Jeremiah summing up

By JEREMIAH BARTRAM

Animateur for “Celebration” Puppet Power 2022

It’s been my privilege over the past days to see all the shows and participate in all the Intermissions—and I feel changed by the experience, which has been immersive. This always surprising blend of conversations, performances, and some wonderful how-to sessions has been nourishing in ways that I would never have imagined—kudos to Wendy and Erin for creating such a dynamic mixture of experiences, and for so imaginatively exploiting the opportunities of the virtual, which bring us all together, wherever we are.

I can’t in these five minutes do a summary of all the riches of the week, especially the amazing performances, which were often so hauntingly beautiful. But certain phrases stay with me, and always will:

• What are your intangible treasures?

• I sit. I wait. I continue my way.

• Radical listening.

• Your protagonist IS the audience.

• We didn’t know there was a way you SHOULD do it. We Just did it.

• Create our own rituals.

• Celebratory love.

• Who is celebratory art for? Everyone. It’s owned by the people.

• And maybe simplest, yet most potent of all: the community of puppeteers.

So when I reflect on the accumulated call to action which emerges from our time together, which has itself been a celebration—that’s the theme to which I return:

• We celebrate life, love and our art.

• We celebrate our identity—as artists, above all; and as people who may be trans, or male, or female; who may also be Indigenous, Black, White, People of Color.

• We celebrate an art that is rooted in our various human cultures—and also reaches beyond them, to a shared humanity.

• We celebrate our identity as people with ‘intangible treasures’—and that’s each one of us; but also, as artists, we engage in ‘radical listening’ and are able to hear, and tell, both the intimate and the public stories of our time.

• We celebrate as prophets of a renewed societal order, based on justice and peace and environmental stewardship—‘we the people,’ as Sandy Spieler says and shows us in her vast outdoor rituals.

• And we celebrate with hope, love and courage, wherever we are, knowing that art is a gift that always returns a hundredfold to the giver, and increases with the giving.

• THEREFORE, we celebrate in the face of the fears and dark forces of our time, knowing that we belong to a community of artists, of puppeteers, of seekers, of peace makers—

• Confident that our work, however intimate or grand in scale, has the power to change the world.

Jeremiah is an executive consultant and a published author and newspaper editor. He is also an artist, puppeteer and champion of the LGBTQ2S+ and Queer Senior communities.