Wednesday, January 20, 1999

Jerry Handorf's madcap world

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Price Hill puppeteer's energy infects his troupe and the kids he entertains

BY JOHN JOHNSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Jerry Hansdorf's puppets are big, as is the childlike spirit he brings to Madcap Productions Puppet Theatre. (Michael E. Keating photo) | ZOOM |

        Maybe someday Jerry Handorf will run out of ideas.

        Naaaah.

        “I have tons of ideas running through my head all the time,” says the frenetic co-founder and artistic director of Madcap Productions Puppet Theatre, based in Price Hill.

        Believe him. Tons. All the time. His brain works like his body, which is to say it gets quite a workout. Sometimes the mind goes so fast, the mouth has trouble keeping up.

        He's got a word for all that: hyper.

        Anyway, he's describing an idea in typical rapid-fire fashion: “We're going to get kids to write down the weirdest things that have happened in school. Or the strangest. Or the funniest, or the most interesting. And we'll begin to build a show from that. I want to hear it: "My teacher had a wart as big as a house!'

        “Doesn't that sound like a great show?” he says, big brown eyes fairly bulging, voice rising. “Wouldn't you want to see it?”

        Yes, Jerry, yes!

Hansdorf works the beanstalk puppet with Russell White for "Jackie & The Beanstalk" at Immaculate Heart of Mary School. (Michael E. Keating photo) | ZOOM |

        Welcome to the mad, mad, mad, mad, Madcap world of 38-year-old Jerry Handorf of Westwood.

        “I have a fun job,” he says. “The only thing is, it's very stressful sometimes, especially when I'm putting a show up.”

        Which is now.

        Jackie & the Beanstalkplays this weekend and nextas part of the Hats Off series at the Cincinnati Art Museum. It's vintage Madcap: a slightly off-center, tongue-in-cheek, humorous show that always lets children in on the joke. It also has the awe factor: a 10-foot giant and a 14-foot beanstalk.

Madcap's 17th year
        Now in its 17th season, non-profit Madcap is one of four touring giant-puppet theaters in the United States. In this decade alone, it's been seen by some 3 million children, the company says. Performances and school artist-in-residency programs reach 19 states.

        Mr. Handorf contributes mightily to that success. He designs the puppets, writes the plays (crafting them so they're enjoyable for adults, too) and pushes the troupe toward new creative endeavors.

        His ideas are transformed into puppets in Madcap's Glenway Avenue studio, where an ogre, shark, genie and 100 or more life-size creations keep silent watch over bolts of cloth, spools of thread, and boxes of wigs, yarn, string and other materials.

        The silence is broken when Mr. Handorf enters.

        He can't resist bringing the Bogle to life — it's half lion, half lizard — with a mock-sinister laugh. “Ha-ha-haaaa. Pretty cool, eh?”

        Then he's lending a crotchety voice to a puppet created by a friend. It's the head of an almost toothless old man with a white wispy beard: “Heh, heh, heh, yeah, Jerry likes me, too. Wish he'd give me a body.”

        He has just returned from an artist-in-residency program at Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Anderson Township. Madcap schedules about 22 residencies a year; Mr. Handorf himself does 10 weeks' worth.

        Such programs are the vehicle through which he'll ask kids to write about weird/strange/interesting things at school.

        So, Jerry, what's the weirdest thing to happen to you?

        “We were in a church, and we had a sound system of wireless microphones. One of my actors was testing his mike. He always said funny things to make the other actors laugh. Through the mike, he said, (spooky voice here) "I'm the devil! I'm coming to GET YOU!

        “This woman comes running in. "Turn off the mikes! We're having a funeral next door and it just came through the speaker when they were having a casket viewing!' ”

Storyteller within
        Mr. Handorf is, in some ways, just a kid. (Packaged, however, in a 5-foot-10, muscular body). He reads “tons” of children's books, and has a special fondness for the pop-up variety. He's a lot of things: funny, talented, hyper, stressed out.

        “What I really am inside,” he says, “is a storyteller.”

        But he'd just as soon skip over the story of Jerry Handorf. He'd prefer to talk about Madcap. About what's in the works. About the talented people who have helped make it a success.

        “He wants Madcap to be valued and recognized for the fine work we produce,” says Mimi Richmond, the managing director the past 10 years. She points to Mr. Handorf's belief that “what he creates is more important than the creator.”

        He says much of his storytelling ability came from his grandmother, Agnes Yost. As a boy growing up in Delhi Township, he listened to her fanciful, Appalachian tales about her summer kitchen, about pots and pans flying around the room.

        “I loved her stories,” he says. “The sad thing is she never got to see any of my puppet shows, which really kind of bums me out. I think I'm always trying to atone for that, or trying to reach out to her for that.”

Talent discovered at 16
        He discovered puppetry almost by accident. At age 16 he attended a movement theater workshop that included puppet-making, and somebody told him he had a talent for it.

        “I came home and started building puppets. I was like, "This is really cool.' Because you know what? I never gave puppets much thought as being a real career. I mean, they're puppets.”

        He went to Brooklyn to earn a fine arts degree from Pratt Institute, then worked a couple years for Jim Henson's Muppets. Feeling unfulfilled, he left. “One of my (college) professors said, go someplace where you feel comfortable and start your company there.”

        So he returned to Cincinnati and co-founded Madcap with Beth Kattelman (who left in 1989). Buoyed early on by a small grant from the Fine Arts Fund, the company took shape. A big growth spurt followed the arrival of Ms. Richmond in 1989.

        Today, Madcap's funders include the city of Cincinnati, the Fine Arts Fund's Community Arts Fund, the Greater Cincinnati Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council.

        The company has 18 full-time employees and several part-timers. It tours four troupes; a fifth performing group consists mostly of office staff. Mr. Handorf sometimes performs in his plays, as he will in Jackie & the Beanstalk.

        Aretta Baumgartner moved here from Chicago to join the troupe.

        “A little bit of Jerry is with us on the road,” she says, “because these are his puppets. These are his scripts. I haven't met anyone like him. The childlike energy and optimism he has is infectious.”

        Students at Immaculate Heart of Mary, where Mr. Handorf and three Madcap actors spent last week, won't argue.

Youngsters rave
        “It was like an angel gave me a chance to change my life,” says fourth-grader Brendan Sullivan of Anderson Township. “It changed my life because when I retire from (playing) sports, I wanted to be a lawyer, but now I want to be an actor.”

        “It was awesome,” says fifth-grader Steve Gartner of Anderson Township. “I thought he was really funny. He did good impressions with the voices, and he was good with the puppets.” Steve and his sister Melissa, a second-grader, “talk about (Madcap) every night,” says their mother, Ann Gartner.

        Such comments, which Mr. Handorf hears often, are gratifying. And yet, “To be honest,” he says, “the stress sometimes gets me down because it's such a big company.”

        The bigger the company, the more material he must produce. He worries about maintaining quality. About schools that say they want multicultural programs, then back off. About getting bored. About staying fresh.

        Exercise helps relieve the stress. He does aerobics every other day. And a lot of push-ups.

        “It is calming because I'm hyper, and it just wears me down,” he says.

        But Ms. Richmond knows Mr. Handorf well enough to know this: “When he gets really calm and really quiet, there's probably something wrong.”

Hooked on the process
        So, despite the pressures of an upcoming show, all must be well in Jerry Handorf's world on this day, because he's anything but quiet. He's revved up, with all these ideas he wants to talk about.

        Like Two Crummy Kids, the Handorf version of Hansel and Gretel.

        “It takes the play from the witch's point of view: What if she was providing a service to the community by making gingerbread children for parents who couldn't have kids. What if the dough she used for one batch of cookies was spoiled, and the kids came out bad, and she had to get them back?

        “Doesn't that sound like a fun play?”

        Yes, Jerry, yes!

        “I think the creative process is really important,” he says. “The idea of having something in my head, and bringing it out and actually having it sitting in front of me, that's probably the best thing in my life.”

IF YOU GO
        • What: Jackie & the Beanstalk, part of the Hats Off series, a collaboration between Madcap Productions and Cincinnati Art Museum.

        • When: 1 and 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; and Jan. 30-31.

        • Where: Cincinnati Art Museum.

        • Tickets: $7, $5 children; includes museum admission.

        • Also in the series: Granny Perkins & the Will O' the Wisp, March 6-7 and 13-14; An Arabian Adventure (featuring Tanglewood Marionettes from Connecticut), April 17-18 and 24-25.

        • Information: 721-0300.

       

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