Feb 2007

Pulling Strings

Becoming a puppeteer was, it seems, something artist Basil Twist was destined for. As a child, his fascination with this enchanted art form was ignited by his parents — his father, Griff Williams, was a well-known big bandleader who incorporated puppets into his work; his mother was an amateur puppeteer who performed at birthday parties and hospitals. Twist’s love of puppetry developed naturally from there. “Puppets were my toy of choice,” he says when talking about his childhood. “I was a pretty shy kid, and it was a way for me to get attention without having attention on me.”

Once Twist discovered the joy of being able to safely express himself through puppetry, he ingeniously began incorporating it into different areas of his life such as school, where he would use puppets when giving oral reports. This, he says, made him very popular with the teachers, but not so much with the other students. “The kids thought it was kind of weird,” he recalls.

In spite of this early reaction from his peers, Twist remained true to his artistic instincts and continued to explore and study puppetry as a creative outlet. His determination eventually led to him becoming the only American to graduate from the E’cole Suprieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mezieres, France — one of the world’s premiere puppetry training programs.

Twist started out working as a solo puppeteer, doing it all — writing, directing, designing, and performing. “Puppeteers tend to be jacks of all trades,” says Twist, who reveals that he doesn’t get to perform as much anymore now that the size of his productions has grown. His interdisciplinary piece “Dogugaeshi,” for example — which will be remounted at New York’s Japan Society in September — is performed by Twist, three additional puppeteers, and musician Yumiko Tanaka. This hour-long performance, according to Twist, attempts to “re-create the dogugaeshi mechanism of sliding screens that was developed centuries ago as the climactic sequence in Japanese traditional puppet theater.” Twist received a 2005 Bessie Award and the New York Innovative Theater Award for his original presentation of “Dogugaeshi” in 2004.

The fact that Twist has always been — and currently is — on the right path cannot be disputed when one looks at his list of accomplishments. His work has been shown internationally at such notable venues as the Public Theater and Lincoln Center in New York, Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum, and the Houston Grand Opera. His work has been nominated for Drama Desk Awards, and he is the recipient of two (1997 and 1999) UNIMA Citations of Excellence, an OBIE Award (1999), and an American Theatre Wing/Hewes Design Award (2005). Twist was also the underwater puppetry consultant on “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004).

Twist is currently in residence at The MacDowell Colony working on “Behind the Lid” — a new collaborative work to be premiered in New York’s Silver Whale Gallery in May. He will share a video of his work (including an excerpt from “Dogugaeshi”) and will be on hand to answer questions from the audience at February’s MacDowell Downtown presentation.