Creativity and Death with Basil Twist

Basil Twist is a world-famous puppeteer. His first full-length production, Symphonie Fantastique, flipped the audience's concept of the art form by existing entirely underwater in a massive tank. As he looks back on his decades-long career, we talk about what aging feels like, how losing a mentor changed him, and all the wonderful live shows he has collaborated on, and why seeing performances in-person matters. We explore the world of puppetry, and how the veil between being alive and not alive is so thin. He argues the audience does not need to suspend disbelief, but simply to believe.

You can learn more about Basil's work and see a video of Stickman: https://basiltwist.com/

Transcript:

Sarah Cavanaugh: [00:00:00] I am Sarah Cavanaugh, and this is Peaceful Exit, the podcast where we talk to creatives about life and death. Basil Twist is a world famous and celebrated puppeteer. His first project was Symphonie Fantastique, which is set to a famous 19th century composition of the same name and performed entirely underwater.

And since then, he's done many different projects for Opera Ballet. He's even worked in film for a minute. He helped create the Dementors in the third Harry Potter movie. He and I explore the arc of his creative career and the magic of a live show and why audiences still crave them. We also talk about his grief when a dear mentor died. Basil explains how the conversation of death is always under the surface of almost any creative act, but especially puppetry.[00:01:00] 

Welcome to Peaceful Exit.

Basil Twist: Thank you.

Sarah Cavanaugh: Let's start with a bit of history. Did you always know you wanted to be an artist? And what, what drew you to the the art of puppeteering?

Basil Twist: When I eventually went to puppetry school in France and had this very impressive intellectual who wrote about puppetry named Henrik Kosky, and he started out with why would people do puppets and why would an.

Why would an artist choose puppetry as a medium? And there was different reasons why you might, metaphorically, artistically, one of the reasons you might choose to do it was because people were shy and I was found that so validating that some fancy intellectual giving, the reasons for, might suggest that that certain performers were more in inclined to it because.

Comfort level, being [00:02:00] visible or being on stage. And that puppetry was a way for someone who was a little more retiring and who would hide behind the couch and stick your puppet up. But that was a, a legitimate reason to do, to choose puppetry. Um, and it, it rang true for me. That was true for me. I. Express myself and my theatrical flare, but without putting myself into vulnerable position, I could do it indirectly by hiding behind the couch and speaking through a felt creature on my hand.

Sarah Cavanaugh: I know your grandfather was a puppeteer.

Basil Twist: Well, my grandfather was mostly a musician, a big band leader. He used puppets as part of his act, but I never met him. He died before I was born. I think that what hit me at first was that my mother was doing puppetry when I was [00:03:00] young. So when she moved to San Francisco, she met a group of women who, mostly mothers who had a kind of social activity and social activity puppet.

Got, you know, full access to the puppets. And because I was born in 1969, so I'm squarely of the puppet, Sesame Street Generations, the Muppets were also, you know, hot on the heels of that. And there was this puppeteer in San Francisco too, that I was kind of obsessed with. It was a street performer. His name was Bob Hartman.

He used to perform down at Fisherman's Wharf and I just loved him. My siblings probably had the same conditions, but it didn't hook them the way it hooked me. It was like my thing. I was a kid who, I didn't want a teddy bear. I wanted a puppet. I [00:04:00] wanted toys that I could, um, you know, make come to life. Not just that, didn't just sit there.

Sarah Cavanaugh: I would love for you to talk a little bit about some of the puppets you made as a kid.

Basil Twist: Made a whole series of Star Wars puppets, so that must have been 19 76, 77, whenever I must have been seven or eight years old in particular. I remember making those legs, pantyhose containers, those metallic plastic eggs.

I made a R 2D two puppet out of that. I remember doing like a book report in school. I had to do like a report in school and I was shy and I used a puppet to do the report instead. I, it was like a report about ancient Greece and I think I put built, made a toga for the dog and did my report with the puppet, which was like a coping mechanism, almost a way of dealing with public speaking that I did it with a puppet.

And of course, everybody loved. [00:05:00] Hi, marks on my book report.

Sarah Cavanaugh: Well fast forward to today and seeing you with the marionette that see, it seems like an extension of your body. It's mesmerizing. Can you talk a little bit about this particular marionette?

Basil Twist: I call him stick man, and he's a carved marionette, meaning that he's operated on strings.

When I was in school in France. So I went to this, uh, puppetry school in France, and while I was there, I met all these great puppetry masters and the puppet is an expression of that. So I was taught by a Brazilian master named Alvaro Apocalypse, how to carve the wood puppet based on a certain design that's.

Called a Wiggins style. And then I had a Swedish master teach [00:06:00] me how to string it. Mik Meka taught me how to string it, and he used a certain kind of control, which is a Malaysian style control, which is an H control instead of like a Christian Cross style control. And I gathered all this information in France and then made this.

Amazing puppet, but didn't. It's because it's a string marionette. It's very indirect. You don't have your hands right on it. There's strings. So you have a really, um, delicate relationship with it. How to, how to animate it. And it actually took me years and years and years to figure out how to do it.

30 years.

He is like an extension of myself now because I am so used to having him in my hands, but that's because I've had time with him and also because he's [00:07:00] actually such a good, excellent puppet because there's all this great master and knowledge that's been passed. Down to me through that puppet.

Sarah Cavanaugh: So for our listeners, Stickman is a slender wooden puppet in human form.

There's no paint on him. There's a simple expression, and he has very graceful movements with long legs connected to the marionette strings. I highly recommend going to Basil's website to see a video of him maneuvering Stickman. We'll put a link in the show notes. How did you learn to express emotion through Stickman?

Basil Twist: Oh, I don't know how you learn that. Actually, it comes out in, in practice. When I was in France, I became aware of all this other artists, and one of them was this, the painter and sculptor, Alberto Giacometti, who makes those really long, skinny sculpture figures, and I wanted to make my puppet like that.

And then it had a quality already [00:08:00] in it, so it had a certain quality in it. But it mostly revealed itself to me over time.

Sarah Cavanaugh: So in any of your productions, has there been a death scene or a representation of death, and what did that look like?

Basil Twist: When I share that puppet, what I share is sort of a mini lifecycle, so that the puppet starts as a inner pile of sticks and it comes to life.

And, and at the end of the performance, he'll arch his back and throw his head back and make a beautiful kind of shape with his body. And then I'll lift him up and pull him with a string. So he lifts to my hand. Um, and then [00:09:00] he's back to being, um. A limp doll. So that's, that is always an expression of, um, you know, something coming to life and then returning to its baker in a way.

But that, that question of something being alive or not alive and the, the veil between those two states is, I think. Actually pushes right elegantly in front of us to to just to consider

Sarah Cavanaugh: you're animating something that's inanimate

Basil Twist: and the question of spirit and spirits being in something or expressing itself through something and then leaving something and what's left behind.

Um. These are all kind of, you know, big, mysterious questions that actually make puppetry be a [00:10:00] a pretty profound, it's part of what gets people about puppetry that they don't, they're not quite aware of how it's touching them so deeply, but it always does.

Sarah Cavanaugh: I know you've worked on many wonderful projects.

My neighbor Totoro, working with the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the right of spring. And operas, but Symphony Fantastic was one of your first big shows that you created. It's an hour long show set to a famous 19th century composition of the same name, and it's completely underwater. The puppeteers in their wetsuits manipulate feathers, dyes.

Black light bubbles, all sorts of amazing things within this giant water tank. I have a very vivid memory of going backstage and just seeing the engineering that required that, you know, that was required behind the scenes, which [00:11:00] was. Fabulous. And then standing with you in the alley and watching the water be drained out the hose into the alley.

Just so much water. I just have this wonderful memory, uh, you know, New York at night and the draining of the tank.

Basil Twist: Yes, yes. Special needs of that show. Yes. Yeah.

Sarah Cavanaugh: Yeah. What was it like revisiting a show that you did so much earlier in your career?

Basil Twist: 20 years before we had done it in the little theater downstairs.

Now we were in the slightly bigger theater upstairs, and we also had a slightly bigger tank than when we did it. 'cause the show had had a history and in the show's history, it also had moved from being with. Recorded to eventually had started working with this wonderful pianist, Christopher O'Reilly, so it had live music.

So it was, it was exciting to bring it back to the same address [00:12:00] but have more audience seeing it, bigger tank and live music. When you revisit something, especially any, anytime you do something again and it was really good the first time, you're always a little worried, like, I hope it's as good. You know, it was so good.

Then why would I wanna mess with it? Fortunately was really well received and showed up well in that space. I think

Sarah Cavanaugh: talking about Symphony fantastic is making me think of your grandmother. 'cause when I interviewed your mom about death and money, she shared a story of her mom, your grandmother, and her letters to the grandkids at the end of her life.

Basil Twist: I was communicating with my grandmother a lot at that point because. The theater where Symphony Fantastique opened was named after her, and she was a part of that. And she came and cut the ribbon for opening, you know, the opening of [00:13:00] the show in the theater. Um, and then she passed away that, you know, two, two months.

I just know that she was of especially proud of me and I had gone and spent time with her at her home in Palm Springs. And I remember I was working on Symphony Fantastique and I, she had a swimming pool and I had fabric in the swimming pool and she would brought out, she's like, oh, here's this fabric.

She brought out stuff. She just was really, um. Very supportive of me, and she gave me my grandfather's puppets when I was 10, which really sealed the deal in many ways. So my, my, my relationship with my grandmother was strong and important, and it was particularly important, close to her death. I did this show that I had worked on in her swimming pool, and then it [00:14:00] was in a theater that was named after her, and she cut the ribbon.

I mean, it was a big, really. Of finding to me and my grandmother and that theater still exists and one of my cousins is in town in New York today. I'm like, Hey, you should come and see Grandma's theater.

Sarah Cavanaugh: I am remembering the puppets in that theater. Yes. Were those your grand, those were your Yeah.

Grandfather's puppets that are in the glass cases. In the glass

Basil Twist: case with little tuxedos on it. Yeah,

Sarah Cavanaugh: yeah, yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. She gave

Basil Twist: those to me when I was 10. I made a trip down to Palm Springs on my own. I think I took the train and I. And she picked me up and then she showed me the, this old trunk and these kind of beat up bags, and they had these amazing kind of spooky antique puppets in them, and she gave them to me.

Then I had them in my, in my childhood bedroom. [00:15:00] These kind of. Sort of spooky old puppets. Um, and they're almost too big for me to work. They were string marionettes, so you had to be kind of tall to work them. Um, anyway, that was, that was, uh, major.

Sarah Cavanaugh: From your perspective as an artist, how do we get more comfortable talking about death?

Basil Twist: I frequently will speak to that aspect of puppetry that connects us to that, to the mystery. So the mystery of being alive and, and something not being alive. So I think that simply engaging in the mystery, like engaging in the sort of the. The reverence for, oh, [00:16:00] this is alive, this is, let's pay attention to that.

How specific that is, how finite that is. So there's to, to that people create works that actually address the subject. I.

I have a friend who made a, actually a beautiful, I was surprised how beautiful it was, was a piece about his grandmother who was passing. She, she chose to die. She said, I'm gonna die today and we're gonna have a party. And they did a piece about it with a puppet representing her, and it was so moving and it was so touching when the puppet was.

Being performed. That was one way to kind of bring us closer to that [00:17:00] conversation. But I think it's always under the surface of almost any creative act actually. But in particular, puppetry is this idea of spirit and life and um, and then the mystery of being alive. And honoring that.

Sarah Cavanaugh: I would love to help people appreciate this art form as you have done so brilliantly in your career, and there are many popular works with puppetry at the center.

Can you describe your work for the third Harry Potter movie?

Basil Twist: Oh, well, so yes, I was part of the. Filmed the Prisoner of Azkaban and the wonderful director, Alfonso Quadron, was the director of that. And some people say it's the best of the Harry Potter movies. Alfonso had seen my, he'd seen my Stickman puppet, and he at a.

[00:18:00] Party I was performing at. And then he came to see Symphony Fantastic. My underwater puppet show. And he, um, invited me to participate in the Harry Potter film. 'cause he wanted to have more, um, puppetry and magic than just computers doing things. Um, doing things. So he, I did the Dementors, which are these spooky Black Ghost characters.

Suck your life energy. And we did them underwater with fabric underwater and made miniatures of them and did them in a big tank and made them and filmed them underwater. Eventually they did it all with computers, um, because it's, it ultimately is easier to do that. It's. It's on wires and it's in a tank, and if you want it to go upside down, well you have to get in the tank.

So it's easier, [00:19:00] it's easier to film it, get the style of the movement, and then to recreate that with computers. But that's, that's what I did on the Harry Potter.

Sarah Cavanaugh: How has technology impacted your work over the years and the craft?

Basil Twist: Puppetry is a low tech world. It's analog world. It's best that way. I trained, was trained and trained myself, making stuff out of legs, pantyhose, containers and cardboard, and making things and thinking with my hands and bringing stuff to life with my hands.

So there's something that's happened actually. Concurrent with my career as technology has become so majorly part of our lives in terms of the devices and the screens and the um, the, the [00:20:00] access to knowledge and that, and connectivity is like. Completely mind blowing and hard to wrap our heads around.

And there's something about the purity of magic that happens with Stickman, with his pieces of wood and his strings, and when he comes to life and people are. Their eyes well up with tears or they hold their breaths. There's something about it that I think is all the more potent for people because they're so overwhelmed by technology, that technology somehow makes us thirsty for those more primal elemental.

Connection with Spirit and magic we, that puppetry connects us more directly to [00:21:00] it than a computer does. There is a place where technology can be applied to puppetry, like in 3D printing or there's ways that it's helpful, but it's more that tech puppetry as a non-tech form as a low tech form. Somehow rises in value as we're so inundated by technology that the, the, the low TEUs of puppetry becomes even more refreshing, even more necessary, even more nourishing.

Sarah Cavanaugh: I love that. And that makes me think about our. Earlier in this conversation we were talking about how, how Pu puppets can express emotion, but there's something about the three dimensions of being in a theater being live. You know that there's a different energy to it and I, I love what you said. I.

Basil Twist: And puppetry invites us to, you [00:22:00] have to, you know, when you saw those horses in warhorse, you, you knew that they're made out of wood and leather.

You can see it and you can even see the puppeteers, but you are overwhelmed with memories about when you rode a horse, when you were a kid, or when your grandmother used to have horses, or how horses have or have not been in your life. It's like all of that. You experience that you show up with that. So the thing that's just made outta leather and wood becomes something so much more because of what you bring to it.

And that happens in the live theater and in puppetry where sometimes people call it the suspension of disbelief. I think it's not the suspension of disbelief, I think it's belief. You believe, you actually believe in something, even though you, despite the information that you see the strings and you can see the person you believe in it.

That's, um, that's totally magical.

Sarah Cavanaugh: I love what you say about us [00:23:00] being thirsty for those experiences and do you feel like in our modern culture, you're fighting for the art of puppetry? A little bit. Like keeping it alive.

Basil Twist: It is sometimes a fight. 'cause I feel like when I'm advocating within a big show that people don't know about puppets and I have to advocate, but I'm not fighting other than just trying to do my work, you know, trying to do my work.

Things lined up for me where my grandmother. Gave me those puppets and I lucked out and went to this amazing French puppet school. And I, that's, that's just, these were the spectacular cards I was dealt. And so I'm playing my hands, which is being a puppeteer, I'm so, so lucky to do it and, and, and aware of how special and important it is, you know, in important.

That's how you get [00:24:00] Toro, how you get that character. It's not because of the actors. It's the puppets brought to life by the performers. Um, that brings that spirit, that presence of that spirit real presence, which is more than you can get in a film. When you get that presence in live theater. It's really.

Overwhelming, overwhelming.

Sarah Cavanaugh: We talked a little bit about aging on that bench in Seattle,

Basil Twist: Uhhuh. Yeah.

Sarah Cavanaugh: What's it, what? What's it like for you to be an aging artist?

Basil Twist: For a long time I lived in a sort of Peter Pan way where I was a kid, and I am still have that quality about myself. I know, but I am not, what is.

Termed an emerging artist. I have emerged, people know me, I've made my mark and I'm doing shows now. You know, I'm doing like the 20th anniversary re [00:25:00] of Symphony, fantastic 20th anniversary, remount of Dogo. Gai. I look with some distance at what it was like when I was young and full of ideas and full of.

Um, energy to make my mark, you know, and, and, and marvel at how that was and how I, there's something different going on now, which is, um, I also just, I want contentment. You know, I want a sort of peaceful existence, not, uh, um, the, the fight of being a young artist and making your way. I had enough opportunity that I'm feeling a comfortable place, but I'm also, yeah.

I wonder as an older artist, um, what's next? [00:26:00] What's important, what I want to do, what I wanna create, as opposed to how I just. Participate with other projects, but what do I wanna create noticing I don't have the same drive missing it wanting. When I see parts of that, I am coming to accepting that I'm an older artist and what that means for my art and also how I relate to.

The world.

Sarah Cavanaugh: Yeah. A lot of people talk about aging as like having limitations or losing, like the physical ability to hop on top of the tank or whatever it is, but mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But I wonder, I find you very positive. Um, creative. Creative. Like what are the, what's the joy of getting older as an artist? [00:27:00] 

Basil Twist: Um, I guess it's knowing yourself, knowing.

How you've done it or knowing that you can do it. I know how to get there and we're gonna do it now. And having that confidence thing as opposed to the, the sort of hubris of a young artist who's like, I know how to get there, let me through. And they're, you know, and they crash through and maybe go some end up someplace else, but they got there.

This is different thing of knowing yourself, knowing how you work. Which is, which is also still mysterious to convey.

Sarah Cavanaugh: So in Peaceful Exit, um, we talk a all about your personal story around death and in the arc of your life so far. Have there been any significant losses that have kind of informed how you think about death?

Basil Twist: So Lee. Was an [00:28:00] important friend and collaborator and mentor of mine. She was a performance artist in New York before anybody knew what that was. And she had this incredible artistic life in New York City from the fifties on and was part of many fascinating cool New York. Pure New York Arts moments and I created a show with her called Behind the Lid.

This poster that's behind me is from Behind the Lid and it was her life story and she fell ill while we were working on the project and I had to pivot and recreate the project, have puppets of her. The show about her and myself and I did create this show and performed it in her loft space where she had lived and worked for years.[00:29:00] 

And she, um, went into the hospital and she passed away while the show was running. And the show became a sort of a. Of her life. I really felt myself like, it was like she was passing a torch. To me, this torch of this a a really actually specific way of treating the live theater experience as almost. Like a, something sacred, like a religion, like this sacred experience that we did these, this work.

I Lee immensely impressed that upon me about the work, the, the work. Just being an artist and, and [00:30:00] being an artist meant making art. Just doing it and creating it. And sometimes that took years and years and years. Um, and that I participated with her on that. And then also that the, the, the big show that we worked on together was marked the end of her life.

And then I continued, I continued performing the show and celebrating her life. That was an incredible experience and a great privilege. It also happened. I now I'm kind of realizing too, it was very close to when my grandfather passed away. So my grandfather, who I'm named after, passed away also right around that time, and I was with him when he passed away.

So I was actually with my family. We were sitting around his hospital bed when he flew away, and I remember how incredible. That [00:31:00] moment was, and how blessed I felt by my grandfather that he was a key moment in terms of my experiencing death, experiencing people I knew dying. And also how that with Lee, in particular, how it impacted me as an artist.

And I know with my grandfather too, my grandfather was so, um. And supportive of me. He, he helped build the tank for Symphony. He was an engineer, so he was really into the tank and how it got built near him in, in Central California so he could help be.

Father as opposed to my mother's father, who was the big band leader. So I had this great, [00:32:00] I'm so fortunate, have had grandparents who, who supported me and also celebrated. And my accomplishments and my unique accomplishments.

Sarah Cavanaugh: What does a peaceful exit mean to you?

Basil Twist: I mean, the way my grandfather went was, it was definitely peaceful.

He had. Lived a full life. He had, his kids were all in great shape, but when he passed away, it was very easy. We were around him. He passed away before midnight, you know, it was very practical. And then we could all go and sleep in our beds and it was beautiful. I mean, incredibly beautiful because I got to be there and my father, and my mother and my brother, his breathing [00:33:00] slowed down, and then it got slower and slower, and then it stopped.

It was a total miracle to be present to. I would call that a peaceful exit. That I experienced with him.

Sarah Cavanaugh: Thank you for listening to Peaceful Exit. I'm your host, Sarah Cavanaugh. You can find me on Instagram at @APeacefulExit. And you can learn more about this podcast at peacefulexit.net. Our senior producer is Katy Klein, and our sound engineer is Shawn Simmons. This episode was edited by Sydney Gladu. Additional support from Cindy Gal and Ciara Austin.

Original music provided by Ricardo Russell, with additional music and sounds from Blue Dot Sessions. If you'd like to support our show, please follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, rate and review us wherever you listen. It really does make a difference. And as always, thank you so much for listening.