Jottay Puppets Address Some Weighty Questions

Vi’s in hot water. She’s not sleeping with her husband anymore. Her kids think she’s a shadow of her former self and the endless news of war on her Sony sends her into a suburban tizzy.

Vi’s a 13-inch rod puppet--as are most of the forlorn beings in her world. Pulling the strings: New York visual artist, Janie Geiser, who uses puppets to engage audiences about choices between involvement in social issues or passive alienation.

While the former political activists from the ‘60s sit at home and watch “thirtysomething,” now, at least, there are puppets to rail against wars in Central America and the Persian Gulf. It’s a comment on a willingness to delegate anything unpleasant and a lesson in creative enterprise.

Geiser’s seven-member Jottay Theatre ensemble will present two West Coast premieres--”The House,” co-written by Geiser and Neill Bogan, and “The Fish,” based on a short story by Russell Banks-- at MOCA’s Ahmanson Auditorium tonight. Chip Epsten’s score for toy piano and electric guitar will be performed live.

Why use puppets to dramatize the dilemma of choosing between what Geiser calls “helping only oneself” versus “also helping the world”? Wouldn’t flesh-and-blood human beings, in all their violence and greed, be more appropriate for the role?

“There’s something pretty mysterious and mythic about puppets, like pre-classical Greek figures, that remind us about our essential humanity in a way that can sometimes be startling enough to get people thinking,” Geiser replies.

“I suppose the puppets, in transcending class and race differences, get at something eccentric and vulnerable in all of us,” she says, “things that I think powerful people, people with a lot to lose, don’t want to think about.”

Geiser believes that Vi’s decision to jeopardize her cozy home life by spending her entire day educating herself about the worldwide wars and genocide she had once blocked out “may seem surreal but it’s also very telling.”

Vi discovers she has the magic ability to affect the outcome of global conflicts by picturing them correctly in her mind.

In many cases, she forestalls plane crashes and ends conflict in the Persian Gulf. For Geiser’s part, the implications are obvious: “In a world so dangerous, Vi learns that not only does she have a responsibility to be informed, her actions seem to make a difference.”

Does Geiser, 38, see any parallels between Vi and herself, the string-puller?

“It’s always dangerous to make connections between puppets and their creators,” she asserts. “But I do think that artists occupy a privileged role in society, and we should use our position to try and lead ourselves out from our own dark ages.”

As a painter until age 30, Geiser remembers experiencing a “deep and strange reaction” when visiting the Center for Puppetry Arts in her native Atlanta (where most of Jottay Theatre’s members live and work) and seeing Bread and Puppet Theater and puppeteer Bruce D. Schwartz perform.

With no theatrical experience, but a desire to “make work that dealt with political issues and that was live,” she began learning about puppets from scratch, discovering “a Geppetto love of puppet mechanics with rods and strings” she never knew she had.

But Geiser wasn’t content with Punch-and-Judy gimmicks. She began to incorporate much of the gestural body work she saw in the New York dance-based performance art scene and began overlaying live speaking roles (performed by members in her troupe) with the puppets’ silent actions.

These “puppet beings”--who took on the appearance of Kabuki monsters and Paul Klee children--apparently touched a nerve when first seen in New York in 1985, and no less when Geiser dealt head-on with such controversial issues as plague, serial killings and the abuses of leaders who lack compassion.

Last year she received a Bessie Award, the equivalent of an Academy Award in the New York dance and performance art world.

But Geiser bristles at suggestions that it’s the visual component of her work that moves people the most.

“The visuals are just a tool to get the meat,” she says. “Gosh, I would hate to do something just because it looked nice or was pleasing to the eye.

“Even when I was painting, I was making these narrative dioramas, always fascinated by the story of people and the forces that surround them, like in Vi’s case, where she finally encounters what all of us are looking for: a way to give our lives meaning.

“My partners in Jottay Theatre--who usually get little credit because they’re behind the scenes, pulling the strings--and I are attracted to work that moves closer to a more engaged relationship to the world--even if it makes you despair.”