Making—Her Way
Editor’s Note: Karen Cantor’s career path includes marketing, teaching, documentary filmmaking, puppetry, mothering (three kids), and grandmothering (eight grands).
When I was three I had a box full of colored paper, scissors, shiny buttons, and all kinds of other wonderful items under my bed. More than 70 years later, I now have a whole room full of stuff to make things. I make puppets and props for scenarios about tree care.
It is no surprise that I’ve circled back to making things.
I’d spent years as a photographer in a career that morphed into creating industrial and artistic slide-sound shows. Abandoning this “calling,” I worked in the business world and earned an MBA. Yet I didn’t forget how much I’d loved telling stories integrating sound and visuals.
In my early 50’s, my inner voice relentlessly asked, “If not now, when?”
I started taking documentary filmmaking courses. Following a semester-long workshop at George Washington University’s Documentary Film Workshop, I teamed up with the co-writer (a Danish national) to make “The Danish Solution” about the miraculous rescue of the Danish Jews in 1943.
After that, I produced and directed three other documentaries. With each new project came the challenges of learning about a subject; the pleasures of engaging with people whose story I was telling, and the joys of collaborating with talented people.
All this was tempered with raising money to support the effort, enduring the inevitable disappointments, and maintaining the energy and focus. The result of all this effort—a grand total of three viewing hours!
As I finished my fourth documentary film, I had an urge from who-knows-where to seek out a puppet workshop.
Luckily, I came across the New England Puppet Intensive (NEPI). Affectionately called puppet camp, it taught many aspects of puppetry.
A couple of years prior, on a long car ride, my significant other (an arborist) and I wrote stories about tree care featuring a tree and an arborist. Voila! These tales evolved into PUPPET TREE—puppet shows integrated into tree conference presentations.
PUPPET TREE synthesizes so much of my experience: co-developing concepts, co-writing scripts, testing materials, making puppets and props, and performing. Now that COVID has put a stop to in-person presentations I am developing video vignettes, drawing upon my filmmaking past.
