The Memorable 1980 World Puppetry Festival

                          

Why I attended the impressionable conference held at Georgetown, Univ.,and the Kennedy Center for Perfoming Arts, Washington DC

An Inspirational Experience

The conference was a joint venture of the Union Internationale (UNIMA) and the Puppeteers of America, of which I was a member. Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, helped organize the event.

To promote the festival, Statler and Waldof (his cranky, human, muppets) appeared in a series of Muppet TV advertising spots.  This resulted in 2000 eager attendees and performers from around the world.

Continuous, assorted, puppet show performances were featured at Georgetown University theaters and the Kennedy Center's seven theaters for the performing arts. The eclectic conference gained attention to puppetry, as an art form, to the National Endowment for the Arts, a govt agency.

Thereby, puppeteers could be funded through grants, to perform and teach puppetry classroom skills at colleges throughout the United States. I eagerly attended professional’s touring classes, and soon learned puppetry skills to instruct Kansas City workshops for teachers, to engage students in the creative arts.

Earlier, as a vital member and article submitter in the 1970s for “The Puppeteers of America” organization, I had created my own family Voco Poco Puppets show that toured Kansas City and Topeka. 

Our unique stage show featured ventriloquist puppets that interacted with a hand puppet theatre. Electric piano music embellished the comedic acts, providing sound coherence for multiple puppet vocals.

             

Subsequently, I was desirous to see the creative performances of world-renown entertainers on various stages of Georgetown University and Kennedy Center.

Multiple Georgetown and Kennedy Center theaters ran shows simultaneously for the entrants. Various types of puppets engaged.  (Ventriloquist figures, marionette, shadow, rod, and hand puppets).

The esteemed Kennedy Center featured celebrity film and TV puppeteers

The celebrity, Edgar Bergen, with his witty Charlie McCarthy sidekick, did not perform as Edgar had recently passed in 1978.

 Yet, Buffalo Bob Smith performed with his marionette Howdy Doody, of the 1960s TV show, “It’s Howdy Doody Time”, as did the Jim Henson’s Muppets.

Bill Baird’s marionette presentations were engaging at Kennedy Center, as he is best known for his work in the film “Sound of Music” where Julie Andrews and the children sang for the dancing marionettes. Baird was a protégée of the early 20^th century celebrated puppeteer, Tony Sarg. They designed the Macy’s balloons for the annual Macy’s Christmas parade.

The Smithsonian's Natural Museum of History and Technology's long-term exhibit displayed three celebrity, puppet characters together; Charlie McCarthy (Bergen’s ventriloquist figure), Howdy Doody (Buffalo Bob’s marionette), with Kermit the Frog (Henson’s hand and rod puppet).

Preferably, hand puppets (like the themed Muppets and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood) and ventriloquists’ acts are best suited for film (television shows and movies mediums), rather than performing on large stages with large audiences. These performers obviously had production challenges adapting to a live stage performance with a vast audience.

Sitting in stage left box at the Kennedy Center's concert hall

Viewing actual live Muppets, Baird’s marionettes, Mr. Rogers work, and Buffalo Bob with Howdy Doody, in close proximity overlooking the stage, was joyful, astounding.

As a Kansas City performing artist, I found my self sitting next to, and chatting with the noted Hazel Rollins (Hazel’s marionettes) of Kansas City.

Key take away of our chat was: “be careful how you plan the puppet’s posterity. The worst thing you can do is bequeath them to a museum that will store them on a numbered shelf, stored in a box.” She now has her varied marionettes distributed online for mass market purchase.

But, the greatest experience was meeting several of them personally, and obtaining their autographs.

My greatest surprise was bumping into Jim Henson while I ran up the back stairwell of the Georgetown University’s “Old Main” building. Recognizing him immediately, he offered his autograph on my notepad.

Inspired and motivated, two months later, in August, 1980, I created the nonprofit, Educational Media Therapy Consultants, Inc, aimed to research puppets’ effects on listening sequencing memory, and learning.

Active Listening and AI Part 2

 This article is a continuance of Active listening Part 1, and how it will interface with AI. As the reader, you are interested in how AI will benefit, change, and/or disrupt your own personal world.

In many ways, there will be huge improvements to simply your life, as artificial intelligence WILL streamline many fields of endeavor to eliminate both small and consummate errors.

AI will rule data management, much to the relief of business and industry. Heath Care management will greatly benefit. Case in point: In the following incidence, I would have been grateful for an AI intervention like data management.

Recently, I endured a series of catapulting errors trying to get and prescription order filled. I finally did, but it took nearly a week of vacillating communication issues between the nurse, pharmacist, and me. 

Once an initial set of data was submitted, the pharmacist found another detail gap. 

The order remained in abstract limbo. It took my time and energy to finalize the order.  Humans have to organize information and notice discrepencies.

It had become chaotic mis-management. AI will streamline these routine data entries, and can offer additional competence, but, AI will NOT be able to THINK for the prescribing nurse. or the pharmacist, who is processing a specific order, having detailed instructions. It requires cognitive integration, of which listening is an integral component.

This type of personal hassle, you the reader, can relate to this. Similar incidences become daily nightmares to cope with. Life soon becomes too complicated.

Subsequently and conversely, AI will not manage human thought processes involving logical problem solving or unique innovations. Many life decisions will require your own, awareness and ability to resolve the problem. You wind up regretting having made unwise decisions and bad choices.  

Your life soon becomes chaos.

However, you can seek your own solutions. However, this requires enough memory strength to compare multiple options.

Answer lies in increasing our Critical Thinking Processes

How do we accomplish this achievement?

In review, active listening is the ability to integrate enough info correctly through cognitive integration, to make decisive judgments that benefit us. (see Hierarchy of Thinking model). The first step is to improve your own listening ability and memory levels to increase your self- awareness and monitoring.

Critical Thinking can only be achieved through deep learning rehearsal practice, and not though medications and pills, which might clear brain fog, but do not generate cohesive thought.

Bottom line: Training is a gradual, incremental process, like learning to play the a musical instrument or playing an athletic game.  Expertise does not happen overnight.  But, your gradual road toward excellence may be your feeling of accomplishment and resilient well-being.

Erland, J. K.  (1989c, 1980). The Hierarchy of Thinking Model.  Lawrence, KS. online; Academia.edu (2024). Jan Kuyper Erland.

Your Active Listening Capability vs. AI

Will Artificial Intelligence replace active listening and inter-communication?

This article series, as an early pioneer in cognitive neuroscience, as a lay practioner, can give you, the reader, hopeful communicative insight. We can find much discourse on this topic on social media. 

There are many viewpoints to consider.

My earlier article on “Listening Success” (February 18, 2024), outlined three types of listening; passive, active, and critical. 

That being said, can Artificial Intelligence replace active and critical listening, crucial components of inter-personal communicative skills and interaction?

The answer is a resounding “no.”  Why, so?

Business, educational, medical, and technical positions will always depend upon personal interaction with feelings and intent.

 AI cannot copy this.

There will also be conferencing and working in teams that will require inter-active communication. Subsequently, inter-personal thought patterns will be outside of AI.

Active listening requires cognition. Without it, you are relegated to only visual memory and careers that utilize the visual process.

Example: Lawn businesses and factory line work require only minimal critical- active, listening. It is primarily visual work.

     i.e. I live on a street where every house employs a difference lawn landscaping company, as there are multitudes to choose from.  

The owner often entails the workload personally, as his lawn assistants cannot follow the necessary, mandatory, oral directions. (auditory memory).

To compound the situation, the lawn proprietor also has limited sequential, listening memory.

Out hiking, I noticed a homeowner giving a lawn proprietor detailed instruction. The latter looked overly confused, as he could not follow, or remember, the procedural instructions entailed.

Subsequently, the specifics were accidentally skipped. Later, the disgruntled home owner then hired another company with the same problem.

Unfortunately, the town is saturated with lawn companies. It is an easy business to acquire the necessary equipment, as failed lawn services soon go broke, (after two or three years in the red), and sell their equipment at a loss to another aspiring lawn company.

Perhaps, it would be better to acquire active listening memory ability; even if it requires some effort. For enhanced performance, The Bridge to Achievement program requires deep learning practice like athletic and musical performance.

                

t may be time to lessen time spent on visual video games, and consider listening development.

 

 

Film-work Part 2: Complex Details Unfold

 

                                                            

Research and Development years: 1979-1999

 Initial 1979 research was conducted at the University of Kansas Watson Library, applying my class textbooks noted prominent researchers. It began with B.F. Skinner’s stimulus-response research followed with D. O. Hebb, Canadian Neuroscientist, who wrote on the organization of behavior.

 Those meant hours searching “the dark stacks” using Dewey decimal; cards, and printing textbook findings.

 Popular college instructional topics in the 1980s, expanded into Cognitive Behavioral Modification (CBM) with Donald Meichenbaum, who combined Skinner’s and Albert Bandura’s behavioral analysis work.

 It was an exciting, informative, time for me. I couldn’t read enough about it. The early 1980s created a fresh flavor for neuroscience, at a time when few lay people understood the meaning of the word “cognitive”, or cared about it.

 Scientific writing tutorials were recommended by a Journalism faculty member, who directed me to the well-known Topeka Menninger psychiatric clinic’s prominent editor.

 I soon found myself writing scientific papers, and publishing them in an accelerated learning journal, eager for fresh perspectives. Their editor soon became my mentor, and the research effort sprang from that point.

 Seeking Scientific Advancement

 

I kept going, setting up 12 research sites in the process, training and conducting trial classes with puppetry voices.

Today we have large, well-attended neuroscience conferences; many students major in cognition.

The topic now also floods the internet’s Social Media feeds, nearly half a century later.

The first memory and cognition lessons 1-30, were created on audio tape formats, recorded in detail several times.

Hefty personal-directive, workbook additions, complete with researched and cited, lessons, were added to interface with the listening tapes; 45 minutes of additional written/spoken homework was required.

Unfortunately, the cassette tapes consisted of the warm-up drills only; with few game lessons (which are the centerpiece of the instruction). The complete game lessons were administered by an instructor applying transparencies on an overhead projector in group settings, according to age ranges and abilities.

School implementations were activated on this crude model.

Data streams were compiled as such by 5 different university professors and grad students. Then, the data was submitted to the University of Iowa’s statistical analysis department with the Woodcock Johnson’s (Cognitive Skills Battery) Vice President, who evaluated the entire ongoing process.

The final data process then progressed to the New Jersey automated testing service for the schools’ achievement tests correlations.

This rehearsal model was rapidly becoming non-feasible, outdated, with technological advancement.

Subsequently, initial filming of the Warm-up lessons and a few simple “Games” followed. But the bulk of the program was in limbo, requiring high-definition video and sound.

The recent, arduous, film update was strapped with earlier detailed compilations to formulate, yet in the mirrored procedure as the earlier audio tape formats.

A long incubation followed, until recently, when the seemingly unattainable process was realized this spring in solid teamwork with talented sound engineer, Scott Adam Walker.