Suspended in the air dangles a pale face with almost perfect cheekbones and deep red lips – the 25-foot puppet smiles down with a seemingly knowing stare. Even though the object is inanimate, it still has a way of creating the feeling of another human presence in the room.

But there’s no reason to feel creeped out. It’s not an oversized Chuckie doll. It’s an oversized puppet – and it is going to unify the community.

Joining the ranks of established community service work such as feeding the hungry and donating outgrown sweaters to the clothing drive, is puppetry.

It might seem a bit outlandish, but for the class Puppetry and Community (SOL 345), offered through Syracuse University’s Soling Program, puppets are a way to bridge the SU community to the surrounding city.

‘Puppetry is very valuable, especially dealing with the construction of larger puppets,’ said Geoff Navias, professor of the Puppetry and Community class. ‘It’s creating a form of art, and a connection that takes a high level of cooperation, teamwork and leadership.’

The large angelic creation hanging from the ceiling was an original by Navias, who also serves as the director of the Open Hand Theater, a puppet museum and theater in downtown Syracuse.

His course explores the art of storytelling through puppetry. The class requires students to build their own puppets and produce a play alongside local elementary schools and other children’s groups such as the Syracuse Children’s Chorus.

During the Mayfest celebration Tuesday, the class will perform ‘The Color of Invention’ in Hendricks Chapel with fifth-grade students from Van Duyn Elementary. The show will tell the story of early science inventions, following the lives of innovators such as Samuel Hopkins, the man who received the first United States patent and Jean Baptiste Jolly, the man who created dry cleaning.

‘Puppets are a way for a culture to take a mini-version of itself and present it,’ Navias said. ‘They push aspects of culture and humor, which allows people to get away with things that ordinarily can’t be done or said.’

The Soling Program is an interdisciplinary program that includes approximately 100 students. The courses involve semester-long projects that benefit the community.

Other courses in the Soling program include a Folk Arts Festival and Public Display class where students design folk art, and a Hospice and Elderly Legacy Project classes where students create mementos for families of hospice patients. Students even have the option of creating their own projects. A few years ago a team of engineering students proposed and created a knee brace to help physical therapy patients learn how to do their workouts correctly.

‘The program offers solutions to world problems through creativity, collaboration and community,’ said Jim Spencer, the Soling program director

However, no other Soling program involves 20-foot tall dummies. The students in the course work closely with the youth in the Syracuse community in creating the dolls. Earlier this year, they performed with the Syracuse Children’s Chorus in Hendricks Chapel, telling the story of the history of Lake Onondaga through puppets and song.

The strong bond the college students form with the younger students is what drew Seung-Hyun Chun, junior international relations and political science major, to the program.

‘I just love being around kids, and it also feels great to feel engaged with the community and see what they are doing in the elementary schools,’ Hyun said. ‘Most people on the SU campus I would assume don’t know how the local elementary schools in the area run, but it’s critical.’

The class learns to build all sorts of puppets like modern American puppets, which could include anything from Sesame Street Muppets to shadow puppets – cutout figures presented in front of a translucent screen.

The construction itself is time consuming. Hyun said the students spend anywhere between four and 10 hours constructing a single puppet. Although the class syllabus outlines that the class will take 20 hours of outside work time in the semester, Hyun added when everything is taken into account, it seems to run a bit over.

‘We mainly build them using paper-mache, cloth and attached strings,’ he said. ‘The process is simple but also has a lot of complex architectural intricacies.’

Five students are enrolled in this semester’s class, and Navias readily acknowledges the class’ huge time commitment. For a class that is made up of students with majors like biology and international relations, learning how to build a puppet is another type of learning process on its own.

‘Almost everyone’s major is irrelevant to puppet making,’ Hyun said.

While the puppets and the stories told with them are educationally benefiting students, the program also offers them a new way of viewing the world and provides them with older role models.

‘It’s important to get into something that is so far out of the conventional ways of learning, because people all learn differently,’ Navias said. ‘Also, working with the SU students shows (the elementary students) college, which might not be something that they’ve been exposed to before. This opens up conversation about the future in ways that unites parents that didn’t seem possible and invites parents for Mayfest.’

The time and effort that goes into creating the puppets is critical, and Navias believes it forges a bond between the two groups of students.

Navias got involved in puppetry when he found himself highly discouraged with the state the country was headed into during the 1960s.

‘There was a lot of yes, no yelling,’ Navias said. ‘The public dialogue didn’t allow certain types of values, and I was looking for other ways to express myself and be a part of civil conversation.’

As an outlet, he started to create puppet shows for his community.

The performances were accessible, easy and inexpensive to run, and after realizing the children would bring their parents along, it pushed him to see how it applied around the values of life between parents and children.

‘I think that within puppetry a sense of wonderment is invoked,’ Navias said. ‘That is a valuable thing, because it gets people to think outside of the box.’

kaoutram@syr.edu

Published on April 20, 2008 at 12:00 pm