"I remember in school, they used these two puppets ‘Will Do’ and ‘Can Do,’ to illustrate some points about good behavior,” says puppeteer Sean Samoheyl in an e-mail, a few days before I meet the Twin Oaks puppeteer for the first time. “But I think I missed something, because I just remember thinking what odd names ‘Wildu’ and ‘Kandu’ were.”
Let’s call Samoheyl “Can Do,” for thematic purposes—a bit like the “Goofus” to Jim Henson’s “Gallant.” “Can Do” is in his 30s, tan and fit, with a large beard and thick, horn-rimmed glasses; he looks a bit like a young man who walked off to work in the 1930s and stumbled into the 21st century by mistake. At age 27, “Can Do” moved from Chicago to the Twin Oaks community in Louisa, his brain stuffed full of characters from sitcoms, films and encounters in the Windy City during jobs as a bicycle messenger and a bartender.
 |
Then “Can Do” became “Will Do.” Or, perhaps more appropriately, “Make Do.” All of the residents of Twin Oaks help school the community’s children; occasionally, Samoheyl would teach with puppets, many created by previous Twin Oaks residents from clothing and wood. Living on $75 per month, Samoheyl kept his budget small; new puppets were created from the sturdy boards that hold together packs of stamps, old gift cards and markers. Rather than craft a few intricate characters, Samoheyl created loads of two-dimensional puppets with basic functions. “I love the genius and simplicity of just one moving part to imply a gesture,” Samoheyl writes in an e-mail.
“Puppets are intuitive,” he explains further when I meet him. “Since they’re so close to dolls.” Samoheyl says that he doesn’t differentiate between dolls and action figures at Twin Oaks; rather, they’re all dolls, and easier to interact with.
Samoheyl began performing outside of Twin Oaks, from art galleries and craft fairs to potlucks and dinner parties, guiding his two-dimensional characters through a box that he wears strapped to his chest, like a living diorama. During the last year, Samoheyl performed locally at the release of locally produced culture magazine Mildred Pierce and as an opening act for musician Kimya Dawson, whose music career got a jumpstart following the popularity of her songs on the soundtrack for the movie Juno. Dawson’s performance at Twin Oaks was kept largely under wraps; Samoheyl mentions that the singer was more interested in an intimate performance and evening at a place where she and her daughter, Panda, could enjoy themselves.
“It was interesting to meet someone who really struggles with that [fame],” says Samoheyl. “I really appreciate that.”
Not long after his performance with Dawson, Samoheyl recorded Thrift Store Odyssey, a DVD of two stories produced by local filmmaker Meghan Eckman. The story, he says, was inspired in part by meeting Dawson and her daughter: Two young, awkwardly chatty men visit a thrift store and find a full-body panda bear suit. When one tries it on, he gets stuck inside of it and is forced to wear it around.
It’s a simple storyline—the type that “Will Do-ers” like Henson’s puppeteers could bypass now for a big-budget epic. (Heck, even Jason Segel got one in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.) But that’s the best part about Samoheyl’s work: the bulk of it is simple enough for his students at Twin Oaks. He’s a “Can Do” fellow in a “Will Do” world, happy to let kids interpret his plots.
“The kids are a humbling audience,” says Samoheyl. “Tough. They’re comfortable around me, so they’re not afraid to tell me, ‘This sucks.’”
In September, Samoheyl will return to Chicago to perform for the first time since he left the city, in a drive-in movie theater; he also has a Halloween performance scheduled for the Front Room Gallery in Cleveland. In the meantime, watch for future local performances at seansamoheyl.com, and rent Thrift Store Odyssey at Sneak Reviews.
Feedback Sessions
This week marks the launch of what I hope will be a recurring series of music events called Feedback Sessions, in which C-VILLE invites a musician or band into our office to perform a few songs. What’s the occasion, you ask?
Well, some things are better seen than heard. But music ought to be both. Rather than asking you to drop a few dollars on a songwriter that you don’t know, we’re giving you a free introduction right here.
And who better to start us off than Thomas Gunn? A local songwriter and guitarist, Gunn takes directions from blues, British folk and rock, but doesn’t necessarily follow them; instead, his fingers tear along the neck of his guitar like he’s driving along country roads. The paths Gunn takes aren’t always the most expected, but they offer the best scenery. Watch Thomas Gunn here, then check him out on Saturday, August 16 at Rapunzel’s Coffee in Lovingston.
