INTERVIEW: Art Grueneberger pt. 3

Photo from Wendy Morton's "The Shadow Maker's" website. Behind the scenes of "The Little Dragon"

I noticed that, for the most part, your cast wasn't familar with puppet performance. Were they receptive to the idea of using puppets in this production?

How long did it take them to "work it out?" with the puppets?

The cast was stoked about using puppets since none of them had ever used them before.

The biggest challenge on this project was to take actors and, over a seven week rehearsal process turn them into puppeteers. Seven weeks isn't long enough to make them perfect. Only time and years of experience can do that. However, I've developed a training method that quickly introduces the cast to some basic principals of puppetry. That happens during the first week. After that, it's just making sure they've got the puppets in their hands from the beginning of the rehearsal process until the end. At about 5 weeks in there's a transformation that happens where most of the puppetry begins to really gel up and come to life. The teams (two or three on a puppet) begin to breath together and move intuitively. It's an amazing transformation to watch as a director.