Tribal Handiwork

An unusual puppet show will be staged at the Glendale Library this Saturday. No strings, no operator’s hands hidden behind cute cloth faces, no characters bashing one another over the head. These puppets won’t even look like puppets, but rather like large, elegant sculptures that move.

And the two traditional African tribal stories, “Tug o’ War” and “Talk,” that the puppets play out are quite sophisticated, but not beyond the comprehension of kids as young as 4. Youngsters will also want to participate in the interactive parts of the show.

Recalling kids’ reactions to previous stagings, Gregg Ballora, one of two puppeteers presenting the event, says, “You don’t have to sell them.”

Very quickly, he says, kids who have seen the show at other libraries and schools on the West Coast have gotten into the spirit of the traditional exhortation-and-response interaction of Ashanti tribal people.

John Chambers, the other puppeteer, customarily begins a tale by warming up the audience with “This is a story!” and eliciting the response, “A story it is!”

The first tale on the program Saturday, “Tug o’ War,” is about a tribal chief who tries to settle a dispute between two leaders of the community--a farmer and a warrior.

He tricks them into a tug-of-war, which ends in a stalemate and leaves them with an understanding that they are both important to the community and should stop trying to knock each other out of commission.

The second story, “Talk,” is about a farmer, who, while digging in his field, discovers a yam that talks to him. When his dog appears and condescendingly tells the farmer that it is indeed the yam that’s talking, the farmer gets angry at the dog--for never having spoken to him at all before.

“And, furthermore, I don’t like the tone of your voice, in this situation,” says the farmer.

Kids, predictably, delight in the spectacle of such bizarre bickering, which escalates to the point that a river starts to talk to the human characters and a tribal chief’s throne-like ceremonial chair begins to take issue with what the leader says.

The puppets and scenery used to present these goings-on are based on African designs, such as kente cloth and wooden and metal sculpture from the area, Ballora says. Puppets of this large size, however, are not used in Africa to tell these stories.

The puppeteers have stories of their own, apart from those they deliver on stage.

In addition to these live performances, Ballora works in TV and movies. His puppet work, involving other characters than those in Saturday’s show, may be seen weekday mornings at 8:30 on KCOP on “The Crayon Box.” This fall, his series, “Mr. Potato Head,” begins running on the FOX network. Sometimes Ballora gets inside his puppets to perform, as he did when he played an alien in the recent “X-Files” movie, and, before that, in “Robocop II,” where he was the evil robot.

Chambers, a veteran of 20 years’ puppeteering in the style that kids will see Saturday, has a sort of Clark Kent existence.

Instead of ducking into a phone booth to change his identity, he regularly enters the ultramodern Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where he teaches computer graphics. He is also a leading guru specializing in the mysteries of the Macintosh computer.

BE THERE

“Tug o’ War” and “Talk,” Jim Gamble Puppet Productions show based on African tribal tales, for ages 4 and older, Saturday, 2-3 p.m., Glendale Public Library, 222 East Harvard St. Free. (818) 548-2030.