Puppeteer returns to pull strings
Dave Herzog, a family-oriented puppet entertainer, is returning to Celebration for the second year in a row.
The Chicago-based marionette puppeteer will bring “The Furry Follies” to delight festival goers Saturday at 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. in the Doudna Fine Arts Center’s Recital Hall.
“The Furry Follies is a variety show,” Herzog said. “And every one of the puppets is a different kind of animal from French poodles to talking turtles.”
Herzog, said the show uses 14 marionette acts which include Barbra Strieswan, Mouschelle Kwan, Clara Canarie and Timothy the Turtle as the host.
“We have puppets that roller skate, tight-rope walk, sing and dance and a few things that only puppets can do,” Herzog said.
After Herzog received a sting puppet from his father at the age of 4, he has turned playing with his favorite childhood toy into a profession for 37 years. Herzog has conducted more than 25,000 shows, mostly in and around the Chicago area, covering 30,000 miles while putting on 375 shows annually.
He is a one-man business, booking events, developing performances, setting up the stage and even hand-crafting all his own marionettes.
The puppeteer also has his own theories on puppets. Herzog believes in exaggerating the features of puppets to make them more visible to the audience. He describes it as making three dimensional cartoon characters.
Herzog’s puppets start with an idea or inspiration; it could be a person or an animal doing something amusing, an item based on puppetry tradition or a piece of music. He then takes the idea and starts sketching. The puppeteer creates a working drawing of how the puppet will function, similar to a blue print. From the blue print, he will make the patterns to create the wooden pieces that will be carved and assembled.
The marionette heads start out as play sculptures and Herzog makes a plaster of Paris mold. He pours industrial rubber into the mold to create a hollow head. He then creates animated parts such as the mouth and eyes. It takes about a month to create a puppet from start to finish.
Herzog performs in a cabaret style of puppetry where the performer is in full view of the audience instead of standing on a bridge behind a curtain. This style allows Herzog to interact with the audience off the stage.
Daniel Crews, the Celebration director, said Celebration is a festival with an eclectic mix of all art forms. This includes puppetry.
“We chose him because he makes the puppets himself and the whole art of presenting a puppet show is kind of a lost art show,” Crews said.
Herzog is preserving an art form in another way too. He said marionette variety puppets are one of the great traditions of puppetry.
The new puppeteers that have emerged over the last 30 years were influenced by different form-Jim Hansen’s muppets.
The puppeteer said all the young people today are building in the muppet style, while marionettes are receiving less attention.
“While it is not dying by any means; it is much less prevalent than it used to be, so I am tying to preserve this particular form of puppetry,” Herzog said. “And by doing that and by communicating with other puppeteers, inspires young people and make them familiar with this style of puppetry.”
Collen Kitka can be reached at 581-7942 or crkitka@eiu.edu
