PLAY episode

Woman: Look at him!

[Shakers rattling] ♪ Dana: Play is the giant building block of everything.

Lorena: Piñatas are a beautiful piece of art.

That's how we see it.

We're making a new concept-- a spinning piñata.

Patricia: Whoo!

Catherine: Piñatas are ephemeral.

You're supposed to destroy them, but not Roberto's piñatas.

These are works of sculpture.

Calder: Play is another word for experimenting, and what I'm trying to do is to make sculpture completely out of garbage, to transform these materials into beautiful objects.

Schroeder: I stopped playing with puppets in high school, and then in college, I realized I really enjoyed playing with puppets.

"All right, all right, all right.

I'm Smooth Earl."

[Laughter] Schroeder: The kids are laughing at him because many of them have never seen a Black puppet.

[Coyote howls] Nina: Noah's Ark at the Skirball tells the story of animals and people who survive a stormy time by working together.

Child: Hey, little foxy.

Sheri: We wanted to create something that would ignite children's imagination.

Child: Ha ha ha!

Ha ha!

Schroeder: [Slurps] "Ahh.

Yes.

Play is very important."

♪ ♪ Calder: Every summer, the entire city of Breckenridge is activated with art during the Breckenridge International Arts Festival... [Dog barking] and I was invited by Breck Create to be their artist-in-residence this summer.

♪ They asked me to make a piece for one of their trails.

Multiple trails throughout the city will have art pieces and art installations.

♪ A previous artist for the International Arts Festival made a troll, and I thought, "If there's a troll, then there must be other mythical beasts in Breckenridge," so, therefore, the unicorn.

This is gonna be my first animal public art project, and I'm trying to stick to what I believe my studio practice should be, that is, to make a public art sculpture completely out of garbage.

♪ Trash is a totally human, manmade cultural problem.

It doesn't exist in nature... ♪ but I can transform these materials into beautiful objects.

♪ Nature never wastes.

That's why I reuse.

That's my mission.

Woman: Got some plastic for me?

Man: How are you?

I do.

Woman: Awesome.

Dump it out.

Man: See what we got here.

Woman: Thank you.

Man: Can you take any of this?

Woman: Perfect.

Tamara: What really attracted us to Calder and her work was that it was an opportunity for our community to kind of bring something that's important to them, that being recycling and to think of creative ways to use their plastics for art.

Calder: So the City of Breckenridge told me they have a trash problem.

It's these sleds.

They shatter after use.

The big challenge, of course, making outdoor art is making it waterproof... [Saw whirring] but what I'm most concerned about is preparing it for people.

She is big enough to mount, so I'm trying to use the sleds that Breckenridge provided me to give my unicorn butterfly wings.

Every morning since I've been in Breckenridge, Pixel and I wake up, and we try to find a new trail to hit.

All the art residencies that I have had, she's gone with me.

Sometimes you need a little emotional support when you've got a deadline.

Ha ha ha!

Being a creative child in Texas, that was my identity.

I would make my little clay animals.

I'd have this little tackle box.

I'd take it with me everywhere.

We'd go to a restaurant, I'd ask the waiter, "What's your favorite animal?"

and then by the end of the dinner leave the little animal with the tip.

♪ I went to the Kansas City Art Institute, and the ceramics studio was great.

♪ I started making hybrid or mythological creatures in my work... ♪ but at some point, clay started to feel arbitrary.

"Why am I sticking to this one medium?"

It was then that I started picking up other materials.

First was birth control packets because estrogen was now in the water stream impacting amphibians, so I cut little frogs out of these birth control packets.

Maria: Calder was part of a interesting generation of students who was doing really conceptual work that was activist and said something about the world outside of the materials.

Calder: So the guts of my unicorn are made out of plastic that's been collected from the community, so her girth is a bunch of to-go boxes, and her nose is Coke bottles, and then the county newspaper had a whole day's worth of misprints and gave me 400 pounds of newspaper.

Maria: Wow.

Calder: I only used about 100.

♪ It's a messy, very lengthy process to get the papier-mâché body of my unicorn.

♪ Maria: By making art out of trash, she's drawing our attention to how unsustainable not just art practices oftentimes are, but our lives and our communities oftentimes are.

Calder: It was a coat of two layers of cement, then laid down my beads and then the grout.

One of my favorite parts, though, is that the hooves are made out of coffee cans.

♪ One of my favorite materials right now are marker caps.

It's basically just slicing in and then rounding off.

There's a little flower.

I love cupcake tops, love promotional cups, kids toys, Easter egg shells.

They make good flowers, too.

It's funny now how much my brain has changed since making things out of trash.

I'm always thinking, "How do I play with it to make it into a flower?"

♪ These are my animals.

This one's "Dog Violet," "Snake Plant," "Valerian Vixen."

The ears are marker caps, and then these are bottle caps.

This is an Easter egg shell.

These are golf tees, and then the fur is made out of the sleds from Breckenridge.

♪ Drea: Not only is she creating alternative uses for our waste, Calder Kamin has been engaging all members of our community, but specifically the youth in our community, to create art pieces that will be part of her installation for Breckenridge International Festival of the Arts.

♪ Calder: What we're gonna do is, we're gonna take a strip, and we're gonna dip it in the glue, and then I'm gonna lay it on the mushroom and then smooth it down with my hands.

I'm a huge fan of mushrooms because they're nature's best recyclers, and I thought it'd be really lovely to have papier-mâché mushrooms along the trail.

OK, so stick it on.

Perfect.

The kids make mushrooms, and they leave them with me to complete.

I apply what's called cement board.

This is what the cement is adhering to.

I then apply two layers of cement.

Once that has cured, I can start applying my beads.

♪ My last residency was in New Orleans, and while I'm walking the French Quarter, I see Mardi Gras beads dangling from balconies that have probably been there for over a decade... ♪ but that's how I figured out that the Mardi Gras beads would be a good plastic for the outdoors.

♪ Oddly enough, when we were locating the site for the unicorn, I look up, and there's a tree covered in Mardi Gras beads, and I thought, "This is the spot."

♪ Uh...ooh.

♪ I had no idea that Mardi Gras beads would be relevant to Breckenridge, nor that I'd find them in the forest.

I had no idea that her butterfly wings would be made out of the sleds... [Drill whirring] Oh.

Nugget!

so she's got a lot of materials and elements that are all a part of Breckenridge.

♪ Man: It's right there.

♪ Little wiggle.

Oh, there she goes.

Different man: That feels good.

Calder: Wow.

Man: Hey, hey!

Calder: She's made it.

The Eagle has landed.

♪ She's a really big surprise in the forest.

People come off the trail just drawn to her.

♪ The title is "Once Upon a Time in the Future," and my hope is, in the future, we've eliminated waste culture, so she's the mascot for that.

♪ ♪ Child: Waah!

Hang on.

People: Whoo!

♪ Lorena: Breaking the piñata, it's contagious.

You just want to be part of it, and it's not just with children, but adults.

We see that.

We see that it brings that euphoric moment, yeah, gives you life, actually gives you life.

♪ At Amazing Pinatas, we are making unique piñatas.

♪ They are a beautiful piece of art.

That's how we see it.

It can be a flower, an animal, geometric shape, and we can use them for different occasions-- for weddings, graduations, birthdays, even for celebration of life.

Patricia: Es preferible medir dos veces y cortar una sola.

Lorena: Exactamente.

Patricia: Yo creo que este sería el largo de las colas.

Lorena: Sí, ajá.

It's fun working with paper, but it's so overwhelming sometimes with so many types and colors.

Yeah it-- ♪ We have done so many things here.

We work with the movie industry.

We do a lot of custom orders, like huge star piñatas for commercials.

♪ Patricia: Oh, that looks nice.

The star piñatas are really difficult to make, so you need a lot of practice and have patience more than anything, so when you have experience like Francisco does, it's easier for him because he's been doing it for so many years.

Francisco: En México, desde niño, mi mamá tenía negocios.

Vendía mariscos y vendía piñatas.

Y se dedicaba a su profesión, y yo aprendí con ella.

O sea, es tradición mexicana.

♪ Catherine: The origin of the piñata probably was in China.

♪ Clay oxen with seeds in them were broken.

This tradition found its way into Italy via travelers, and this is where the term "piñata" comes from.

In Italian, "pigna" means pinecone, but it's also the name for a ceramic jug, and there was a practice of breaking these jugs filled with treasures inside.

Lorena: Beautiful.

Catherine: From Italy, it went to Spain.

♪ It came to the New World from there.

♪ In Mexico, the Spaniards brought the desire to indoctrinate the local population with Christianity.

The star piñata was seen to have these seven protrusions said to represent the seven deadly sins.

The person would hit them, and this was vanquishing evil.

♪ Lorena: This is what is called the Piñata District.

¿Y estas qué precio tienen?

A lot of the businesses in the area are owned by immigrant, hardworking people.

I am from Nicaragua.

I had a happy childhood... and then I came to this country to get some education.

I worked as a social worker, and I saw immigrant women making piñatas.

They were earning at that time $2.50 for each one.

They will have to make about 300 a month for the families to survive.

♪ I have no idea that I was gonna enter in the piñata business, but I was thinking, "We need to pay the piñateros livable wages."

It will benefit them, benefit us, benefit our community.

♪ Francisco: Es buena jefa.

Como te sientes como en familia aquí.

Como que queremos crecer juntos, ¿sabes?

Que crece aquí, crece uno como persona o económicamente también.

Lorena: Mm-hmm.

Ah ya.

Ahora le vamos a poner las flores.

Lorena: Le ponemos acá.

We're making a new concept-- a spinning piñata.

♪ Ahora démosle la vuelta.

Vamos a ponerle las colas.

♪ Patricia: Aquí se da todo por la piñata.

Todo, ¿ah?

Patricia: She has an amazing imagination.

She has all these ideas, and it's beautiful to see most of her ideas become into reality.

♪ Lorena: You put the candies, and you put confetti, but the best part about this spinning piñata is that it's nonviolent.

It's nonaggressive because you don't break it.

You can use it over and over.

We're gonna hang that here.

Francisco: ¿En el macate?

Lorena: OK. Corta.

I try to be example to other immigrants because we all have opportunities in this land.

Mine was with piñatas.

♪ Patricia: Whoo!

Francisco: Yeah!

Lorena: Ha ha ha!

Ha ha!

Patricia: Whoo!

♪ Roberto: I would love for people to think beyond the piñata as just being a game.

♪ It's a medium that can be as complex and rich as the maker wants it to be... ♪ and, for me, just being open to the impossible allows you to pursue things you normally wouldn't.

Catherine: Love the installation.

Roberto: Thank you.

Catherine: You happy with it?

Roberto: Yeah.

I'm very happy with it.

Catherine: Piñatas are ephemeral.

You're supposed to destroy them, but not Roberto's piñatas.

These are works of sculpture created in paper.

My favorite element-- the little, raised bits of his foot.

Roberto: Oh, sure.

Catherine: You can feel him climbing.

Roberto: Right.

Yeah.

It gives it kind of a gesture and movement.

Catherine: Yeah.

Phoebe: Roberto's work is in a medium that we all recognize and understand and can relate to, even though he's doing it completely in his own way with this incredibly high level of craftsmanship and artistry.

♪ Roberto: The weasel is from a medieval manuscript.

Pairing it with this Bosch figure, I really like the interplay between the two.

It's very playful.

Catherine: He has used Hieronymus Bosch's 16th-century painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights" over and over again as source material for his piñatas.

♪ Roberto: It's believed to be religious in nature, and it's about the progression of man from innocent to sin.

♪ Catherine: And it's populated with this phantasmagoria of these crazy, fantastic beings, invented things, and so he takes those images and brings them to life.

♪ Roberto: These are prints from "The Garden of Earthly Delights."

I usually just print off the image of the creature that I want to make, and this is a bear from the current exhibition.

This is a Bosch three-headed bird that I will eventually make.

I went down this path of creatures and people from the Bosch painting, but because of this religious underlying theme of the painting and the religious nature of the history of the piñata, it was fun for me to tie those two together.

This figure is holding a red berry up to this bird.

♪ I turned the berry into a star piñata, and that star piñata is piercing the hands and the feet, where Jesus was nailed to the cross.

The name came, "Stigmata Piñata," and once that came into my head, I just couldn't leave it alone, so it had to come to fruition.

Catherine: It's unusual to find a really new creative expression, and Roberto has that.

♪ Roberto: I grew up in rural South Texas on a ranch, a very big family, and we were very poor.

My dad identifies as Mexican.

My mom is Anglo.

I am highly aware of my being biracial.

I think I have always wanted to be an artist, but I was afraid that I didn't have what it took or didn't have that talent, but I started playing with FIMO, which is a polymer clay that you bake in your oven, and I started making these mushroom figurines.

When I moved out to California, I started taking night classes at Pasadena City College, so I pursued a body of work in bronze, but I realized just how expensive that medium could be, and that's when I stumbled upon the piñata.

So this is piñata number one.

I made it for my husband's 40th birthday.

It was my first attempt at a piñata.

It really forced me to jump headlong into this medium, and I'm so glad because I haven't stopped since.

♪ I am drawn to a medieval manuscript called the "Luttrell Psalter."

Catherine: Illuminated manuscripts are handmade books from about 1100 to 1600 decorated often with kooky, again, fantastic beasts.

♪ Roberto: With this particular one, the body is a piñata, what you'd see at a party, but the head is a medieval monster, and the scarf was part of that creature.

♪ To me, it was absurd and ridiculous to have a scarf on a piñata.

Catherine: And, of course, you're gonna have people wanting to pet him.

Roberto: Oh, yeah, for sure.

Medieval manuscript creatures that I combine with piñata motifs, it was kind of an allusion to my mixed-race background, so a lot of my work kind of references myself.

♪ So many.

Monte: Yeah.

Roberto: Growing up, I never imagined that I would be out or that I would be married to somebody that I love.

OK. Ha ha ha!

Monte: I'm so proud of him for finding his inspiration and sticking to it.

Roberto: I don't know.

I still think it's better without it.

Monte: I'm sure it is, but...

I love living with the pieces, too.

I love living with the creatures in the home.

Sometimes if they're not on exhibit or they haven't been purchased, they're here with us for a while.

Roberto: You know, we live in a default-heterosexual world, so one of the interesting things about my birds is, I say all of them are gay, so I started a series of depictions of same-sex couplings of birds.

[Blows] I use what I knew as a kid to be the piñata technique, so the first stage is taking balloons as your base and covering that with papier-mâché.

♪ From there, I build out those papier-mâché balloon forms using paperboard.

♪ I'm making a gynandromorph cardinal, which means it is genetically both male and female.

♪ The way that gynandromorphs display that mutation is, one side is male and the other side is female, and if the male and female plumage looks different, then it is split down the middle.

♪ When I first started making piñatas, I realized how translucent the crepe paper was and how you can really shift color around, so I really wanted to play with the aspect of what I call painting with paper.

♪ One thing about birds, their feathers are quite iridescent, so I try to capture that quality by layering the metallic papers underneath just so there's a slight glint.

♪ Phoebe: All of Roberto's work is interrelated.

♪ Even if it's coming from these disparate sources, they all kind of come back to him.

They all come back to us.

They all are in the same garden.

It's just magic.

♪ ♪ Schroeder: My career is a triumvirate.

I've been an artist, a puppeteer, and a museum educator, and those things have been the three focuses of what I've been involved with throughout my life.

♪ My mom gave me puppets when I was a kid.

I played with marionettes.

I still have a marionette from third grade, so I played with string puppets from early on, and then I moved to hand puppets.

I stopped playing with puppets in high school, and then in college, I realized I really enjoyed playing with puppets.

"All right, all right, all right.

"I'm Smooth Earl, and I'm one of the puppets "in "Schroeder Cherry and his Puppets."

"We're a family, you know?

We're like a family.

Yeah.

"We got a lot.

"We got Ms. Lily, Dallas Dan, Africa Brown.

"You want me to keep going?

Because there's a bunch of us.

There's a whole bunch."

♪ This type of puppet is called a rod puppet, and the body itself is made pretty much like a doll, but the hands and the head are sculpted out of a wood.

The rod, I hold it from the bottom, but it goes through the body, through the chest, up into the neck, and it supports the head.

On the inside, there's a spring in the mouth, so when I pull a string which comes down here, I have one finger on the mouth, and my thumb is controlling the eyes, so when I move my thumb like this, the eyes open and close, and for the hands, one rod to each hand, so when I'm performing, I'm performing with one hand or two hands and then that kind of movement, so the hands are operated with the rods.

"I am Maya Opinion, and my thought for today is, it's a lovely day."

[Slurps] "Ahh, that's my opinion for the day."

♪ Growing up in Washington, D.C., I did have a pretty big playground.

I used to wander through the Smithsonian Institution.

You don't have to pay to go into a Smithsonian, so I could just go in through the doors... ♪ and it has had an impact on my life.

♪ Now I'm the curator for the James E. Lewis Museum of Art, also known as JELMA.

♪ So in this gallery, you've got works by Ernest Shaw, well-known Baltimore artist who's known for portraiture.

JELMA is on Morgan State University's campus, and we have a collection of African, Asian, European, and American art.

You can see his face, but if you look at the line drawing, that's an older version of this kid, so that's something that he's using in his work.

I was trained as a painter on canvas.

Later, I got my doctoral degree and focused on museum education.

♪ Museums do a really good job in helping people to understand the world, whether it's science or history.

Art museums let us know what artists are dealing with in the past or present and what they imagine might happen in the future, so it's all about imagination.

♪ "I'm Ms. Lily, and I am the puppet docent of the troupe, "so I give tours to adults, mainly in museums and galleries.

"Most recently, we were at the National Museum "of African American History and Culture, "and I had the opportunity to identify six objects "that the museum had recently acquired, "including a shawl of Harriet Tubman "that was given to her by Queen Victoria "and Nat Turner's Bible.

That was quite exciting."

Lily was delivering this tour, and I noticed that a couple of people were kind of unnerved when they realized that the voice they were listening to was a puppet.

I heard a couple of gasps like, "Oh, my God!"

Ha ha ha!

[Drill whirring] I'm a painter, but over time, I've become an assemblagist.

I do a sketch, and then I start adding objects to the piece.

[Router whirring] I'm using wood like a canvas.

I sew into wood.

I'm attaching things.

♪ Because my works tend to be narrative, whenever I add an object, the object lends to that storyline.

♪ ♪ The cards have become a part of the material that I use in the work with the assemblages, and they become to mean, "What do you do in life with the cards that you're dealt?"

♪ "When you talk about Dr. Cherry's assemblage, "I would talk about the different series "that he's worked on.

"I think he has 68 paintings in the "BarberShop" series.

"He tends to work in these series "because that gives him an idea of a narrative, and he just explores that as far as it will go."

♪ "The current series, The 'Future Voters,' he's up to number 22, I believe."

♪ [Drill whirring] During COVID, I birthed, like, five different puppets.

I sculpt the heads and the hands out of a plastic wood, and I sew the bodies.

The eyes are made out of ping pong balls.

They have a rod that goes in through the head to the other side.

Their face really comes to life when the mouth mechanism is connected and when you can see the eyes open and close.

Even the way the mouth moves can impact the voice that they're gonna have a little later.

"Oh, yeah.

My name is Tevin-- that's spelled with a T-- "and when we do shows, he's good at packing us and taking us around..." "because when we have to go places, "we have to be put in a trunk or a bag, and it gets really dark inside that trunk."

"He works us, though, because, you know, "every time we do a show, we got to do rehearsal.

"We got to do it again and again and again.

He's like that."

♪ Underground Railroad, not a subway ♪ ♪ He couldn't read, he died on his feet... ♪ The show that I have called "Underground Railroad, Not a Subway" is narrated by an older gentleman--Mr. Zeke.

First, when he shows up, the kids are laughing at him because many of them have never seen a Black puppet... Zeke: Have you ever lost something, something you wanted back real bad?"

Schroeder: but when Mr. Zeke starts speaking, that's when I hear the hush.

Boy: What's an underground railroad?

Woman: It's not a thing you can see, exactly.

It's something that helps slaves get to freedom.

Boy: Oh.

Schroeder: The show itself is about a little boy who runs away from slavery.

Boy: I don't want to be a slave all my life, so here I go.

Schroeder: We're getting across the fact that enslaved Black people did want to escape, and there were things that they had to do that were very dangerous.

Man: Did you see it?

Can you tell me where it is?

I want it back, and I want it back now.

Schroeder: Slave owners thought they lost something because they considered those people their property.

Man: I gives it a good home, and I takes care of it, so it's mine, right?

Children: No!

[Shouting] Schroeder: It's pretty dense with information, but, because it's a puppet show and it's done in fun ways, the audiences absorb a lot, I think.

♪ Underground Railroad had conductors ♪ ♪ Helped the slaves get away to freedom ♪ ♪ Black, brown, red, and white ♪ ♪ They helped the slaves stay out of sight ♪ With play, you are relaxed enough to be able to receive information.

Even if it's subconsciously, you'll be able to absorb information much more easily.

Girl: I liked the show because it was, like, important because they were showing you what happened a long time ago.

Boy: I learned that the Underground Railroad was a secret.

♪ [Applause] Schroeder: And that's our story for today.

Child: Bravo!

Bravo!

Schroeder: "Adults don't play enough, don't you think?

"They just have to bring in that inner child.

"I think we all have the inner child, "but we lose it when we become adults, "and it just goes somewhere.

"That's so unfortunate.

That's just my opinion, yeah?"

[Slurps] "Ahh.

Yes.

Play is very important."

♪ Woman: Let's see.

Dana: Children's books are some of the best and most powerful writing.

They are full of magic and possibilities.

You're learning how to read at the same time you're being introduced to concepts and ideas and morals and creativity.

Woman: And what is this one?

Dana: This beautiful collection of children's books, manuscripts, educational objects was bequeathed by Lloyd Cotsen, who was Princeton Class of '50.

He stipulated that he wanted a public gallery for children to come and explore their love of literacy.

Lloyd: I guess one of the things that excites me, that turns me on, is to see somebody grasp something or come to terms with something, especially young, and it's like the light bulb lights up.

Corinna: When you're growing up, you don't realize that your father is different than everyone else.

We didn't have a color TV, so we'd sit on the floor.

My father would sit in a chair.

We'd eat popcorn, and he would tell Greek myths.

He went into business with his father-in-law, a company called Neutrogena.

Lyssa: Lloyd Cotsen was the marketing genius behind the Neutrogena brand, and then he became the CEO, but he never stopped doing the things that he loved.

He was so much fun.

♪ Andrea: When I first met Lloyd, it was in the Neutrogena offices, and he swooped in.

He sat down on the edge of the desk, and he stuck out his hand, and he said, "Hi.

I'm Lloyd."

Ha ha!

Next to his desk was a dentist's chair.

That was a little test to see if people would actually go and sit in the chair or would they go sit on the couch, which was about 8 feet away from the desk.

♪ The children's book collection started as a family library that Mr. Cotsen and his wife put together for their children.

Lloyd: I think reading, to me, was like opening the window there and allowed you to look out and maybe fly out.

If you couldn't fly, your mind could fly.

Andrea: This is a special book in the collection.

It has the family bookplate.

Mrs. Cotsen annotated it with the place they bought it and the date.

♪ The collection just grew exponentially.

He traveled so much on business, we knew when he came back, there would be bags and bags and bags of new books.

Lloyd: I do it because I have a good time.

You know, I go in the bookstore, and the lady says, "Should I wrap it for your child or your grandchildren?"

and I said, "I am the child."

♪ Andrea: You can think of this book collection as a huge repository from different countries and traditions of how adults think children will learn best.

♪ Dana: The wall of books was actually Lloyd Cotsen's idea.

He wanted a rare books vault on the other side of glass so that families, teachers, librarians who came in would see the rare books, five centuries' worth.

It's a way to show them history.

Andrea: This is one of the collection's greatest treasures.

It's a scrapbook that Hans Christian Andersen and his friend Alfred Drewdsen made for Alfred's daughter in 1848.

This is the title page, and it has Andersen's paper cutting.

He would often tell a story while he cut them.

Dana: "Read to Tiger."

"I sit down on the couch and open my book, "but I can't read because I hear, 'Grr grr grr grr grr grr.'

"I can't read my book because there's a tiger behind my couch pretending to be a bear."

Today, this is our story time for three- to five-year-olds where we read a picture book... "Then he jumps..." and then we do a very creative project that is related to the book.

♪ It puts the book right in your hands to then recreate on your own and take home.

♪ We did a box tiger... Woman: Look at him!

Dana: that cradles its own book, and inside this tiny, little book, kids could draw or write their favorite things.

♪ We have a saying-- "Hands on, minds on" because play is learning.

Play is the giant building block of everything.

Lloyd: What do we want to give our children?

I would want them to have a sense of curiosity.

I think that's the inheritance I would like to pass on.

♪ ♪ Jessie: The Skirball is a place of gathering inspired by this ancient Jewish idea that we could welcome the stranger.

Our founder Uri Herscher imagined this place when it was vacant land and the idea of a nontheological Jewish cultural center was utterly new.

♪ This is a place where, we hope, beauty and joy create that sense of safety that allows you to open yourself up to something that might be really different.

♪ Uri Herscher said he wanted for the Skirball to be one good place for everyone, and over and over again, we find art and culture is a way to provide that.

Sheri: Uri was thinking about what would be the best theme to engage a broad audience and be relevant and familiar.

Lloyd Cotsen, who was a beloved board member of the Skirball, happened to have one of the largest collections of folk-art Noah's Arks in existence.

Uri loved the fact that the Noah's Ark story had roots in the Hebrew Bible and that it had a presence in so many different cultures.

[Thunder] [Thunder] Nina: Noah's Ark at the Skirball is an 8,000-square-foot experience, and it tells the story of animals and people who survive a stormy time by getting onto a great, big ark and working together.

You come in, and you begin to realize that it's really you who gets to bring this story to life.

Man: OK. Everybody take one part of the zebra.

Here's one.

On three, we're gonna spin the zebra.

Ready?

one--push it this way--two, three... and look how fast they move as these zebras are running and running out from the storm.

Great job.

Nina: All the animals are on the go, and they're trying to find a safe place.

[Coyote howls] Sheri: It's the coyote who tells you when it's going to rain.

[Thunder] Boy: Go crazy.

Nina: Then you find yourself in the storm.

[Wind howling] It's on the visitor to create the storm.

Woman: There it is.

I can't believe it.

Whoo!

Nina: There are levers that you can push, and there are wheels to turn... and then it's time to get on board the ark.

The animals are all two by two.

♪ and it's their first day on the ark.

They're maybe kind of shy, and they're sticking with each other.

You can look up in the rafters and notice what other animals are here with you.

Sheri: We included bats and spiders, sloths, because life isn't only about the pandas and the kitty cats of the world.

We really welcomed that playfulness and difference.

♪ The team of people who worked on Noah's Ark included staff members, and we had sound specialists, movement artists, and folklorists, a host of creative partners.

♪ Chris: My role was to design and fabricate 46 life-sized, kinetic animals as well as puppets.

We knew that the animals were going to be comprised of repurposed materials.

That was sort of the key impetus for bringing me on, because I'd had all this history with creating work out of found objects.

♪ Sheri: What is important in this story of a flood?

When we were unpacking the meaning of it, this idea of second chances kept coming up, so the use of found objects that had had different purposes in the past was a way of kind of embodying the notion of second chances.

That was very important, as was the idea that it's so valuable to learn from the past and to honor memory.

Chris: Look at these antlers.

These are actual, you know, of course, pitchforks, and they're super sharp.

Anybody else would have said, "You know what?

Let's just nix this.

We'll make this out of rubber," but this team said, "Nope.

The point of this is that you're looking at an actual antique pitchfork."

Sheri: We wanted to create something that maybe didn't spell out every single feather and claw but would ignite children's imagination and allowed them to kind of fill in with their own powers of deduction.

Child: Here, a banana.

Ha ha ha!

Ha ha!

Rachel: Chris Green's puppets really invite the imagination, wonder, play.

Kids learn about problem solving and learn about themselves and the world around them through play.

Child: Here, foxy.

Different child: Oh, my.

Child: Here, little foxy.

Here.

You could help me.

Chris: The most important thing is the sense of eye contact-- "I see you.

You see me"-- so the idea of the animal puppets, heads being found objects, we didn't gravitate to that, and I was fortunate to have master builder Eric Novak, who, just by hand, carved the heads out of solid blocks of wood.

That's a major part of how, I think, we attempted to retain the majesty of the animals, was within the faces.

Sheri: That was such an important decision.

The eyes were so relatable on an emotional level, they really felt like they had kind of a spirit.

Chris: These were all fabricated in 2006, so after many years, I'm back to look at these things.

This is a chance to sort of keep them on their feet and active as long as possible.

The repair on this guy, this cockscomb, it's very fragile at this point.

I mean, as it as it is a hot water bottle, this is the original hot water bottle.

Michael: We throw nothing away, Chris.

We throw nothing away.

Chris: You guys are doing an amazing job with conservatorship and nothing loose.

This is a little loose.

So this is the right leg of the ostrich.

Yeah.

We used ax handles and with motorcycle gas tank covers representing the quad of the animal.

Michael: OK.

Here's the tail.

Chris: The elephant has two main components.

Michael: What are these?

These are sepak takraw balls, like volleyball but you use your feet, from Thailand.

Michael: I've seen that trunk come very close to some very delighted children.

[Elephant trumpets] Man: You want a strawberry?

Here you are.

Yum yum yum yum yum yum yum.

Nina: Time has gone by the further into the ark that you go.

Man: Would you like a banana?

[Elephant trumpets] Man: I will give it to the gorilla.

I sure will.

Nina: You come to the place that we call the Arkade.

That's where all the action is happening.

You can have climbing opportunities.

There is a baby nursery.

♪ It's really a fun place to work together.

Man: OK.

I'll start sweeping it your way.

There you are.

Rachel: Young people love to be helpers, and so our educators invite them to take care of an animal, feeding them or cleaning up after them.

♪ Jessie: When they first board the boat, these creatures just stay with those they know, and as you make your way through the story and the ark, you see all kinds of species intermingling in ways we might not expect had they not been stuck on this boat together, and that's what building community looks like.

♪ Nina: And then slowly the sounds of the rain have drifted out, and you peer off the ark and out into the new land, and there's a beautiful rainbow... Child: Look at these-- llama, polar bear.

Nina: so you're Noah in this story.

You get to do all the good deeds, taking care of each other and our environment.

[Shakers rattling] Sheri: We saw Noah's Ark as a story where the animals are really analogs for all the different people and communities of the world.

Jessie: We are better through the storm together.

That's the story we take from ancient texts, and it feels relevant generation after generation.

♪ The Skirball has an annual puppet festival to showcase the different forms and artistry of puppetry.

♪ It's just a joyful day for not just the puppetry that happens inside of Noah's Ark, but we have various different styles of puppetry from different parts of the world.

♪ Chris: Play is actually serious business.

If you allow yourself to play, interact, and be open to the feedback that you have with the puppet, you're having a transformational experience yourself.

That's the goal.

♪ Rachel: I think the thing that I love the most about the puppet festival is our elephant... ♪ and to see the look on little kids' faces, to see, "What is that thing made of?

How does it move?"

♪ It's inviting that wonder and sparking that curiosity and that moment of awe.

♪ ♪ ♪ Watch all episodes of "Craft in America" online with additional videos and more.

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