Wilma Cashore came on stage at the Thompson Theater in front of a full audience to place a tiny piece of sheet music upon a three-foot tall music stand. She was about to walk off stage when she turned back and realized that the music was upside-down. Quickly rushing back, she flipped the tiny page over before the tiny violinist came to give his performance.
This whole scene was, of course, scripted and part of the Cashore Marionettes on Feb. 18. However, as Cashore’s husband, Joseph Cashore came onstage to perform his first marionette piece of the night, the normality of the sheet music bit seemed to make sense.
The tiny violinist was no more than a puppet controlled by Cashore with strings, but many audience members like Kelly Fish, a freshman in art design, fell deeply into the illusion. It seemed as if the puppet violin player would actually care if his music was upside-down.
The show was Fish’s first time seeing puppets live and gave her a sense of the art form she’d never had before.
“I had seen puppets in videos,” Fish said. “But the artistry that went in to the Cashore puppets is amazing. I didn’t find these marionettes creepy because I think there’s a difference between how these are made as compared to many other puppets. I think that these things look so alive and they seem so real, so putting them in real situations makes sense.”
In fact, the realistic situations Cashore’s marionettes take part in are what separate his work from other shows. The show he and his wife gave was not a fairy tale, the subject matter many puppet shows use, and there was no overarching storyline that carried through the hour and a half performance.
Instead, Cashore performed short pieces that were about five minutes each, with only music and his actions to express the themes and emotions that the puppeteer sought to share.
This desire to express a wide range of themes and emotions with just music and movement influences every aspect of Cashore’s work, from developing to storyboarding to performing.
“I’m mostly inspired by everyday stuff,” Cashore said. “I keep a little notebook so if I see something that would make a good puppet piece, I could make drawings. It’s like a short story. I’m trying to make every gesture count towards the main theme, so I don’t have many extraneous movements.”
Another defining aspect of Cashore’s work is his personal involvement and visibility during a performance. He doesn’t hide behind a curtain, something he feels suits both himself and the show well.
Although Joseph Cashore built his first marionette when he was 11 years old, he first started performing in college. At the time, the shows he put on were traditional performances, with the puppeteer hidden behind a curtain.
“Every once in a while I would get invited to a party and someone would say, ‘Could you bring one of those marionettes?'” Cashore said. “I would work up an act that I could do with it and this felt so much more satisfying and more normal and more natural than doing it with a traditional marionette show.”
For Sharan Moore, director of Center Stage, it was this aspect that was so special.
“His show demands the audience to put a part of them in the show. It’s more personal,” Moore said.
This involvement on the audience’s part is important to Cashore , who feels it is the audience that makes the show. For Cashore , the involvement of the audience builds on the theme of the show itself, the importance of relationships.