• Puppetry: Cactus Flats
This blog features my creative hand-made Indian Puppets and the Puppet Show that I created called Cactus Flats. This production was made for Laurel Pines Christian Conference and Camp program. The camp is located in the Big Bear Mountains, CA. There they had an Indian theme program, called Indian Village, complete with tepees for the children.
These latex puppets were the work of one year and were ready for their summer program. We trained the puppet team and installed this set across the end of the dining room, so after every meal there was a brief Indian theme puppet show that “set up” the teaching themes for the day. It was a lot of fun and all original work designing and creating the shows for the camp. However, the thin air at 9,000 feet would seriously affect the latex puppets…
So in September we dismantled the whole program and stored it at our offices for the winter. Then each Memorial Day weekend, we would have to return up the mountain and set it up again at the beginning of the camping season. We continued this for several years, until a new Program Director came and he keep the program on the mountain from then on and we were no longer involved in their care. It all belonged to them, but the decay of the program began at that point and it never returned to the glory days. That was hard, but there were a lot of lessons learned doing it. These photos remain along with the memories of summer camp at Indian Village.
The Cactus Flats was a story about a Indian family who went on a long family trip to a place called Cactus Flats. They set up camp there between the Mesa, where the animals live, and a Cave called Spirit Rock. The closest town was Fort Trouble.
Spirit Rock was a burial ground and had black light Christian symbols on the black walls. It was really cool to use the black light in the night shows. The Chief Red Fox, is a Plains Indian, but was not a Christian.
Blue Wolf was a family friend, a brave one, and a kind of mentor the the Chief’s son, He was always teaching the son the Indian ways. Blue Wolf got his name from a blue medallion that his mother gave him as a baby. He proudly wore it around his neck. He was a very good hunter and tracker, and was always on the lookout for strangers and unwanted characters. They lived in a temporary tepee at Cactus Flats, they would come and go in and out of the tent. There was a pet dog, who would run through the show when you leased expected him, kind of interrupting things. The children sometimes would be chasing the dog or vice a versa.
The Animal Mesa was loaded with all kinds of ground animals. Skunks, Prairie Dogs, Rabbits, and a Howling Gray Wolf that would close the evening shows with a howl at the moon. The animals were in sets of two, and would often introduce puns and good humor (kind of a Laugh-In sketch). There were twelve holes in the face of the Mesa, many places for the animals to appear. They would tend to disappear when people were around. Every show had a joke or two thrown in before or after a skit. Kids always liked the animal jokes.
The Chief would depend on Blue Wolf for hunting and scouting expeditions. He would bring in reports of what was going on in the plains. He always reported on his hunting forays and his gathering of food, etc. His reports added to the sequencing of the shows. The camp fire shown here, had black light, red light, and a fan that blew colored acetate. The fire looked very real at night, with the house lights low. Red Fox would sometimes tells stories around the campfire.
Chief Red Fox had a wife, Princess Singing Waters. She was a convert of the Missionaries who worked among the tribe. They gave her a new name when she would always be humming and singing the Christian hymns and tunes they taught her. They had two children, a boy and a girl (boy is not pictured) Chief Red Fox was the one who told of the Tribal ways and all the Indian Lore of the tribe.
What keeps the story line going is the Scoop, the Newspaper Reporter, who is always trying to dig up the story that will make the front page of his paper. So he continues to show up and ask lots of questions and they all take turns being involved in all the props, camp fire, cooking, burial grounds, tepee, striker frame, peace pipe, bow and arrows, hatchet, customs, lore, dances, hunting, stories of the missionaries and the message of the gospel that has affected their ways, but not all of their ways. Scoop is always writing down everything, in hopes it will lead to a really great story that his boss back home will just love.
I really got involved in making everything and discovered in the process that the Indian images I had in my head I got as a young boy about the Plains Indians. So at some point that helped me research the Indian lore from that tribe, as opposed to lots of other tribes.
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