Meet Ma Puppet

See her holding up The Sea Wall

By Katherine Joyce

The Sea Wall plays at Bates College’s Blackbox Theatre, in Lewiston, March 7 through 10. Call (207) 786-6161.

In 1999, Ellen Seeling began the long process that will culminate this weekend in a full-scale theatrical production of one of her favorite novels, The Sea Wall, by Marguerite Duras. Seeling set out to find a story that was not only adaptable to stage, but that could also incorporate the use of puppets in the telling. According to Seeling, The Sea Wall is an excellent choice for theatrical adaptation for several reasons, not the least of which was its use of metaphorical images, of which the sea wall is one. She is also excited to have found it a story well suited to the use of puppets because, as she says, for some characters the “puppet could do the role better than a human actor in th[e] role.”

In particular, Seeling felt “Ma” would be best portrayed by a puppet, as she is a woman who has essentially become her anger and anxiety. The puppet can be used to portray this “in the way an archetypal mask might be used,” says Seeling. She designed the puppets herself, and they were roughly built in a course she taught on puppet theater. She then had the opportunity to workshop the show, which provided the information she needed to work out the kinks in the adaptation and in the challenging job of perfecting the puppets.

Although the show has been in the works for a long time, the cast and crew have only rehearsed during the current semester. And the entire cast, says Seeling, has done an amazing job of dealing with their intense roles in this production. “The cast is incredible,” says Seeling, noting that “all of the roles are intense.” She even reports that those who are not operating puppets have had no trouble learning to interact with puppet characters (something you don’t think about much in acting school, unless you were on Sesame Street as a kid). Some characters also had to learn French accents, as Seeling chose to use that as an indication of characters being from the central family. Luckily, Bates’s voice coach, Katelin Vecsey, was on hand to keep the actors from sounding like Brad Pitt in Seven Years in Tibet.

The Sea Wall is one of several novels by Duras, many of which are semi-autobiographical stories about her childhood during the French colonial era in Indochina. Early in the twentieth century, the French government was selling property to its citizens to entice them to colonize Indochina. Unfortunately for many unwitting buyers, the government essentially perpetrated a real estate scam on its own citizens, selling them property that was largely within the floodplains of the Pacific Ocean. The Sea Wall is the story of one such unfortunate family, a clan that bet its entire savings on a new life in the colony. The story examines the struggles of this family as they battle against poverty and despair. It is an intimate tale played out against the backdrop of the devastating personal and political effects of colonialism.

This is no ordinary puppet performance (if such a thing still exists). The puppet who portrays Ma is a full size human figure. One might wonder how such an immense puppet is operated. (I did, anyway, and was surprised at the answer.) An actor dressed in black, head covered in a black hood, is the primary operator of the puppet. She is also the voice of the puppet. A second operator handles the movement of Ma’s left arm, and deals with Ma’s props as necessary. So, for the entirety of the show, Ma has a shadow behind her. The actor who plays this role had to learn the role, learn how to perform the role in a black hood, and learn how to transfer the physical manifestation of the role from her body into the body of an inanimate puppet.

The one exception to this actor’s role as the shadow behind the puppet is a difficult scene in which Ma beats up her daughter. For this the puppet is placed in a sitting position, and the operating actor takes off her hood to reveal a mask that is identical to the face of the puppet. She then proceeds to pummel her daughter. This scene, which sounds powerful when merely described, is no doubt an extremely intense moment in the show. This power is amplified by the creative use of puppetry in this case, as the black-clad actor takes the form of Ma’s soul, implying visually the obvious mental abuse that would surely go along with the physical. It is testament to the use of puppets in theater and the effect they can have on both the story and the audience. It is also a testament to the demanding job of the actor who operates such a puppet, a job which Seeling says must be “twice, maybe three times as hard” as playing a more normal role in a play.

As one might infer from the scene described above, this is not a fluffy show. It deals in sex and violence, and is about a difficult time in the life of this family. It is an engaging and intimate story. Or, in Seeling’s words, it is “a sensuous expose of a political and personal tinderbox.” For that reason, Seeling chose to produce this play in the Blackbox Theatre, a small space on the Bates campus. She felt strongly that the audience needed to be close to feel the intimacy, and to appreciate the puppetry.

Katherine Joyce can be reached at ingliskat@aol.com.