Department of Theatre and Media Arts

Marionette Expert Instructs and Inspires Theatre Arts Students

by Leah Hill

An old woman clenches her husband’s gravestone with one hand while lovingly patting the ground with the other, her body hunched over and her shoulders heaving up and down. She looks around for the perfect spot and gently places flowers on his burial place. Without words she tells a story of longing and love.

The realistic and emotional scene makes it difficult to notice more than twenty strings attached to her body, connecting to her master manipulator Joseph Cashore.

Cashore creates detailed marionettes and props and performs them, with the help of his wife, in a collection of engaging pieces about everyday life to audiences around the world. As part of the BYU Performing Art Series, where some of the most celebrated artists around the world are brought to perform and interact with students, The Cashore Marionettes performed Life in Motion and Simple Gifts in the Pardoe Theatre recently.

In the performance Cashore gave a short introduction and then allowed the marionettes and props to tell the story through movement, while classical music played in the background. Some of the pieces included a boy flying a kite, a discouraged homeless man searching for food, an elephant exploring, and more.

Before the program, Cashore performed five different scenes from his program to BYU’s puppetry class of 15 students.

“I can’t even tell you how amazing it was to see these lifelike puppets,” said Kelsey Johansen, a junior majoring in theatre arts studies.

She said she wanted to watch how Cashore manipulated the puppets, but they were so captivating and intricate that she couldn’t look away from them.

“It blows your mind, you’re just thinking, how does he do that?”

Johansen also said she was “star struck” to have Cashore take the time to teach her class before performing.

“I was like, wow! This guy who can make a puppet play the guitar is coming to my puppetry class to teach me,” she said. “It’s just kind of surreal.”

Although Cashore was suffering from a case of laryngitis, making it difficult for him to speak, he still took the time to answer questions and explain the building and sculpting process of the marionettes to the class. He also described how he was inspired to create each of the marionettes and their complex controllers. He allowed the students to manipulate some of the puppets and gave them helpful tricks and skills for creating their own marionettes.

Samantha Jarvis, a junior majoring in humanities, said, “It’s rare to be able to go almost one-on-one with someone of that caliber, so just having that experience will always stick with me.”

A simple marionette can have about nine strings and two of Cashore’s puppets from the show have 36 strings. Most of his marionettes average more than 20 strings. Cashore carries the puppets in special cases he made to keep the marionettes from tangling.

Jarvis and other students explained that the uniqueness of the Cashore Marionettes lies in the details of the puppets and props, making the show more personal and entertaining. In one scene a homeless man lifts up his holey shoe and wiggles his toe at the audience. Another scene depicts a man playing a guitar and his guitar speakers start smoking.

Jarvis said the idea of making puppets more believable and emotion evoking can also apply to other forms of communication and art, like her passion for writing.

“It has opened up new things,” she said. “I feel like I can now add more dimensions to my stories and make them more lifelike. Now that I see the type of work and things that go into making a bunch of rags lifelike, I think I can take a bunch of words and make them more lifelike as well.”

Marshal Peck, a pre-animation major, said the experience taught him more about the meaning of life.

“It was more than just a puppet show for me,” he said. “It’s an example of life and of hope and of joy. To be able to see his work and experience it, it opens up your mind to be able to understand the possibilities that can be done.”

Nat Reed, who teaches the puppetry class is a member of the Puppetry Arts Guild of Utah, which hosts the annual Utah Puppetry Festival at the SCERA Theatre. He said the experience taught the students the vast possibilities of puppetry, and the ability to use movement to connect with the audience.

“It doesn’t have to be you, and you don’t have to speak to evoke emotion,” he said. “Just by movement and action, you can evoke emotions that are written on a script.”