We could all use a little ‘Doll Face Has a Party,’ a new virtual puppet show by Chicago Children’s Theatre
Quarantine has made us do things we never thought we’d do, from finishing long-overdue projects to binge watching new television shows and baking bread — or creating digital puppet shows based on children’s books. That last is what Chicago Children’s Theatre has been up to with the company’s second virtual show for kids, “Doll Face Has a Party!”
The show is based on the 1994 book of the same name by Pam Conrad and illustrated by Brian Selznick, who also directed Chicago Children’s Theatre’s digital production. The book tells the story of a doll who throws a party with objects found around her house, the perfect pandemic story for kids to make do with what they have around them.
“It was this super weird story about a doll who throws herself a party with forks, knives and plates as the guests,” said Selznick, who also illustrated the “Harry Potter” novels and wrote “The Invention of Hugo Cabret.”
Artistic director Jacqueline Russell came up with the idea to produce “Doll Face” as a digital puppet show, following the success of the previous collaboration with Chicago Children’s Theatre’s Will Bishop and Grace Needlman, the designers, builders and performers of “Frederick,” narrated by Michael Shannon.
“It was so early on in the pandemic you know you kind of thought, ‘Oh we’ll all be back at work in a month’ or something,” says Russell. “So we just thought let’s just stay busy. ... But we had a patron who asked us to release the archive of ‘Frederick,’ this feels like a beautiful time to share that show with children. We felt that the archive of that show really didn’t give it justice but we wanted to do something with ‘Frederick’ because of the message.”
The stars aligned for these digital puppet stories because Bishop and Needlman did most of the projects’ heavy lifting as the designers, builders, puppeteers and performers.
“We immediately got a copy of ‘Doll Face Has a Party’ and when I read it, it is very strange,” said Russell. “And then I thought, but isn’t that what so many children are like right now. I keep thinking about only children that are having to entertain themselves and what a great story for using your imagination to transform your surroundings. And that is so much of what we do as theatermakers. And it just seemed like this was so right for this time and to give children something to smile about and to keep playing at home with their own parties.”
Bishop, director of productions at Chicago Children’s Theatre, has a background in theater and puppetry, with previous work at Redmoon Theater, which closed its doors in 2015. Needlman met Bishop at Redmoon and comes from a visual art background and is the manager of youth and family programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
“Through the shutdown,” says Needlman, “I have found a lot of solace in the collaboration (of theater) that has been able to continue even though we’re so separate. I have never met Brian in person, but we have this collaboration now and we’re able to do that because the world has opened up in this weird virtual way. ... I am an only child and I think there was a part of this story and a part of why I came to puppetry is also that sense of playing and imagining worlds alone.
Directing over Zoom sounds a bit daunting, but Selznick says the process felt pretty natural, despite this being the first time he has directed. The team said directing through Zoom requires multiple cameras, and building a television studio at home. Bishop says they had over five different devices on Zoom including two phones, one iPad and two computers, all pointing to different angles.
Selznick said he never thought “Doll Face,” a book he illustrated more than 20 years ago, would be adapted as a digital puppet show during a global pandemic.
”In a way,” Selznick says, “anything can be adapted into a new medium if there’s a reason for it and if you find the thing about the new medium that helps tell the story in a new way. ... The idea that it could be adapted made sense and especially because the story is ultimately about objects. Like the story is about having a party with the things in your house. ... But then within the story, the characters themselves are the things we have around our houses.”
”Doll Face” was Needlman and Bishop’s fourth digital theater piece created through Zoom. “It starts to feel less like theater and a lot more like making a movie through random things you have around your house,” says Bishop.
All of the materials used in “Doll Face” were found from around Bishop and Needlman’s apartment. They had access to their wood shop for materials, but limited the number of times they went due to it being a communal building. The only thing purchased doll hair and velvet fabric.
They begin their multidisciplinary process by story-boarding along with thumbnail sketches and breaking up the text into frames, based on what they think are scenes.
“It doesn’t exactly match each picture in the book, but that was kind of where we started, was how could we translate each illustration into a scene and what text goes with it and what other pieces of the text that are missing,” says Needlman.
Once everything was built, Needlaman and Bishop had rehearsals with Selznick and Russell. At the end of the show and in the “making of” portion, viewers can see Needlman and Bishop’s whole apartment was the set. They said they moved their furniture around to make space for the set and lived on top of that for several weeks.
Then, Selznick would give notes based on recorded performances. He says that during the process, the outside world, including the George Floyd protests, kept coming in this world about making the best of what you have with your surroundings.
“Things were happening so quickly and what was happening was so big and we all kept touching base to see if we were all OK,” says Selznick. “And acknowledging that escaping from things can actually be helpful and valid. But all of the events happening in the world kept happening in our conversations. ... I found it helpful to have ‘Doll Face’ to turn to between protesting and having a party to help throw for a little pink doll was helpful for me.”
“Doll Face” is narrated by James Lecesne, founder of the Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on preventing suicide in the LGBTQ community, after Russell suggested amplifying the work of the Trevor Project. For Bishop, that helped unlock meaningful takeaways from “Doll Face.”
“This is a show about queerness,” says Bishop. “It’s for all children but especially for children like me who were growing up and feeling like they were different than everyone else and finding that place in the world and finding that moment of connected with a super gendered queer doll character and its like how do you piece that out. And realizing that this is what’s going on here in that entire piece, completely, unlocked it for me in a lot of ways and helped it feel like this was the work I needed to be doing right.”
The team says they hope the kids watching the show know that they are missed and haven’t been forgotten.
“We want kids to know that we haven’t forgotten about them and we don’t want them to forget about us, says Russell. “So to me this was very important to say we’re here and we’re thinking about you and we see you and that art and imagination that every child can participate in and can be a creator. That’s really what this is about for me and for Chicago Children’s Theatre.”
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