'We reside where we are': Local performers use puppeteering for activism

Under sunlight streaming through a leafy canopy of swaying oaks, Pierce Freelon, children’s musician and collaborator with Paperhand Puppet Intervention, walked barefoot onto the dirt floor of the Forest Theatre. 

“Ago,” Freelon shouted to the large crowd gathered on the stone benches before the stage. 

“Ame!” They responded. 

In the Ghanaian call and response, "Ago" means "to pay attention," and "Ame" means "you have my attention."

The crowd erupted in cheers, and Freelon smiled and introduced his mother, Nnenna Freelon, musician and fellow collaborator, to the stage. Four puppeteers, wearing delicate and vibrant cloth wings, followed her on stilts and music exploded from the orchestra pit. 

The show, "Where Our Spirits Reside," began. 

Paperhand Puppet Intervention has put on elaborate and colorful spectacles like this since 1998, when co-founders Donovan Zimmerman and Jan Burger met in Saxapahaw. Every year since, the two begin to collaborate in January to put on their annual puppet pageant, Zimmerman said.

The shows are about connection, Zimmerman said, amongst Paperhand’s artists, between humans and the Earth and between the performers on stage and the community. 

“What do I think art is?” he said. “I mean, I think it’s food and it feeds people and it gives them hope, it gives them opportunities to feel together in the collective, which I think is an important part of the human experience. I think it’s here to reflect life back to us in a way that can deepen the meaning — in a meaningful way — that we’re engaging with life as we’re here.”

This year’s show is a collaboration between Paperhand and mother-son duo Nnenna and Pierce Freelon, both Grammy-nominated artists. 

The show was originally titled, "Objects: Where Our Spirits Reside," but Burger said he wanted to cut out the "objects" to expand the connection people have with their loved ones and their own spirits. 

“We reside where we are,” Burger said. “And we live where we are, if we remember that.”

Burger grew up watching Bread and Puppet Theater — another puppet production company in Vermont — and has been working with puppets for years. 

“I think puppets exist in an in-between world, between living things and inanimate objects,” he said. “They speak to us in a way that plays with our brains and our memories.”

Sophie Joy grew up watching Paperhand shows and has worked with them as an artist and puppeteer for the past five years.  

“When we come together in collaborative art like that, it helps us remember to feel, and to love and breathe and heal ourselves and each other, and out of that richness, remember and germinate the seeds of inspiration that will us into action,” Joy said. 

Jackie Doyle started interning for Paperhand this summer, and she said working on the show has been a life-changing experience. 

“I feel like people either think of puppets as being creepy or for children only,” she said. “But Jan and Donovan really have this focus on making people think that puppets are something beautiful, and also something that can be a form of activism and it's not something that people typically think of when they think of puppetry.”

Zimmerman said Paperhand’s activism centers around a culture of consent, care and creativity — the "three C’s."

“It’s interesting to try to reframe power with — instead of power over — and start to rebuild some of the mechanics of how we look at the world and how these decisions are made,” he said. 

Zimmerman also said Paperhand’s activism is about protecting humanity and the Earth. 

About an hour into the performance, the sun had gone down. Cicadas murmured through the audience’s cries of joy as three figures emerged through the dimmed stage lights, glowing spectacles with gleaming, outstretched palms. 

The puppeteers maneuvered the figures down the stage, and people clapped and danced as the puppets flitted through the audience.

Then, on stage, the lights shut off completely. A translucent fabric was stretched beneath the single, central puppet that had laid rest during the spectacle, and various images were reflected through the fabric — a makeshift film. 

But, as the orchestra’s music graduated from lilting to somber, the images of mountains, trees and a flowing river gradually became corrupted by the forces of pollution. 

“Who has the right?” Nnenna Freelon said, the music growing in volume and intensity. “We give corporations the right, to pollute while people are unfairly represented, under-invested in. Generations of hurt, the river holds the history: the history of harms done.” 

"Where Our Spirits Reside" is showing at the Forest Theatre in Chapel Hill until Sept. 17, and will run from Sept. 22 to 24 at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. Tickets are available at the entrance and on Paperhand’s website. 

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