The Puppeteer

What's in a face, planetary eyes, the hardness
and gentleness that carved us? 

Dropped into Lambert's Puppet Theatre completely on a whim, something I've been meaning to do for ages. A young 20-something lad opened the door, one of the grandchildren I think. He was good enough to invite me in, and I met Miriam, whom I hadn't seen since her husband Trevor Scott's funeral (Trevor was my  vice principal when I attended Dun Laoghaire Art School). Good to see her again, though she was in the middle of a meeting so couldn't say much more than a friendly hello. 

I was allowed to go upstairs, to the puppet museum, and was taking a few shots of the exhibets when Liam, who runs the place since Eugene and Mai died, came in. 

He was very patient and not only allowed me to photograph him but brought me into the work-room and gave me an impromptu tour, explaining how puppets are made now, out of a kind of plastic wood/resin that is very durable and light, easy to carve and work with generally. Liam has the Lambert features and looks quite like his dad, Eugene, whom I photographed and interviewed in the museum in the early 1990s; the Lamberts have been puppeteers since the 1960s I think, and first became popular in Ireland with the TV series Wanderly Wagon in the early 1970s. 

I know very little about puppets, though I am aware that these walking talking moving statues emerge from an ancient Far East tradition, one which is still very much alive, especially in Europe. 

I love the ritualistic beauty and spookiness of the puppet universe, that frozen woodiness, at once both petrified and colourfully animated, magically come to life but also still as a tapestry, shadowing back into the always receding wings.