My mother could put on a puppet show that captures the rapt attention of the audience, this being our family.  The puppet stage had footlights and was the perfect size.  The puppets became increasingly works of art.  I remember Saint Francis and the wolf best.

My mother believed that I was a natural for following in her footsteps.  I remember the Christmas when my father and my mother gave me a huge collection of puppets and a stage.

I had the approach of focusing on the scenery.  My father gave me all his attention one night when I was reduced to tears because I could not tell the story and manage the scenery at the same time.

Puppets are a way of remembering together.  John Dever sings,’sit about the fire and pass the pipe’.  Puppets allow you to do just that.  It is curious and incredible what we remember about our favorite stories.  Puppets build up a family tradition as if with magic.  We recognise together, the friend, the enemy, the suffering, the joyful, the generous, the cold hearted.

Puppets can be easily attributed to the French.  The French language creates sound in spaces that are devoted to the listener’s memory and self expression.  The French language is the language of diplomacy because of this.  It is the life at home that dictates the final course a country will take.  French helps the diplomat and average citizen focus on what people recognise as their own lives.

Acting is witness, puppets allow you to become more sensitive to an actor’s or actresse’s performance.  My mother was the biggest film buff God ever made.  With the pride of my mother and father in me I became a lawyer so I could know my story and tell my story by heart.  Plato warns us that the shadows that are made behind us might be more our reality than what appears immediately by firelight.  Puppets make those shadows.  The more we share about what we love in life with puppets or stories the more we come together as a family and friends.  This closeness is our reality.  Acting is the strongest way to represent this reality.  As a lawyer, who we are, is my focus.  The stories we know by heart, we want to remember in times of trial or great blessing.  I want to be a Poet Laureat.  This means I will speak to represent myself and my own only with love.