Classic kids’ tale gets new life in Babor— puppet show

Date Published: {J}

The age-old children’s tale, The Gingerbread Man, will come to life for the Baboró Festival when puppeteer Miriam Lambert presents her heart-warming show aimed at children from four to eight years.

For the show in Druid, Miriam remains faithful to the story of the freshly baked biscuit who escapes from the oven and outwits all those who try to catch and eat him . . . until he meets a hungry fox!

“I’m using the story but it’s in an unusual way, because it’s visual,” explains Miriam. “Language and dialogue aren’t all that important but the ending is the same.”

Miriam is a one-woman operation and has devised a puppet booth that lets her operate at two levels, allowing her to move her characters around freely.

She doesn’t use scenery or a backdrop so everything is done to black, putting all the focus on her puppets.

If anybody knows how to make and operate these creatures, it’s Miriam. As a member of the famous Lambert puppet family she was a principal puppeteer, deviser and designer with the family’s puppet theatre in Monkstown, Dublin for over 30 years. She also worked on the legendary RTÉ series, Wanderly Wagon which was created by her father Eugene. And she manipulated and voiced the red-headed puppet Bosco during in its early years on RTÉ.

But then she left the country to get away from the busi

ness, she laughs. It wasn’t that Miriam disliked her family or puppetry; she just wanted a break.

She lived in the Netherlands for eight years and even there, she did a bit of puppeteering, being exposed to different styles and learning new techniques.

Eventually Miriam returned totally to theatre, although initially as an administrator, becoming a founder member of the Dublin International Puppet Festival. But performing was in her blood and five years ago she set up her own company.

When creating a show, Miriam begins by using a technique known as ‘storyboarding’, where she makes drawings of how the show will unfold. That’s vital, because she has to work out every move that the puppets will make, including getting them on and off stage.

She makes her puppets to suit either her right or left hand, and knows almost instinctively which hand to select for her creations. “You’d feel that something works or that it doesn’t.”

For instance, there’s a chicken in The Gingerbread Man, which is built around a glove with head, arms and legs that move, and “it’s definitely going on my right hand”.

There’ll also be a goat and, of course, a fox as well as her two signature puppets Pick and Boo, little white gloves with white balls for heads. They are not connected to the actual Gingerbread Man story, but they introduce the show and are integral to her performance. Pick is adventurous and outgoing, Boo is shy and intellectual.

They have their own language, ‘gobbledygook”, making sounds that are happy and sad, while adding to the visuals.

Miriam currently mostly uses hand and glove puppets, although she has ideas for the future which would see her combine gloves with marionettes.

In The Gingerbread Man, Miriam appears herself, as the humanette who bakes the runaway man – her first time ever appearing in one of her shows.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.