My Personal Puppet Ministry saga continues! If you missed earlier posts in this series, you can catch up here:
Puppet Grace
Picking a Puppet Pal
Picking a Puppet Pal, Part 2
Once again, audio recordings of today’s post are provided for your listening pleasure (I hope!). The post in written transcript form follows, for those who prefer to read.
Audio post, part 1:
Personal Puppet Ministry
As I’ve explained in previous posts in this series, personal puppet ministry is what I call a solo puppeteer and his/her puppet pal sharing God’s love by chatting back and forth in front of an audience, basically playing the “role” of themselves. It’s a totally different style from puppet plays in which the puppeteers are hidden under a stage where puppets act out a Bible story or a story with a moral lesson. Personal puppet ministry is more interactive with the audience, and more… well, personal.
I’m a novice puppeteer, starting out with two puppet pal candidates. One is a cute little cow. The other is a black crow.
The crow needs major surgery to be converted from a regular stuffed animal to a hand puppet, so I’m going to postpone developing that character until I have time to make it into a functioning puppet.
The cow is ready to use as soon as I give it a name, a voice, and a personality. Those three elements will hopefully work together to make my puppet a truly memorable character.
My puppet pal’s personality
By “personality,” I mean the kind of characteristics it will have. Will it be male or female or gender-neutral? Sweet or feisty? Talkative or shy? Casual or elegant? Impulsive or thoughtful? City or country? That sort of thing.
This puppet’s personality is already partly determined by its obvious identity as a cow. Its black-and-white color pattern marks it as a member of the Holstein breed, like the cows on our dairy farm.
Cattle are animals that are either male or female. My cow has little horns, so you might assume it’s a bull, which is a male, but actually Holstein cattle of both sexes are born with horns. You rarely see an adult dairy cow with horns because it’s standard practice to remove them, for the safety of both the farmer and the other cows in the herd. A little lesson in agriculture there.
Anyway, besides pink horns my cow has very sweet, soft, almost childlike features, which I’m going to translate as a girl cow, in the age range we’d call preteen or teenager if she were human. (That would make her a heifer if you want to get technical, but we’ll just call her a cow for the sake of simplicity.) We’ll say that she hasn’t had her horns removed. That might make an interesting tidbit to talk about in a skit later on.
Cows live on a farm, and so do I, so that settles the city vs. country question. Cows are famous for giving milk, but they only do that after they have their first calf. My pal is too young for that. What else do we know about cows? Cows moo. Cows don’t go to school. Cows eat hay and corn. All those standard cow things can be part of my pal’s persona, her onstage character. As we go along, I might give her a few traits that are not what the audience will expect from a cow. Those departures from normal cow-ness can be used for comic effect or to make a point for a particular message.
Besides having general cow characteristics, my pal needs to be an individual. I’m picturing her as very nice, humble, good-natured, very young and naïve, and enthusiastic, with a gentle sense of humor, sometimes unintentional. Her limited knowledge about religion and church matters can set up discussions that teach a Christian lesson. Her lack of sophistication can lead to some funny moments too.
Do you remember the character of Georgette in the old Mary Tyler Moore Show? Georgette was played by the wonderful actress Georgia Engel, who passed away recently. The character of Georgette was an adult woman, but she had an adorable childlike quality, the same sort of quality I want my cow to have.
I’ll keep Georgette in mind as a kind of role model to help me keep my puppet’s personality and manner clear and consistent. This is important because I plan to perform multiple times for the same audience. If my cow behaves like a sweet country bumpkin one week and a wise-cracking pest the next, everybody will be unnecessarily confused. Continuity helps establish a sense of familiarity with the character, which contributes a lot to relationships between the puppet and her puppeteer and the audience.
On the down side, sticking to a consistent personality for my pal does limit the topics and techniques I can use with her. For example, I enjoy humor that tends toward satire. Not mean or belittling anyone, which has no place in a ministry program, but a bit edgier than my nice little cow would appreciate. That’s one advantage of developing the crow character as a second pal for my personal puppet ministry. Depending on the topic and the message of a particular skit, I might want my pal to be more sassy than sweet. My crow character could fit that bill, so to speak.
For contrast, the crow could be male, older than my little cow, more worldly-wise. He’ll definitely have a good heart, which is absolutely necessary for building the relationships that are so important in personal puppet ministry. But his basic goodness will be dressed up in a less nicie-nice manner. He’ll get in some zingers with a “cawstic” sense of humor. (Yeah, I went there. And I’ve got a million more crow-related puns stored up!)
My puppet pal’s name
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I need to give my cow pal a special, memorable name. Not too long. Not too complicated. Not too difficult for me or the person who introduces us to pronounce.
I want a name that fits her unique identity. In this case, she’s a cow. A cow-related name will give my audience a head start on feeling like they know her, and also will clearly differentiate between my cow pal and my crow pal.
I came up with a slew of cow-related puns and possibilities. The most appealing ones started with the syllable moo.
- Moolah
- Moody
- Mooch/Moochie
- Moonbeam
- Muchacha
“Moolah” has a nice ring to it, but I decided to keep that word in reserve for talking about money. I actually found a lot of other words with moo-sounding syllables that will be comical to use in my conversations with my cow pal. I’ll stash those away for later.
I ruled out “Moody” and “Mooch” because those names suggested personality traits that didn’t fit my cow’s sweet, uncomplicated character. (That’s part of the consistency thing I talked about.)
“Moonbeam” wasn’t so bad, but it put too much emphasis on the moon instead of the moo.
The winning name? Drum roll… “Moochacha”
Muchacha is Spanish slang for a cute young girl. That fits my cow’s character, and I can write it as Moochacha. The cow connection is very clear, and the chacha ending adds a distinctive touch. Since cha-cha is also the name of a dance step, I can play off of that in a skit.
And my puppet pal’s name for me
Speaking of names, how should my puppet pal address me? Just plain “Linda” would be fine if I were a teenager like Moochacha, but I haven’t been one of those in a long, long time. A young girl calling a sixty-something woman by her first name might sound disrespectful and set the wrong example if the kids in the audience are expected to call adults “Mrs. Smith” and “Mr. Jones.” On the other hand, Moochacha is supposed to be my friend, not my daughter or my Sunday school student. “Mrs. Olin” is too formal and authority-figurish for a friend. I think I’ll borrow a Southern custom and have Moochacha call me “Miss Linda.” Using the courtesy title “Miss” along with my first name strikes a better balance. That suits my church audience, too. Our congregation isn’t super-formal.
My puppet pal’s voice
Since talking is a huge part of personal puppet ministry, creating my pal’s vocal personality is a fun and important challenge.
Moochacha’s vocal characteristics have to contrast with my natural voice, so the audience immediately recognizes which one of us is speaking. I have an alto speaking voice and I sing in chest voice. Moochacha can speak and sing in my head voice, which will be higher and a little more nasal than my natural voice. That range should be comfortable for me to sustain throughout a performance without straining my vocal cords.
That crooning sort of falsetto voice will suit Moochacha’s character very well, too. Georgia Engel’s Georgette character will serve as my voice model for Moochacha, as well as her personality model.
A peculiar speech mannerism, such as a regional accent or drawl, can add a distinctive touch to your puppet pal’s voice, as long as you don’t overdo it. Since I chose to have Moochacha call me “Miss Linda,” which is considered a Southern thing, I thought about giving her a Southern accent. I decided against it. It would be distracting to have to keep remembering to use speech patterns that don’t come naturally to me and probably would come off sounding hokey anyway. Besides, a pronounced Southern accent would make it harder for my upstate New York audience to understand what my puppet pal is saying. Getting a message across requires a clear, understandable voice. And after all, conveying a message is the prime objective for my puppet ministry. I don’t want anything to interfere with that.
Another reason for deciding against a Southern accent is that I don’t want to be tied down to a matching backstory. Do you know what a backstory is? That’s the character’s fictional background, like where they came from and what they’ve done, what do they have for family, what do they have for breakfast, whatever. Some of those details will be revealed in your conversations with your pal. Some details only you will know. Even those will help you maintain consistency with your puppet pal’s character. You can add to your pal’s backstory as you go along. My point at the moment is that it’s wise to avoid committing yourself to a major backstory element, like identifying Moochacha as a Southerner, that you might not be willing or able to carry on with in the long term.
A puppet and a plan
Okay, I now have a puppet pal named Moochacha. I have a plan for her voice, and a general idea of her personality. It’s time to write a short scripted conversation, rehearse it, and perform a trial run. As it happens, I’m scheduled to conduct the worship services this weekend at Ouaquaga United Methodist Church and Harpursville United Methodist Church, so Moochacha can make her debut during the children’s message time. Since I’m putting the service together, I know what the theme of the day will be, and I can write a script for Moochacha that supplements the overall takeaway.
Our premiere performance
Here’s an audio clip of Moochacha’s maiden voyage.
Youth Message: Sharing What We Know; Introducing Moochacha
Continue with audio post, part 2:
Puppet performance review
My little puppet pal, Moochacha, received a very warm welcome at both churches. Overall, our scripted chat went more smoothly than I had expected from my practice sessions. I skipped over a phrase or two by mistake, but no big deal.
The trickiest part was remembering to switch voices and head movements according to whose turn it was to speak. It’s just as well Moochacha doesn’t have a movable mouth, or I probably would have been flapping her mouth open and shut half the time I was supposed to be talking. Better coordination will come with experience.
It would have been helpful to make a video recording to study how we looked from the congregation’s point of view. But I neglected to arrange for an assistant to operate the video recording device, to get it zoomed in and aimed properly.
I made the audio recording to post here on Faith Songs using my digital voice recorder, which I can start and stop by myself. That recording also was very useful to critique my vocal performance. For one thing, I realized that my Moochacha voice sounds less like her voice model, Georgia Engel, and more like Miss Piggy, when Piggy is in a pleasant mood, that is. Again, not really a problem.
I went off-script a tiny bit in the second service, which is the recording I posted here. I admit I find it hard to resist ad-libbing, especially when something strikes me funny, and many things strike me funny, especially when the adrenaline is pumping.
Here’s what happened. Our guest vocalist, Tony Villecco, sang his solo before the children’s time. Tony has a beautiful voice. I don’t. So, my rendition of “Jesus Loves Me” at the first service created an opportunity at the second service for Moochacha to ask, very innocently, if “Mr. Tony” could sing the song to her instead. That cracked up the congregation. Unfortunately, it also cracked me up!
Lesson learned: If I’m laughing hysterically while my puppet is supposed to be talking, and the laughing and the talking are both coming out of the same set of vocal cords, something’s gotta give. In this case, Moochacha’s words got garbled. It didn’t matter much, since that part wasn’t on the script anyway, but it was a good wake-up call.
Judging from the comments received since Sunday, the name Moochacha was a good choice for my puppet pal. People immediately picked up on it, and it stuck in their minds. Yay!
All in all, I’ve made lots of progress on my personal puppet ministry. I hope you have, too. Have fun, and God bless!
−Linda
Next article in the series: The Puppet Leaves the Pulpit