Sophia Magnanini 0:00
The Oak city move is a podcast on WKNC, 88.1 FM HD, one Raleigh, where we highlight people and organizations creating positive change in the triangle and beyond. Oak city move can be heard on air every other Monday on 88.1 FM HD, one Raleigh, or online at wknc.org/listen. For epsisodes and more go to our blog at blog.wknc.org or follow us on soundcloud at WKNC 88.1
Sophia Magnanini 0:00
88.1 WKNC, Raleigh. The song you just heard was house of mango by surf ninja three. I'm Sophia Magnani, your host, and you're listening to Oak city move today, we're joined by very special guest, Donovan Zimmerman, Executive Director of the paperham puppet project, project that creates art that inspires connection. First off, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to join me. I know that with everything coming up, it must be very busy over there, but why don't you just start by introducing yourself and letting listeners know what the paper hand puppet project is
Donovan Zimmerman 0:31
all about. Okay, yeah, my name is Donovan, and I started paper hand with Jan Berger about 25 or so years ago, and we started out as both artists and activists who wanted to, you know, turn our art into some way of amplifying messages that were important to us and largely centered around social justice and environmental justice and trying to get people to re align themselves with a reverence for the natural world, as opposed to, like, I don't know, reverence for just shopping or money or just other things that were sort of feel like a little bit of a distraction from where we kind of need to start with our our sort of where our spirituality lies as human beings, you know, basically. So we, we wanted to make our art about connecting with that sense of the sacred in the world around us, with animals and rivers and trees and the sky as like, treat them like the living beings that they are, and sort of bring respect, and I guess, just a just a recognition of our integral nature with them and how deeply interconnected we are. And sort of so some themes along the way have always been revolving around keeping the web of life kind of present in our minds, you could say, and also that there's no flourishing, really, without mutuality, and we have to, sort of like, lift each other up, if you Will, and including, including all of the creatures and rivers and things that deserve rights as much as any corporation would deserve them. And so we started, in that vein, we started doing shows that were about, you know, protecting the river in our own backyard, which was the hall River, which is where Yann and I met. And we did a bunch of work with young people and other artists and things for many years, the hall river assembly and the hall river learning celebration. And then we, you know, started doing these big shows every year, starting in 1999 and that's been slowly growing in Chapel Hill is where we do those at the forest theater. And we were also doing them for many years at the Museum of Art in Raleigh, but now we're taking the shows to Asheville, and we have plans to and sometimes we've done them at DPAC, and we're planning to take them to Wilmington as well. So yeah, we not only do those shows, but we do a lot of community events and festivals and a lot of parades and where we bring out the giant puppets and masks and creatures and characters and sort of pass them out to folks, and try to just bring some celeb celebration and some Joy to the community into the world. That's the that's the idea behind it, in the basic,
Sophia Magnanini 3:45
Oh, that's amazing. It does such a good job of conveying, like, the messages that you were speaking about, respecting not just each other and stuff, but the world, nature itself. It also is just very impactful, because you guys take it just a whole nother level with the puppets and just how big they are and detailed and like amazing to look at. And I could see kids, adults, like all ages, just being totally entranced when at these shows, which is really cool, you did kind of go over how it has evolved since your first show. I don't know if you kind of want to go more in depth in that, or what verse made you want to start
Sophia Magnanini 4:29
or, yeah,
Donovan Zimmerman 4:30
I mean, you mentioned the word wonder, which is, I think, a real origin point for us. It's a place where we started from with our own sort of awe and wonder that we find in the natural world. Jan and I both just are very enamored of the just the beautiful manifestations of creation in every direction. And so we were amateur naturalists, and we're, you know, collectors of cool things. Things. And look, you know, we like to study the world a bit, you know, and the natural phenomenon and and then we started wanting to reflect that sense of wonder back and try to inspire others to be tuned in with that. Because if we can start there, then maybe the next step, right after that would be to, like, protect and want to keep these things around. Is the idea is that you, you get people bought in with their heart, and then maybe they'll take it into action as as far as, like, just, not, I don't know, poisoning the rivers, or, I don't know that, you know, just, just trying to be more sustain, sustainable in our behaviors, which I think that there are lots of ways out there, and I think that some times we can tend to choose the easier, sort of more convenient and a little bit more destructive path. And I'm not saying that I'm not guilty of that. Sometimes I just saying that in our work, we're trying to put out this, this idea of our codependency with the environment that we have, that if it gets sick and poisoned, we're also sick and poisoned. You know, it seems like very basic and common sense. But it also gets, doesn't get, you know, followed as a general rule, unfortunately, with the way that we have all gone in this society and world. But, yeah, the evolution has been, you know, we started out, you know, I would say that we started out in a slightly more janky style, is what I would call it. It's like a puppetry term that we use, which, like, things were really kind of just like stapled together, and a little on the on the funky sort of crusty side, is another puppetry term. And our crusty puppets, I love that phase. But I mean, I feel like we've gotten a little bit better at our craft over the years, and we've, you know, really tried to make things light, more lightweight and more comfortable to wear, and also just a little bit more esthetically. I think our esthetic has just changed over the years, and we, I want, I don't want to say we've gotten fancier, but we've definitely upped our game, because I don't think we're too fancy, you know, we still just like, sew together cloth and paper mache stuff and then shake it around and and try to bring life to it, you know. So in a way, it was like was, we're trying to bring life to the to the art that we make by making it animated and come to life with music and all the things is we're just trying to bring life to the to the community that we're in and to the people who get to see the show. It's a common saying now, you know, this is giving me life right now, and it's like what I want our work to be, to be, that something that really sort of is a either a bomb for some of the hurts in the world that we feel, or some little bit of joy or uplift that can, you know, just carry you through. I think art is a powerful, needed tool in that way, and so we've, I think we've come a long way, and it's hard to say you know exactly what that means, and we're more stable than we've ever been as a as an organization, which feels good since we became a nonprofit just a few years ago, people who've been able to have contributed to help us, and we've gotten grants, and it's been a little bit more stable and less, you know, swinging from one gig to the next, and, you know, hoping to not just run out of money and completely, which I got kind of tired of that as an artist, especially with how much I felt like we were valued in the community in general. So I feel like we've come a long way, and we provide jobs for a number of people, and there's a lot of sort of things like that that have happened that I wasn't expecting in the beginning,
Sophia Magnanini 9:15
The themes and different stories that you tell throughout the projects themselves. I feel puppetry is such a great medium to use for that, since shows the depth that you all care about these problems and like telling them, but also telling them in these beautiful ways, it'll really get people's attention and also, not only rising inspiration into being a better person and doing these things to help our environment, but then also this rise of inspiration in the art form as well, where people might be thinking, Oh, well, that's cool, and start doing things kind of similar, or it might rouse
Donovan Zimmerman 9:52
I consider myself to to be a spark like I may not be really great at any one art form, but I do a lot of. Different ones. I love to be in the music and the building and the sculpting and the painting and the storytelling and but I just, I feel like being engaged with the creative process in general, what it would however it manifests in your life, thinking creatively, acting in more creative ways, getting creative about how we create a future that we can all survive in. I just, to me, that is just the antithesis of doing something destructive. You know, it's sort of like there's plenty of destructive things that happen just sort of unconsciously all the time and and they just accept it as normal. And I don't know why it would be considered special or abnormal to be sort of leaning into our creative instincts as human beings. Because, obviously that's there from the beginning of humans. Puppetry has been around since the beginning of humans. You know, from like a cave wall where someone was using the shadow of the fire light to create more drama, dramatic experience for the storytelling that carried on until, you know, finding a tradition of puppetry in every culture around the world and and if I, if I can take a little bit, I take inspiration from that, and I, and I would say that in regards to what you said earlier, that like the best art that I experience when I go see a play or a musical, or I go to an art show, or I see art like in a movie, or hear music, all of the different ways we take in art. It, in some ways, the best of it makes me want to be like a little bit better person. You know what? I mean? It kind of, it's sort of like, wow, people are capable of doing so much, you know, why not we lean in to those, to those impulses toward, you know, all the things that I've been talking about, that's, that's the seems, I just figure, why not, you know, and if I also have this philosophy that if I, if we take up everybody's time With creative endeavors and sort of beautiful parades and and plays and manifestations of of the creative divine. Maybe there won't be any time left over to do all these destructive things. We'll just, we'll just take up all the time.
Sophia Magnanini 12:14
I agree, 100% art itself blossoms and blooms all these ideas of creativity and inspirations. And we are in a time where, like you were saying, there's so much destruction, even just destruction of the mind, like going on your phone and scrolling for a long time, this is like you're saying, like the antithesis, the opposite, where not only are you doing something like yourself creating, but then it creates all these different branches for people also to be inspired and to create, and it just kind of keeps on going, which I really like you were talking about art process. I was kind of curious on idea to the finished performance, what that process kind of looks like for you guys.
Donovan Zimmerman 12:55
Well, it starts out with Jan and I sitting around in cafes drinking too much coffee, and we have our sketchbooks, and we talk about the framework and what we're interested in doing in the coming year. And this usually starts around in December or January, sometime like that. We take a little bit of time off after the show is done running in August and September each year. And I don't just reconnect with our families and our own lives and get back, you know, because it's very life consuming, because it's such a big production with, you know, 30 puppeteers and band members and apprentices coming in from out of town, and the people that we hire is a lot of people. So it's a big production in all the ways. We start out with that, that brainstorming process, and then we keep refining and sketching and talking and thinking about what stories are really alive for us, and what's really motivating us or inspiring us, or what books we've read that are like sparking new thoughts and and then we we start to turn that into a bunch of puppety sometimes it's just also, like, I want to make a puppet that does this, that, like unfolds and becomes another thing. You know, it could start out with that as well. So all of those ideas just get kind of run through the grist mill of our brains as we bounce ideas off of each other. And then we bring in in May. We bring in our apprentices, usually six to eight people come in from different parts of the country. We got people who came in from UK and LA and Texas and Chicago. They were they were in from all over this year. And then we have a team of studio artists. Like, usually four people or so. Like, we have a lead costume. Person, and the person who just knows how to build puppets and paint, and another person who's really good at all the detail work of making things function and engineering stuff and and we bring that team all together, and we lay out the plan, and we start building in May. We build May, June, July. And then we here we are in it's early August and Friday. This Friday would have been opening night, but because of the flood, we moved it off to August 15, so we have a little bit more time. And so we're finishing up everything here at the studio. We're practicing the shadow puppets, which are paper cuts that we make with exacto knives, and we mount them onto little sticks, and we use overhead projectors, and we use other types of lighting to so this year, we're doing all of that onto a giant body that represents the oceans like a giant blue, giant blue body that's actually sitting up here in front of me. I know you can't really share this on the radio, but it's like,
Sophia Magnanini 16:01
oh, wow, that is cool.
Donovan Zimmerman 16:04
Scrim and and we're gonna so we're finishing that up, and then we moved to the forest theater this weekend, and we'll start doing dress rehearsals there. So that's basically how the process goes. But in the meantime, we also we do rehearsals and meet up with the puppeteers and practice and play with the masks and try to make it, you know, refine our our game there. And then we have, we also meet with the musicians, and we we develop the music at the same time. So all the music is written, starting again, also in May, where we give all the ideas that we have to the band, and they start dropping musical sketches into a dropbox folder. And then we just listen to them and decide what goes, where, or what pieces need to be developed. And then they keep developing them. And then we sort of mush together the puppeteers in the band and hope for the best, and we get it all roughed in. And then we refine it as much as we can until opening night. And then, if I'm 100% honest, it even gets a little bit more refined after we get the show open, you know, because we're practicing it, doing it over and over again in the week leading up. But I mean, that's, that's the amount of time that we have to do the show as a full production and work out all the timing tweaks, and so things continue to get tweaked. But I mean, what I've always said is that opening night is always, it's, it's, it's worth the $20 you know, or whatever it is, very, pretty low price admission for how much work is going into it. And, you know, we certainly feel confident that we're arriving with a show that is presentable on opening night every year, like I just it's just true that it does get a little bit more, you know, pollen, I guess, fine tuned, polished, yeah, as the run goes on. But we usually do it for about two months worth of shows on the weekends only. But
Sophia Magnanini 18:25
it's cool to hear about all the different components that go into it, which, like, at first, if you're just thinking about it like surface level, you think, Oh, you need band like artists and stuff, but like the engineers of it all that, like, everyone has their own special abilities, which I think also helps it to be such a amazing what finished presentation project, because it's just highlights that you don't have to be really an expert in this area, or an expert in this area, if you like, want to go in to do these certain things, which is really cool. I was kind of curious on, when you're building the puppets, how long do you guys have a big, big puppet that, like, took a long time to do, or, like,
Donovan Zimmerman 19:09
I mean, it's kind of just depends, because we're not working on, like, one puppet at a time. We've got teams of people working on different ones. And so I jump around and work on different ones. So it's, I mean, if I were to get a commission, I would, you know, and I it was for a giant puppet, depending on the details of it and how much it needed, I would give myself a couple three weeks to just do it. We really only work four days a week with our intern, apprentice brew Studio Artist crew, and it's like the other time we either are, like, thinking about having meetings on what to build and how it's going and what the show is going to be, Jan and I will continue to do that through the process. And then we come in and we do Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, just building. And for. Longest time now we've been doing these community work days on Saturdays where the apprentices and the studio crew all come in and work, but we also invite and open the studio doors to folks coming in and just paper mache and helping us out in any of the different ways that we need. Now, we don't typically like just hand out our painting, like our finalized painting jobs and or sculpting even, but we have found that there are lots of little jobs that people can jump in on, because we make a bunch of new stuff every year. This year we made a giant whale, and we made a bunch of like beavers and a cat and a giant ocean puppet that's illuminated, the whale is eliminated, also a giant sun, moon and hands, and, my God, just so many things. So, like, there's lots of things that people can jump in on on these community work days. And so that actually helps us get done. Get a lot more things done and in one production than we would be able to do on our own, because I don't think we would have, you know, the ability to do that much paper mache and that much time and but also people help us with, you know, tons of sewing projects and things like that. And so we really love that it's a big part of PaperHands mission to just create creative culture, as opposed to just like doing something from our little sequestered artist Castle, really just about getting people's hands in it and making it part of who we are as a larger community.
Sophia Magnanini 21:39
I really enjoy that, and also the creative culture. That phrase in itself, it is like you were saying. It gives so much more opportunity and also more inspiration. I was also interested, besides community, are there any other companies that you're more collaborative with or like in getting maybe some of the materials that you need? Or is it more like out of pocket, like you guys are getting everything you need by yourselves?
Donovan Zimmerman 22:06
Well, we we reach out to collaborate collaborators, but usually not other puppet companies as much. Though, I did have someone from string and shadow. Her name is Emily McHugh, and she came in and worked with us for about three weeks this year. And I also had another person from Asheville named Mika, who was from a company called street creature up there. And he came in and helped me do some lighting. And she came in and helped me build some puppets while Jan was away for a little while, and I just needed some extra hands. So I love providing, you know, some money to people, artists who want to just join in and but also, this year was very collaborative in the writing of the show, like we might have the ideas, but we don't always, you know, do all of the writing. This year, we did a lot less we, we because it's a story or the the overall show's theme is about grandmother wisdom and water sort of water warriors and water wisdom. I guess you could say water is a teacher. And so we reached out to Jackie Shelton Green, who is our Poet Laureate of North Carolina. She's an amazing writer, woman, person, and she wrote a lot of words for us to use, and we reached out to Dawn Landis, who was a singer songwriter, who wrote some music for the shadow piece and wrote the shadow piece. Also Claudia Lopez, who's, you know, from, from Chile. And, you know, she's kind of telling like a migrant story, you know, from, because we wanted to highlight that, just like everything moves like water. You know, stories move, people move. It's just been the way of things since the beginning, and if it, if it doesn't move, then it's not alive. And so it just feels like migration, and a lot of empathy needs to be brought to those conversations, because it's like just blanket statements don't work in for the nuance of all the stories of how people get here. And everyone has, everyone's family has a story of how they got here. I mean, unless you're Native American, which, if they had the same kind of immigration policy that we're trying to implement, then none of us would be here. You know, people like myself, I should say there would be a whole thriving other thing going on. But, I mean, it's just, it's just strange to to so there's things like that. I feel like we need to be questioned and looked at and what, instead of just like, you know, being sort of like, I guess, just like against one party or. Another. It's more like here, here, here's a story that one can relate with, of like a mother saving her children from political and violence and unrest in Chile that came here and raised her children and brought the stories of that place with them. And it just, it just, is very, I feel like important to make it more relatable to those who might be like, wanting to, you know, stop people from coming here it and I just don't, I like to just be advocating for empathy and for widening our view, as opposed to narrowing and being more judgmental or having a lack of understanding of people's light in the world. So we're telling all these different stories. So we reached out to these collaborators and had them work with us on what we're doing this year,
Sophia Magnanini 25:59
especially, yeah, getting the other perspectives, I feel like, is such an important part, and it just helps make the whole thing flourish even more.
Donovan Zimmerman 26:09
Yeah, I am well aware that I'm, you know, just a white, male, cisgendered blah, blah, blah, like, you know. And I, I I don't think that. I certainly don't think I ever have all the answers. I just have a lot of questions, and I want to live into the questions, and I want to create organic, like sort of mutual uplift collaborations and collaborative experiences that people can, I feel like we'll get more out of than just me. You know, wanting to say whatever I'm going to say, I just happen to have, you know, been able to establish the infrastructure for that kind of collaboration to go on,
Sophia Magnanini 26:53
which
Sophia Magnanini 26:55
I is really important, because it's not using not only like your platform, but your identity to help all these other people be heard as well, which I think is really important. I wanted to ask, since we're talking about like, collaboration and community, what's something that you've learned about community and creativity while you've been working through paper hand?
Donovan Zimmerman 27:17
I think I've just learned that people are amazing and wonderful. And there's just a lot of a lot of energy out there for to just get involved again with creative culture when it's happening. And so providing that opportunity or or just at least nurturing a space where it's possible is, is like a real win for my life and my fulfilling my own goals. But like, I've just, you know, I've also learned that I have to be very intentional and careful and and try to be smart. That's not easy for someone like me, but I mean, I do make efforts to try to be smart about the choices that I make and about the who, yeah or and also. But it's not just about choices about how I communicate and how my bigness can sometimes the bigness of my sort of like having a big vision, and, you know, can sometimes make other people feel small in some ways. And I really try to be very mindful of that. So it's made me more mindful of my own self and the thing, the ways that I am in the world, and if I'm really working towards a deeper understanding of inclusion and and and true collaboration and equity, like it's all about, really, for me, it's about decentering myself and making space for other voices to rise up, and I do still want to keep following my dream of and doing a lot of creative, cool stuff. So I'm not going to stop that, but I am going to make sure that I'm paying attention and trying to tell, tell important stories, to to our to our betterment, you know, towards humanity's betterment. And I stay really focused on that and and so that's one of the things I've learned. I learned a lot about myself and how to how to be a better leader and a better person. And one of the ways to be a better leader is to be like water and to just get out of the dang way sometimes, you know, and just let let things go, and let let it, let things be, and then, you know, put some influence on things when it feels important or the right moment to but so there's a. Balance there certainly gotten a little bit better at, you know, it feels a little less chaotic to put together a big production. You know, at some points it was just like, Oh my God. You know, everyone just running around, like, how are we going to pull this off? And and we've done what we've done, and it's, you know, our record speaks for itself. But I mean, now I have a lot more confidence in what we can create, and and more possibilities of what we can create have opened up as I've learned those things.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
