Take any conversation you may have overheard. Take as many puppets as there were people talking. Dress them to indicate the characters, try to imitate the most pronounced gestures and postures of your people ... and let them speak, verbatim, the words that have been spoken.
It is simply funny, a sort of unconscious, undeniable criticism of the manners of men. There will always be a point, too, a sort of moral at the minimum. No one can fail to see it, either in the words or the gestures or the situations. The puppets will find it and bring it out. Produce the puppets and try it!
I frankly confess I shudder to imagine myself done in puppet. What a cure for idiosyncrasies and affectations!
A REHEARSAL OF TINTAGILES
In all the lack-luster of realism we “stood on the bridge at midnight.” Four of us stood on the bridge and we were very weary. It was the bridge of our marionette stage over which we had been bending for hours. From out in front somewhere the director spoke: “Now, once more the third act ... and remember they must lean against the door when it opens as if they were trying desperately to hold it. See that the strings do not catch. Readers, please watch the figures and give them plenty of time.... Ready?” We were, tensely so.
The beautiful, sad voice of Ygraine gave us the mood. “I have been to look at the doors ... there are three of them....” Aglovale (old and tremulous): “I will go seat myself upon the step, my sword upon my knee....”
“Aglovale, lean back farther against the step; don’t perch on the edge.” (This from the front.) Aggie (as we familiarly called him) thereupon proceeded to jerk up and sit down deliberately a couple of times, then followed a twitching, collapsing, stiffening process.... “Sorry, it’s the little hump in his shoulders and the step is so narrow!” wailed a tired unseen operator. During the struggle Belangere flopped inelegantly on the floor, her manipulator resting a weary wrist. Clearing of throats, scraping of chairs from the readers in the wings.
Patient director: “Well, let it go for to-night. You may have to remove the hump. Are we ready?” We were.
The play proceeded. On the miniature stage in dim, high-arched rooms, bare and gloomy, slender, strange little creatures moved with stiff, imposing gestures. It is an ominous world, the atmosphere vibrating with hidden terror, tense emotions and lonely overtones. Princess Ygraine, to the little Tintagiles: “There, you see...? Your big sisters are here ... they are close to you ... we will defend you and no evil can come near.”
Oh, the tenderness, the dauntlessness, the pathos ... high hearts encircled by creeping, inevitable doom.