January's Puppet of the Month - Goldstein-becomes-Moses

Moses (photo by Nigel Bewley)

Thanks for joining us Mr Goldstein. Or is it Moses? Which puppet are you exactly?

These days I’m widely recognised as “Moses” from The Table, but I first came to life as “Emmanuel Goldstein”, leader of the underground resistance to the Nazi’s. I was made for Blind Summit’s adaptation of Orwell’s 1984 but I was too cute, apparently.

And that was the end of Goldstein?

Sadly, yes. But just 6 months after 1984 I was pulled back out for The Other Seder - a commission by the Jewish Community Centre for London and Knish Collective playing with the idea of Moses returning to the Passover table (they thought I looked a bit like the Prophet). Lo and behold: I became "Moses".

So what's with the other girl? 

In the very early days of The Table we had me, my 3 puppeteers, and another character. The show focused on the relationship between Moses and the girl, but was dropped around 2012 as we reworked the material. But - we’re bringing her back for the Drak project. 

The Drak project?

I’m about to travel with Mark to the Theatre Drak rehearsal room in Czech Republic for 3 weeks. We're doing R&D on that early idea of Moses and the 4th character. Plus, I went from German revolutionary to Czech puppet in that Goldstein-to-Moses transformation, so I feel like I'm going back to my roots. 

You were a Czech puppet?!

The concept for The Table 1.0 was a Czech group coming to the UK to perform Tabel and divulge the secrets of the famed Czech puppetry. But that got scrapped in rehearsal and we went back to earlier ideas in The Other Seder. So it feels good to pick that up again with our friends in the Czech Republic. 

The Other Seder, 2010