place where Spiral Qs people get their hands
dirty. They used some pallet racks to categorize tools and materials of making puppets and
others parade arts into several groups, such as fabric, paint, wood, flag, cardboard, costume,
and clay. There is a single small studio for hardware tools and
chain saw. These materials mainly came from individual and
organizational donations
I used participant observation and other ethnographic
methods to conduct this research over five-week period. I
spent about three hours a week at the studio over four weeks,
where I helped to do paper mache, cut cardboard, paint, braid
puppets hair; I also spent a day outside to volunteer in a
community parade with 50 5th graders from Feltonville Intermediate school and became one of
the marshalls to protect the kids from traffic. When I was working, I had a lot open-ended
conversations with the Spiral Q employees to get their opinions on this organization, their jobs,
puppetries, parades and political expression. I also had the chance to get to know the whole
process of parade preparing, producing and performing. All the Spiral Q employees I met were
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very friendly and happy to my attendance, and they were open
to all the questions I had asked them.
Findings
Organizational Culture
The working atmosphere in Spiral Q is very casual and lively. Its a busy place, full of
different initiatives and projects, and always bustling with energy and creativity. The Spiral Q
crews are very proud of their jobs, and they genuinely love the way how Spiral Q combine arts
and social justice. Usually the interns stay in the studio, being busy making artworks for parades
and pageants. While they were sitting or standing around a puppet and using paper mache to
build it up, they were joking around and chatting about their life, colleges, friends, and Spiral
Qs new clients. Sometimes there will be volunteer sessions in the studio with students from
local high school to help them do craft work. When the schedule is really intense, the full-time
employees will also get into the studio and participant in the art-making. Liza is in charge of the
production process so that she stays in the studio a lot. The interns are very close to her.
Although some interns are working with Liza for a long time, they still do not know the technical
title of her position because she is one of them. The four full-time employees are leaders,
organizers, and the core workforce, and they are also very down-to-earth and easy to work with.
There is an evenness of status between the full-time employees and the interns in the
organization structure. They are all friends and co-workers to each other.
Though people in are all happy about what they are doing, there is a difference between
the full-time employees and the interns in terms of how they perceive their jobs. Most interns
applied for the jobs here at the very beginning because they thought making puppets must be
fun, and it is. Some interns also thought it would be a
challenging and meaningful experience to work in a non-
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profit organization. For the four key people, however, working in Spiral Q is a more committed
experience out of values and dreams. They believe in the power of giant puppet parade and
neighborhood pageantry could have in creating a more perfect society. They are devoted to the
community activism. For example, Alice is one of the full-time employees and a Philly Fellow
member. Before she came to work with Spiral Q, she dropped off from the University of
Pennsylvania after a half and a year, and then she transferred to another college in Ohio, simply
because she didnt like the elite atmosphere in the University of Pennsylvania where most of
her classmates went to fancy clubs every week and they only cared about how much money
they would make. Alice realized it was not what she wanted. After graduation she went back to
Philadelphia mainly because there are full of non-profit organizations like Spiral Q, and it has a
lot of things going on that she can join in.
Puppetry and Political Ideology
Its not true that people working for Spiral Q have a certain political ideology, though
they do appreciate the origins of political puppetry that uses giant puppets as a medium of
political expression. They also do believe in freedom of
speech and they define it as an inalienable individual
right and a collective responsibility to speak and listen
(Welcome, 2010). In the Living Loft Museum, they try
to show the visitors a history of political puppetry by
presenting a lot of parade items and pictures that send
messages about politics, liberty and freedom of speech;
by doing this they want the visitors to remember that puppetry is a significant usage of giant
puppets. All in all, the museum is to encourage people to identify, explore, and make visible
issues important in their lives through the medium of giant puppetry (Living Loft Puppet
Museum, 2010).
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The Spiral Q has a Justice Works program to
supports social change. They assist organizations in
creating materials such as puppets and banners to send
particular messages in public demonstrations (Justice
Works, 2010). According to program director Ted Enoch,
they tried to select participants very carefully based on
compatibility. Spiral Qs core values and financial need; and
they will not assist any organization that employs hate speech or engages in the destruction of
property (Justice Works, 2010). They are too cautious to even mention the word political in
their value statement; they also do not always involve with political projects. It could be
creating parade arts for an anti-nuclear weapon group; it could be making puppets for a
community-based pageant; it also could be teaching kids how to make artworks together and
express themselves for an educational program in a local school. It depends on their recent
collaborators and programs. Their current project is to remember and celebrate the legacy of
Medu Art Ensemble, a collective of artists and cultural workers who dedicated their lives to
fight against apartheid in South Africa (Welcome, 2010).
Artist and Activist
People working for Spiral Q are not necessarily holding certain political attitude, but
they are absolutely great artists and social activists. Its amazing how much effort a non-profit
organization can make. Once they get involved in a new project, their will start to seek for
materials from donation and from the wild. They made puppets and other parade items from
the scratch. If they need more bamboo rod for flags and puppets, they will bring tools with
them and go to the field to cut down what they need. From full-time employees to interns, no
one is ever required to dress up for work because, as craft artists, they always have to be ready
to get their hand and their clothes dirty.
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One day they were preparing parade items, cutting cardboard into the shape of flower
with a hole in the middle so that parade activists can wear them on the neck and hold two
leafs in hands; then cardboard flowers and leafs were painted with different colors.
When people were painting in the studio, they inevitably got paint stains all over their trousers,
and they really did not care. An intern Nina always wears the same jeans that covered with
paint spots. Every time her hands get stained with paint, she will wipe them up on her jeans as
its the nature thing to do. It also happened to the white Spiral Q T-shirt that every employee
has one. Some interns- most of which are young girls- didnt like the looks, so they used scissors
and paint to customize them. No one will blame them for putting the craft ideas into practice in
an art institution.
In the studio all materials and tools are categorized on the racks; apart from that,
everything else in a mess. The original color of wood
floor and sink is not recognizable at all from paint,
stains, and dirt. Even in the office, its all messy on the
floor with a really dirty carpet. I think no one clean it
up for ages or no one ever wants to. No one cares
because its an art organization. Its all about energy,
creativity, activity and passion. Being clean does not
really matters.
However, the Spiral Q is well organized and fully prepared for their projects. In the
education program they have collaborated with a number of schools to teach the students how
to build a puppet as well as encourage students right to
be seen and heard (Education Initiatives, 2010).
Feltonville Intermediate elementary school is one of
their collaborators. This year on the day of the
Feltonville
parade, the
Spiral Q crew
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met up at Feltonville to get ready at 9:30 in the morning. First they discussed the parade line-up
and loaded puppets into the gym for assembly. Then they held the parade assembly in the gym
with 250 fifth graders as well as their teachers and some parents. The Spiral Q people have
remarkable skills at cheering these kids up and getting them all excited about the following
parade. Ted gave a speech saying to the kids that they were always represented by the media
and by their parents, now it was their time to stand up and represent themselves. In the
assembly they showed the kids how to hold puppets and parade in the right way; they also held
the Recognition session to introduce some key people to the crowd and encouraged the
students to stand up and speak out who they want everyone to recognize. After assembly it
was the lunch break, when one of the Spiral Q staff met with the fifth grade teachers and
informed them the parade line-up and safety information. Then there was an orientation for all
the 12 marshalls, including me, whose job was to follow the parade crowd, wave bright yellow
flag, and protect the kids away from the traffic, when they were marching on the street. The
Spiral Q tried their best to assure the security; they got the official parade permit and police
escort. During the parade, a police car will open a way for the team and help to block the traffic.
Tracy told us how to do if any vehicle driver gets impatient about the blocking road. Just keep
the smile and say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you Dont start any
conversation, she said. After the parent safety meeting, the parade set off at 1:00 in theafternoon. Everything went well because of the well preparation.
Puppetry and Community-Building
The Spiral Q believes in the power that giant puppetry and pageantry could have in the
process of community-building. How does the power work? Before a parade, when they were
soliciting and accepting donations of materials from other community residents, the
connections among community members start to build up and get stronger. The donations
came from various organizations and individuals. For example, some cardboards were donated
by a factory around Philadelphia Airport area; an old lady, who was living in the west
Philadelphia for 40 years and knew about the Spiral Q from a parade, cleaned out her basement
one day and donated some cans of paint.
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Then through the process of puppet building, it brings many neighborhood residents
together, letting them to work together and get to know each other. The Spiral Q created
annual Peoplehood Parade and Pageant program that involves a number of communities for
collaboration (Peoplehood, 2010). Before the
pageant, they hold free puppet building
workshops in the Clark Park, aiming at bringing
people together (Peoplehood, 2010). The event
is to celebrate community, diversity and the
triumphs of life in Philadelphia and its
neighborhoods (Peoplehood, 2010).
Moreover, during the art-making process, people are
able to communicate their thoughts and carry out their ideas
through the construction of puppets. In the last year of
Peoplehood, Beth, a teaching artist from the Spiral Q, created a
giant three-person puppet to tell the story of humanity that
pushes with bravery and persistence against the empire of
money. Then during the parade and pageant, people can sendtheir messages and ideas out by presenting their artworks and
getting feedback from others. For example, the Spiral Q helped
to create the annual Norris Square Parade to make the
community safer (Norris Square Parade, 2010). Through marching and presenting on their
neighborhood streets, Norris Square residents tried to send a message that their streets were
not for drugs and violence, and they wanted to take their streets back for their children and
families (Norris Square Parade, 2010). In the Feltonville parade, the kids were raising their
giant puppets in the air and chanting again and again to introduce themselves to the
neighborhood. They even got more excited when people in the neighborhoods opened their
windows and doors to cheer them up. Through this interaction they celebrated a stronger
neighborhood and the many cultures and family traditions in this diverse school community
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(Welcome, 2010).Ted told me that watching hundreds of kids all happy and excited on the
street was his favorite about the Spiral Q.
Conclusion
In summary, I chose the Spiral Q Puppet Theater as the fieldsite and used ethnographic
methods to conduct my research on puppetry and its connection with political expression and
community-building. I spent about three hours a week volunteering at the studio over four
weeks, where I helped to do paper mache, cut cardboard, paint, and braid puppets hair; I also
spent a day outside to be one of the marshalls protecting the kids from traffic in the Feltonville
parade. Over 15 years the Spiral Q has been making puppets and arts for parades and pageants
and use giant puppetry as a tool of creating social events. From the research my main findingsinclude:
The working atmosphere in Spiral Q was very casual and lively. The Spiral Q crews arevery proud of their jobs, and they genuinely love the way how Spiral Q combine arts and
social justice.
There is an evenness of status between the full-time employees and the interns in theorganization structure. They are all friends and co-workers to each other. But its
different considering how they perceive their jobs. For the four key people working in
Spiral Q is a more committed experience.
People working for Spiral Q do not have a certain political ideology, though they doappreciate the origins of political puppetry and they do believe in freedom of speech.
They also are very cautious about selecting political projects.
People working for the Spiral Q are great artists and social activists. They do not botherkeeping their place and clothes clean, but they do care planning and preparing their
projects seriously.
The impact of giant puppetry and pageantry on community-building is very powerful.Neighborhood residents can find common values and perceptions of their community
through art-making; and a pageant can present a common visual language and thus
celebrate the specific identity of this neighborhood (About Spiral Q, 2010).
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Bibliography
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About the staff. Retrieved 2010, July 2, from http://www.spiralq.org/aboutStaff.html
Blumenthal, E. (2005). Puppetry and Puppets. UK: Thames & Hudson.
Brecht, S. (1988). The Bread and Puppet Theatre. London: Methuen.
Bell J. (2000). Shadows: A Modern Puppet History. Detroit, USA: Detroit Institute of Art.
Dugan, E.A. (1990). Emotions in Motion. Montreal, Canada: Galerie Amrad.
Education Initiatives. Retrieved 2010, July 5, Fromhttp://www.spiralq.org/edInitiative.html
Ghosh, S.; Massey, R.; and Banerjee, K. (2006). Indian Puppets: Past, Present and Future.
Abhinav Publications
Justice Works. Retrieved 2010, July 5, From http://www.spiralq.org/justiceWorks.html
Norris Square Parade. Retrieved 2010, July 6, Fromhttp://www.spiralq.org/NorrisSq.html
Living Loft Puppet Museum.Retrieved 2010, July 2, fromhttp://www.spiralq.org/livingLoft.html
Puppetry. (2010). Wikipedia. Retrieved (2010, June 1) from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppetry
Wilde , O. (1892, February 20). Puppets and actors. The Daily Telegraph.
Welcome. Retrieved 2010, July 2, from http://www.spiralq.org/index.html