I have very little experience with puppets and puppet performances. The video we watched during class was one of my first experiences with them. I was rather surprised with how life like Igor was able to make the puppets. He brought character and personality to each one of the puppets that he had. He made each of the puppets with his hands, and yet each one of them had a different background. Some were more comical, while others were more cuddly and loving, such as the white clown with the young girl. That girl believed that the puppet was real. To be honest I was a bit skeptical in the beginning of the video on how this guy was going to make the puppets seem real, and even though I knew that they were made out of wood, and were being controlled by strings, seeing the people in the video interact with them, really made me look past the wood, and that Igor did an amazing job of bringing the inanimate objects come to life.
Igor used different types of music to bring these puppets to life; some were faster beats, while others were slower, and more serious. Each of the puppets also had a different way of carrying themselves, and even though Igor had control over them, and was responsible for their movement, he also said that they would change how they worked by changing their clothes, or simple washing their jackets.
I think my favorite puppet that Igor had was the two-legged thing with the really long nose. It kind of looked like an anteater maybe…I loved its personality that Igor brought to it. It was a fun puppet, where he would pretend to eat out of the children’s hands, and then would sit in the hands of others. I loved how once it would pretend to eat out of one child’s hand, the rest of the children would hold out their hands to feed it too, even though they didn’t have any food in their hands and they knew the puppet wasn’t real.
The statement that puppets are not just for kids, but they are for adults as well, was very true in this case. The adults that stopped to watch Igor and his puppets had just as much fun as the children did. For some of the people that were regulars for Igor’s performances, they made it into a family outing. For being one of my first experiences with puppets, my eyes were opened to the idea of bringing things to life, and it was just a glimpse into the idea of puppetry.
Igor impacted a lot of individuals of all ages, and after he died, the community came together to remember him. They showed videos of some of his performances, and there were other puppeteers there performing as well. And to top it all off, his “stage” was turned into a memorial for him, and numerous of people were there for the dedication of it. Many people cared, and loved Igor, as well as his puppets.
