Featured Member: Yvette Edery

Rarely will you meet an artist who is more passionate about her craft than puppeteer Yvette Edery. The recipient of numerous grants, she has literally traveled the world teaching puppet design, building, and wrangling, as well as researching motion studies. Through her independent production company, ArtistrYE, she has enabled film, television, advertising and theatre companies to utilize puppetry in their projects. An adjunct instructor of NYU’s first academic-year course in puppetry at the Tisch School of the Arts, Yvette also created the school’s summer abroad puppetry program in Europe.

Yvette, how would you describe your mission?

To spread light through the world and into the hearts and lives of people young and old, near and far, through the magical art of marionette puppetry, while honoring the cultural and historical roots of the marionette and its puppetry counterparts. I aim to facilitate the use and production of puppetry and universe-creation for other artists, production companies, cultural institutions, and educational organizations. My work is about creating global cultural entertainment, giving back to the community at-large, and producing truly transformative storytelling that reflects respect for the art form, from concept through distribution.

How did you come to puppetry?

My parents bought me a marionette when I was a very small child. My father showed me how to use it, and I started putting on shows for my friends in the neighborhood. I fell into this weightless world of balance and motion, like being underwater; it was a phenomenon I have spent years training around the world to re-achieve as an adult. I actually re-experienced it while training in Germany: perfect balance, total connection to the environment, to space and time, utter weightlessness, without the boundaries of the body. I’ve spent my whole life in pursuit of understanding that moment, pioneering a career in motion studies, traveling the world to apprentice privately with the world’s most famous marionette artists. It has caused me to question everything I know about the nature of the universe and reality, and to dive into the art putting everything else in life second, like falling in love.

You’ll soon be in residence at the World School of Puppetry in Charleville-Mézières, France. What will you be doing there?

I am very fortunate to have been selected to be the only puppeteer worldwide to be given free schooling and research privileges at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette this year, so I will be observing the classes, reading about puppet-specific theatre in the library, absorbing puppet films in the media-tech, and meeting both puppetry educators and diplomats of puppetry. I will be writing a chapter on marionette performance for a book that my teachers Albrecht Roser and Michael Mordo requested of me. My goal is to come away with a better of understanding of what is purely puppet drama, not illustrative storytelling.

Is there a difference between puppetry techniques, styles and/or how puppetry is received in Europe as compared with the U.S.?

In Europe the funding for puppetry far outweighs anything we have here. The audiences are adult audiences, commonly paying expensive ticket prices to go to the opera, art-house films, and street theatre festivals to see avant-garde puppetry. European cultural institutions and organizations give year-round funding to their country’s puppeteers so that they may tour internationally, and their schools give three- and four-year degrees in vocational training, all expenses paid, to their younger puppeteers. It is no wonder that the techniques and styles American puppeteers use all come from the roots of their European counterparts. It is one of the main reasons my company is prepared for international collaborations; when I am not in NYC, I spend most of my time in Europe. Every chance I get to go to Europe is a new adventure and it lifts me to new heights.

Who or what are your biggest influences?

Saburo Teshigawara, Nikki Tilroe, Albrect Roser, Jiri Trnka, Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Lincoln Center, my grandmother, and my first marionette.

What has been your greatest success to date?

Producing my self-portrait marionette. It has humbled me beyond all description and filled me with a self-love I have never known. It has connected me back to my authentic self and reconnected me to a higher power. It has shown me that the parable of Pinocchio is real, that marionettes are alive by virtue of actual witness-able miracles. Her creation was the moment my teacher Albrecht Roser told me that he considered me to be his equal, which is an honor beyond all understanding. And I have yet to perform her in public. I experienced all this just in the process of building her.

How did you find out about Fractured Atlas and what motivated you to become a member?

A friend told me about Fractured Atlas and once I saw what it offered I jumped at the opportunity. There isn’t any other arts service organization that gives so much, so often, so quickly, with such good humor. The only thing these people won’t do for you is clean your workshop. Anything else, they’re pretty much on top of it.

How do you use your Fractured Atlas membership?

Fractured Atlas first gave me a microgrant to study privately with Albrecht Roser for six months in Germany in 2007. The organization provides me with insurance for my film equipment, general liability, and volunteer accidents. I regularly re-educate myself using the resources at Fractured U., and they are also my fiscal sponsors, allowing me to accept donations for ArtistrYE’s non-commercial endeavors, which include performing in hospitals, seniors’ homes, and low-income schools and community centers. Recently, I had a one-on-one fund-raising consultation with Juliana Steele, which opened my eyes to the fund-raising climate in the U.S., who is getting funded and why, and what I need to do in order to remain competitive

What’s next on your professional horizon?

Besides doing Q and A after the screenings of my recently completed film, “Jillian Dillon”, at film festivals around the country, I am now creating a documentary-style instructional video on the making of marionettes, beginning with relevant video footage from my travels to Canada, Spain, Croatia, Italy, the Czech Republic, the UK, Germany, and Ireland. The film will follow me (with step by step instructions) as I make the marionettes for my next short film, “Cubicle”. After the completion of the instructional video, I will shoot “Cubicle”, and enter it into festivals internationally. While in Charleville-Mézières, I plan to finish my contribution to the marionette book, absorb the International Puppetry Festival in Toulon, and continue to develop my theatrical marionette solo show, “A Family Story”.

Learn more about Yvette Edery’s puppetry and productions at her website: ArtistrYE.