Basil Twist, a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant-winning puppeteer, will speak today as part of the Creative Matters Lecture Series.
By Claire Dietz
When the 2015 MacArthur Foundation Fellowships — a no-strings-attached award of $625,000 given to people in various disciplines with the intention of enabling them to work for a time without having to worry about income — were announced in September 2015, headlines fixated on the high-profile presence of Hamilton’s Lin-Manual Miranda and author Ta-Nehisi Coates among the honorees. But there was one member of the group who stood out, even though he didn’t pick up the same sort of media traction as some of his peers.
The contributions to the medium that Basil Twist, a third-generation puppeteer, had made had become impossible for the foundation to ignore.
Twist’s creations have regularly appeared on Broadway — including in stage adaptations of The Addams Family and The Pee-wee Herman Show — and, The New Yorker reported, he was famously employed as an “underwater-puppetry consultant” on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Today, Twist will deliver a lecture on the progression of his work and how it has moved between abstraction and tradition at 5:30 p.m. in 240 Art Building West.
Twist attributed his professional success to his time studying in Charleville-Mézières, France, at the École Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette, a prestigious puppetry school, from which he became the first American to graduate.
“Those years laid a very strong foundation,” Twist wrote in an email interview to The Daily Iowan. “There was great exposure to all the great puppetry traditions and to master puppet makers; that, of course, fueled my imagination, increased my technical vocabulary, and shaped a lot of the artist I am today.”
Part of Twist’s appeal, however, stems from his desire to reach beyond the conventional confines of his discipline and turn toward factors outside his control.
“I strive to let the inherent nature and possibilities of the materials reveal and emerge — bring forward the life of their own,” he wrote. “This is a basis for how I approach any materials in all of my work. String marionettes in particular, though very traditional, benefit from this more abstract approach.”
Further origins of this approach can be traced to 1999, when his now-seminal work Symphonie Fantastique—an avant-garde puppet show performed in a 500-gallon fish tank in which dozens of pieces of colored cloth and other materials swam in unity to Symphonie Fantastique, by Hector Berlioz—débuted in New York. The profound power of artistic expression, and Twist’s belief in it, can be seen in both Symphonie and in the rest of his oeuvre.
“Art is spirit; it is vital and essential for human beings, like food,” wrote Twist in the email. “Puppetry is a profound and quite direct expression of this spirit.”
This expression has taken a variety of forms throughout his career and is still in the process of shape-shifting. In 1999, for example, he designed and built a giant spider to hang from the Jefferson Market Library for the Village Halloween Parade in New York City.
In February 2017, a brand-new ballet, tentatively titled Dorothy and the Prince of Oz, co-commissioned by Columbus’ BalletMet and the Tulsa Ballet, is scheduled to début with Twist as the production’s set and puppetry designer. He has also been asked to create the Oompa Loompas for a new production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which is set to open on Broadway in April.
While he speaks today, local residents will have to wait until December to witness the full spectacle of his creations firsthand with Hancher’s preview production of The Nutcracker, created in collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet.
Twist joins a star-studded cast of collaborators including acclaimed writer Brian Selznick (The Invention of Hugo Cabret) whose relationship with Twist goes back to the days when Selznick served as puppeteer in Twist’s Symphonie Fantastique.
The ensemble also includes five-time Tony award-winning lighting designer Natasha Katz and Christopher Wheedon, the Tony award-winning choreographer of An American in Paris.
Hancher Executive Director Charles Swanson — who described Twist as “this rock star; this genius” — noted the significance of the role the puppeteer is tasked with playing.
“[Twist] is one piece of this, but it’s an important piece,” Swanson said. “This is The Nutcracker and, seeing this through the eyes of children, [Twist] would be critical because he is the one creating this magic onstage. He has the experience; he has proven he can do these wonderful sorts of things.
“He is really top of the game, he’s going to help create a lot of the magic in this new Nutcracker.”