Puppeteer With Punch : But He Discovers His Traditional Show Does Not Knock Them Dead in Ventura

“Who’d be plagued with a wife

That could set himself free

With a rope or a knife

Or a good stick, like me.”

--Punch

A dozen onlookers at Ventura Harbor tried to slip away from the show when John Carter’s hook-nosed puppet, Punch, warned in a mock-Italian accent, “This-a may get a little violent.”

The few who stayed to watch the clownish antics saw Carter’s frantic arms and voice animate the 14 colorful puppets of “Professor Sourdough’s Punch and Judy Show.” Some puppets spoke Spanish, others Italian. All had a relentless passion for lashing one another with sticks.

“It doesn’t bother me that people leave,” Carter said after his taxing 20-minute performance, his black clothing and shaggy gray hair drenched with sweat. “I’m not forcing it on anyone. I get a lot of positive response, and some negative. But that’s the sign of a good show.

Violence Won’t Stop

“The most frequent complaint I get is from the mother who complains that they’re hitting people with sticks. Yeah, they hit each other with sticks. . . . and they’re not going to stop.”

For the last three months, Carter, 37, one of the county’s few street performers, has tried to make a living off the traditional puppet show and, to nobody’s surprise, has had a tough time of it. After all, Ventura County’s streets are hardly thronged with strollers, and the county has not been a haven for mimes, jugglers, magicians or other entertainers of the urban outdoors.

“Ventura has a value system that I’m not in sync with,” Carter said. “It’s probably hard for them to relate to someone that looks like me. I don’t have a surfboard on a four-wheel-drive truck.”

The transportation that Carter prefers is his bicycle. He pulls a trailer carrying his portable wooden theater: an 8-foot tall, royal blue booth housing his puppet brigade.

But when he showed up at his premier performance at the Ventura County Fairgrounds in January, he was dealt his first emotional blow. Audience members booed and heckled. Carter packed up and rode away in despair.

“I’ve got the Ventura County blahs,” said the Baltimore native, who has held a number of jobs since dropping out of St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md.

“I can’t make it here as a Punch and Judy man. During my very first show in Ventura, I got that strange reaction. I was depressed over it. I thought, ‘Gosh, people don’t like my show.’ It took all night for me to get over it.”

May Return to San Francisco

Sour still, and feeling blue, Carter is thinking about leaving the area. He moved to Ventura in 1985 when his girlfriend landed a job as a clothing designer for Patagonia, the outdoor-gear maker based in Ventura. Now he thinks of returning to San Francisco, where he felt more appreciated.

From August, 1987, to January, his elegantly costumed Styrofoam-coated puppets frolicked at curbsides and parks in San Francisco, entertaining five “enthusiastic melting-pot” audiences each day, he said.

On sunny weekend days, the puppeteer pocketed $100. On most weekdays he’d walk off with $35 to $40. In the rain he’d be lucky to grab $10. But, he said, he had never been happier.

“In San Francisco, I was hitting my stride,” he said. “It was part of my life. I’d sleep it, dream it. I was psyched. I felt good up there.”

In the brilliant sunshine outside the Port Hueneme Cultural Center, where he occasionally helps build theater sets and props, Carter, dressed in a bright-red Hawaiian shirt and faded, torn jeans, reflected dimly on the prospect of pursuing his puppetry if he stays here.

“Ventura Harbor just doesn’t turn my crank,” he said. “It’s like Heritage U.S.A. or Disneyland. I’m not there to be cutesy. I’m theater with a capital T.”

But Ventura is a lonely town when you’re the only street performer around.

“I can understand why he would want to leave,” said Joe Bertucci, director of the Port Hueneme Cultural Center. “It’s a struggle here.

“I’ve seen his show. It’s fun. It’s spontaneous. It’s interesting. It’s different. It’s unique. But people see him on the street and say, ‘Oh, my God, this guy is 35 and he’s playing with puppets.’ It’s a different kind of mentality here.”

In order not to offend, Carter now cleans up his language and eliminates lewd references when he performs for children. He has been experimenting with offering warnings to his audiences. Lately he has been telling them that violence, the devil and a hangman are part of Punch and Judy action.

Such was the case on an overcast Saturday in March at Ventura Harbor. After Carter offered his cautions, most of his audience slid away trying not to appear rude. One woman who stayed along with her husband, both native Italians, were charmed by the show’s internationalism and good humor.

“I thought it was kind of cute,” said Grace Donato, who lives near the harbor. “It was kind of violent, not exactly geared for children. But it’s nice to take a walk down here and be entertained.”

More Than Entertainment

Mere entertainment has not been the goal of Punch and Judy shows in the three centuries since they were developed.

The show’s roots have been traced back to English fairs and country festivals of the 1600s.

The dialogue is always changing, but the basic plot, which has Punch outwitting the powers-that-be, has survived. The play portrays a battle of the sexes. Punch is attracted to females, but not responsibilities. Judy, his deep-voiced wife, presents Punch with a baby. But he tosses the baby out the window and then kills his wife.

As other puppets enter the plot, the trickster kills each of them as well. A law officer hauls the hump-backed puppet to jail, where he is to be hanged. Punch then outwits the hangman and then the devil to emerge triumphant.

Some critics contend Punch and Judy shows have thrived because they offer viewers the vicarious pleasure of turning the tables on authority. However, they also have provided an outlet for more “topical” satire, said Allan Cook, assistant to the Smithsonian Institution’s curator for puppets.

English political leaders could never effectively ban the wandering performers, despite their barbs, said Cook, who directs his own traveling International Puppet Museum. “If they did, they’d just go to another corner.”

Today, feminist issues and political events are frequently woven into improvised scripts. When Carter sets up at Venice Beach, for instance, Punch blasts the police for their treatment of the large local homeless population.

Justin du Pont, a production designer who is also a contractor at the Port Hueneme Cultural Center, said Carter makes people feel uncomfortable. “But that’s the one purpose of art, to stimulate thoughts issues and ideas.

“I’ve seen a bunch of other Punch and Judy shows,” said Du Pont, a Los Angeles native who grew up watching street shows, and said that Carter’s is the best. “It’s much more authentic, more exciting and definitely more provocative. Not too many people show indifference about his show.”

Eked Out a Living

For the last 12 years Carter has toyed with puppetry while scratching out a living in other ways. He says he has harvested wheat in the Midwest, staked mining claims in Colorado and spent years as a hippie, living in a tepee in the Northwest, where his only daughter was born.

It wasn’t until 1982 that Carter made the break to devote his life to his puppet theater. “I’d always been on the periphery in the art world. I had no confidence in myself until I started doing this,” he said. “I started with children’s theater, with typical fuzzy things . . . the kind I don’t like, but it was a start.”

His interest in Punch and Judy began two years ago during a puppeteers’ convention in Claremont. Carter offers two explanations for choosing the odd profession.

The real story, one he says he does not often tell, happened like this: He was in the midst of describing his aspirations to a fellow entertainer when he heard himself repeating the phrase “kind of like Punch and Judy.” After some creative thinking he decided to adopt the new show and abandon his other puppet endeavors.

But Carter sardonically tells curious people, those who ask why he loves to perform this brutal little play, a more metaphysical story.

“Actually,” Carter begins grimacing. “Mr. Punch is a spiritual entity, of old Punch and Judy men, that didn’t have a body. He found me. I was fertile ground. Now I’m an instrument at their discretion. It’s not me doing it. It’s them.”

If it is, then Carter hopes his puppets will cast him back on the road again.

He dreams of wedding his wandering soul to his love of puppetry. He says his goal is to educate the people of the West, from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, about the history of world puppetry.

But, to travel as an artist, he will need grants or sponsors. Without a stable financial or artistic resume, he said, he doesn’t have much hope.

“You need a track record,” he said. “I don’t have one. I’m so darn rebellious and anti-social. I know I need to be respectful, but I’m in the kind of theater that tweaks the noses of the Establishment.”