Episode 19: Z Puppets Rosenschnoz

In this lively and inspiring episode of Creativity on Tap, host Frank Sentwali sits down with Shari Aronson and Chris Griffith, co-founders of Z Puppets Rosenschnoz, a Minneapolis-based puppetry company that’s been sparking wonder and laughter for over 25 years

Chris and Shari share their origin story, from their roots in playwriting, clowning, and street performance to their creative fusion in puppetry. They reflect on the joy of collaboration and their long-standing partnership with COMPAS as teaching artists, helping learners of all ages make meaning through art

The conversation centers on their glowing, science-inspired stage show “Cellula,” which turns the process of cell division into a blacklight-filled visual and musical adventure. Inspired by Shari’s childhood fascination with her mother’s microscope, Cellula blends art and science to celebrate curiosity, awe, and interconnectedness. 

Frank and the Z Puppets founders also discuss how STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) benefits from artistic imagination, how puppetry engages children and adults alike, and why gathering for live storytelling remains vital in an era of screens

The episode also delves into Chris’s Cherokee heritage, his commitment to preserving endangered Indigenous languages, and his creation of “musical adventures in Cherokee futurism” that blend tradition and innovation

Cellula Info (tix etc.) (Oct. 23-25)

About COMPAS
COMPAS (compas.org) is a nonprofit with 50 years of experience delivering creative experiences to millions of Minnesotans of all ages and abilities, particularly those from historically marginalized communities. COMPAS connects professional teaching artists with students, older adults, and other community members to inspire creativity and empower voices.

About Creativity on Tap
Creativity on Tap is produced by COMPAS. In each episode, Creativity on Tap brings together educators, entrepreneurs, elected officials, parents, and other community leaders to discuss creativity and answer the question: What is creativity, and how can it solve the unique challenges facing today's world?

Creativity On Tap is part of Creativity Saves the World, an initiative led by COMPAS to explore, celebrate, and emphasize the pivotal role creativity can and must play in shaping a world that prioritizes equity, justice, and inclusivity.

Theme music (played at the end of the episode), "Krank It," was produced by COMPAS Teaching Artist Bionik.

Transcript

Creativity on Tap - Z Puppets

Welcome to Creativity on Tap. Creativity on Tap is a series of conversations produced by Compass about the value and importance of creativity. For more information about Compass and how creativity saves the world, visit C-O-M-P-A-S.org. I am your host, Frank Centrale, and I hope you enjoy this episode of Creativity on Tap.

My guest today is Sherry Aronson and Chris Griffith, co-founders and creative directors of Z Puppets Rosenschnaz. If you've never heard of Z Puppets, you are in for a treat. Since 1998, Sherry and Chris have been leading people of all ages and abilities into the power of playfulness and imagination.

With handcrafted puppetry, inventive music, and quirky humor, they transform even complex ideas into fun, meaningful arts experiences. Their shows range from going to dark ping-pong balls, circuses, to mindful musicals starring monkey-mind pirates. And they've even brought this mix of music, laughter, and wonder to schools, museums, festivals, and performing arts centers all over the country.

Z Puppets are members of the Compass Teaching Artists roster, and as Compass Teaching Artists, they invite kids, adults, and entire families to make meaning of the world through the arts. Today, Sherry and Chris are here to talk about Cellula, a glow-in-the-dark adventure that turns the science of cell division into a story about wonder and curiosity, and about how art, science, and community come together to light people up in new ways. Please welcome Sherry Aronson and Chris Griffith.

Hello, hello, hello. Hello. Thank you for that introduction.

You wanna say hi, Chris? Hi, Chris. Thank you, everybody. Yeah.

Good to be here. Already, you can see that Z Puppets is full of quick wit and a sense of humor. So I'm excited for this conversation and excited to hear about Cellula.

And I just know by the time we're done with this, people are gonna be so encouraged to be like, what is this? We gotta figure this out. But before we get into Cellula, let's talk about Z Puppets. And I'm gonna say this again, make sure I got it right for me.

Z Puppets rose and shenaz, correct? Excellent, yeah. All right. Yeah, you just say it with a little pizazz and a grin and you got it.

All right. Holy snaz. There you go.

You can also say Z Puppets for short. All right. So tell me about your origin story.

I'll start with you, Sherry. Tell us how did Z Puppets become a thing? Well, I came out of playwriting and Chris came out of street performance, being a juggler. And we met in the wilds of Minneapolis in South Minneapolis, in the Heart of the Beast puppet and mask theater.

And we fused our skills and what we were interested in and out came Z Puppets rose and shenaz. So puppetry just gives you a chance to really fuse a bunch of different art forms. There's writing, there's design, construction, and then we're always mixing music in there.

So it really gives you a lot of opportunity for versatility. Indeed. Well, I got to ask this question because as we were playing around with the pronunciation of rose and shenaz, I got to do it every time, Chris.

Where did the name, like what is Z Puppets rose and shenaz? Where did that moniker come from? Well, a lot of our, especially our early stuff, you know, we've been doing this for over 25 years, approaching 30, actually. But a lot of the, especially in the early days, we were, because I came from a street performance, juggling physical comedy kind of world. A lot of our early performances were very much influenced by kind of a European style of clowning.

And we often bring clowning into it, physical humor, and we would wear red noses, and we would just really play with the audience and audience interactions and stuff. And so when it came time to pick a name, somehow we ended up on rose and shenaz as kind of a fun made up way to celebrate a red nose. It made us giggle and laugh for about two weeks solid, just thinking about picking up the phone saying, Z Puppets rose and shenaz, may I help you? My mother's maiden name is Rose.

And it wasn't until just a few years ago that we realized that her father, when he came over from Germany, had shortened it to Rosencrantz. So we're not too far off from a play name. Everything that you guys do seems to just exude creativity, all the way down to the thoughtfulness in your moniker and the creativity that comes with that.

Tell us about your time so far as a compass teaching artists on roster and what led you to join the compass team? Well, a lot of times when people ask us about, like how long have you been doing this? We say since way last century. Yes, since the 1900s. Yes, exactly.

And so we had been on the compass roster years ago. And then as we were doing a bunch of different projects that were taking us across the country, we fell off the roster for a few years. And then we decided to rejoin.

A big part is the amount of respect that educators have for compass and different program coordinators. They really see it as a way, it can be hard when you're programming an event and you don't know all the artists that are available. And so a lot of people really treat compass as a way of, okay, these are pre-selected artists of high enough quality to be on the compass roster.

And so, one of the things about being a full-time artist is you don't get to do your art full-time. People think, oh, you must be just playing with ping pong balls and red noses all day. And the reality is that on a good week, it's more, it's really like 75% admin and organizing and planning and all the other stuff that doesn't look as fun.

And so we've found it helpful to have that support, that infrastructure that compass gives us and puts us in contact with new and different people. Beautiful, that's what we are here for. People ask me all the time when I'm out in public circles, when can I see you do, where do you do your spoken word poetry? And my response is always wherever they pay me.

So doing puppet work, doing clown work, doing juggling work, that's not something that you just can do. It has to be something that's innate, that's in you. So I wanna just, and we can go first, Chris, and then Sherry, just briefly, give us a little backstory about what was young Chris like, what was young Sherry like, and what made you kind of go into this form of artistic expression? What were those experiences or that experience as a child that kind of guided you on this path? Oh, well, you wanna go all the way back.

Okay. I mean, as brief as you can make it, we got a lot of stuff to get to, but I do want to listen and kind of know like, how does someone decide to go into clowning and puppet work? Yeah, well, I had a lot of really early influences. I'm of the generation that grew up, is the first generation watching Sesame Street, and then later the Muppets.

And so my world was, on the television anyway, was completely focused on that. I was also, I think, pretty young, maybe six or seven years old when I grew up outside of Philadelphia. And Philadelphia was on one of the first stops after, I think it was after they came to New York, a Swedish mime troupe called Moominschans that took over the airwaves in the 70s, especially early 80s.

But their first world tour, when they first came to the United States, they came to New York and then they came to Philadelphia, and I was lucky enough to be taken to see them. And they were really influential on me. They just used found objects and unexpected regular everyday things like toilet paper and slinkies and things like that.

And they would put them on their faces and on their heads and make just really imaginative and incredible worlds. Around the same time, I also got to see Marcel Marceau perform live. And that was both of those things together, just my parents said they used to turn off the TV and just watch me all night.

Because that's all I wanted to do was stuff like that. Were you an only child, Chris? I have an older sister, but she was very patient with me. And at some point, my grandmother cut out a refrigerator box and sewed curtains and we made a puppet stage and raided my grandfather's sock drawer and made puppets.

And I took that around my aunts and uncles' houses and got an early taste of what my future would be like. I went away from it for a while in junior high and high school, and then in college came back into it with an internship at Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater that turned into a job. And I was lucky enough to work.

And that was actually my first introduction to Compass was when I was working at Heart of the Beast. And then as we started forming our own company and stuff, we kind of said we need to be a part of Compass also. And so, yeah, that's kind of a short answer that I had a lot of really talented and good influences way back when that just shaped my whole way of thinking.

I mean, I think the key thing that you mentioned there is just exposure, having parents that exposed you to the arts and that exposed you to things that you could do to be creative besides just sitting in front of the boob tube. And shout out to Sesame Street and PBS because, yeah, we're all from that generation. And yeah, I don't know what I would have done without Big Bird and company.

Sherry, tell us how you kind of ventured into this world. What was young Sherry like and what family members was she entertaining? I'm the youngest in my family. So I got the older siblings to entertain, but I was really into Barbies and would create scenes with the Barbies.

And when you talk about exposure and what you open up to kids when they're young, my parents were both scientists, but they love the arts. So we would go to all sorts of arts events. And I think that, and my mother in particular was really into encouraging imagination.

Like when I was in grade school and she found out that they were handing out pre-printed coloring sheets, she told the teachers that she wanted me to flip the paper over and write stories about what was in the picture instead of just coloring within the lines. So I really took to writing and was headed, I thought I wanted to go into advertising because I was a big fan of the show Bewitched. And well, Darren Stevens gets to go into this ad agency and think of wacky nutty ideas all day long.

So that's what I wanna do. And then pretty quickly having an internship in an ad agency, I realized, oh, I didn't wanna be Darren. I wanted to be Samantha with all the magic.

And I fell into theater and writing for a theater that was devoted to new works. And so that was my start in theater in Indiana. And then I came here to Minneapolis and pretty quickly fell into puppetry by coming across in the Heart of the Beast and then starting to work together with Chris.

And it just is a form of magic of creating whole worlds. And again, you're designing, you're building, you're performing, you're writing. And so it just is a very tantalizing art form.

Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. Many of our listeners have not seen a puppet show since they were children or maybe they took their children to a puppet show. I had the opportunity to, in 2022, my daughter was part of a youth theater group, just a four-person cast that wrote an original play that got accepted by the National Theater Arts High School, whatever, yada yada association.

But they got a chance to go to the 75th Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. And as part of being there, we got a chance to go to a whole lot of shows. And there was a couple of shows that we went to where puppetry was a part of the theater production.

But most of us, unless we have small children that we've taken to a puppet show, as adults have not seen a live puppet show since we were really young. How would you explain to adults why puppetry is such a powerful way to tell stories and why it can resonate with someone who maybe hasn't been in childhood for 40 years like myself? Sure, well, at its root, a puppet is a metaphor, right? And so it's like, there's some people who get really interested in trying to recreate every accurate move and be as anatomically correct as you can be with a puppet. But to me, what's more interesting is the imagination and the things that it sparks in the minds of the performer and the minds of the viewers of the audience.

And so when you make a puppet, like I always say, I would rather have a puppet that makes you think of a dog than to actually have a puppet that looks like a dog. Yes. And because there's certain things, you don't have to have all the ears and the fur.

That helps, but what you really need is just the essence of a dog. And so for me, what makes puppetry most exciting is when we can create a world of imagination and then invite the audience in to play with us and to bring their imaginations in. And all of our imaginations kind of meet at the front of the stage in this explosion of magic that Sherry talked about earlier kind of happens.

That's the best puppetry to me. And you'll find that in a lot of European countries, like you mentioned, celebrate puppetry as its own art form. Here, it's often relegated to children's theater, which I actually enjoy performing for children in some ways more than adults because children are honest.

They'll tell you exactly what they think of things. They're a tough audience. And it's also a huge responsibility, I think, to be able to present high quality work to children.

I think they deserve it. And I think that when they see it, they recognize it and it sticks with them. And sometimes I think maybe we're not necessarily raising the next generation of great artists, but we might be raising the next generation of art supporters and people who go to the arts and who support the arts.

And also just sparking creativity, even if they don't go into the arts at all, that creativity that can go into STEM fields and whatever field and just a better life. Yeah, a fuller human existence through that creative exchange. Yeah, and I think it's important also just to clarify that how different the vast range of what a puppet can be.

The first show that we ever created together was made, well, I should say is made out of ping pong balls. And we created these circus characters out of each ping pong ball and they glow in the dark and the whole show glows in the dark. And the reason I changed from was to is, is we created that show together as our first collaboration and we're still performing that show.

We're still touring that show. And at one point, somebody, a program coordinator said, well, but do you have something that's any show that where the puppets are cute and fuzzy? Because that's what they had in mind with more Muppet style talking mouth, furred animals. And so we do have that.

We have the monkey mind pirates where each monkey character represents a challenge to finding calm. So that kind of ties into what Chris, that does tie into what Chris said about metaphors. We have Ansel who has a challenge with distraction and focus.

And he's named for Ansel Adams, who also had that challenge and whose parents handed him a camera and that literally gave him focus. So, and then we have with the show that we're doing in October with Cellula, some people would be like, oh, is that a puppet? And it's, we were, yeah, it's a cell and different cells and different for a different magnification levels. And so it's not cute and fuzzy.

There's nothing that has a moving mouth. But after the show, kids will come up and they say, I wanna see Cellula. I wanna see Cellula, the main cell that the show has.

And it's like, doesn't have a face, doesn't have, but we're able to strike that emotional bond of getting the audience to care what happens to the cell. Well, you kind of stole my thunder because that's exactly where we're going next. I was just going to say that you have mentioned a couple of times that your parents had a science background and you've mentioned the relationship between creativity and STEM.

And I just wanna throw on there that, Chris, you talked about the influence of imagination and how in Europe puppetry is still very much its own craft. And my personal philosophy is we do a heck of a job of just extracting the imagination out of young people in our public education system. So it's really important what you all do.

But then I wanted to talk about your latest production, Cellula. And as you mentioned, Sherry, it's about cell division and it's also described as joyful and magical. And you started to explain the show a little bit to people who have never heard of it.

But let's go in a little bit more detail about Cellula. What is the show and maybe a little bit of what you hope people walk away feeling, thinking after they've been entertained by this really creative production that you guys have put together? Yeah, well, so the inspiration for the feeling of Cellula, of the show, came from a feeling I had when I was four or five years old and my mother showed me the microscope that she had and we looked through the microscope at what they call a flatworm, which is one of the first things that students get to see under a microscope. A planaria is its name.

And it was so cute. And that feeling of wonder that I couldn't see it with my eyes but I could see it with a microscope. So that feeling of awe and wonder.

And I really consider Charlotte, the planaria, I named her as my first pet, really. Wow. But that feeling of just marveling.

And so with Cellula, what we do is go under the, into the world under the microscope and show on stage an expression of what people would see if they were looking at cell division. And throughout the show, there's a mother narrating what happens with quite a lot of imagination, but staying factual to what happens. And the mother is narrating, bringing her daughter into that world the way my mother did for me.

And it's really an homage to my mom who was a biologist and a naturalist and always made room for imagination without needing to stray from the facts. And so one of the, so the entire show glows in the dark. We're using black light puppetry, which really matches a lot of the images that you see of cell science if you look around.

And one of the reasons that is, is that those scientists choose colors to dye the cells so that they can see things more clearly. So here's a moment where scientists are doing something that artists do. They're choosing colors.

That's one of the main messages also of the show is science and art are intertwined and there's a lot of overlap and interplay between science and art. And we don't have to leave one for the other and we can celebrate and explore both at the same time. So throughout the show, we're zooming in and out of different magnification levels.

And when people come to the show, they'll see we have all these microscope scientists who are volunteering to set up microscopes so that people can actually get a look under the microscope before and after the show. And one of the fun discoveries that came up last time, the head of the University of Minnesota Imaging Center brought his very fancy electron microscope and that's the type that uses those fluorescent dyes. And we were inspired by the images from those fluorescent microscopes, those electron microscopes.

And what he did was dye his cell sample that he brought to the microscope activity stations to match the cells in our show. So it was a perfect loop of art, science playing together. That is, I just did a performance at Da Vinci Academy, which is an arts and science school.

And so as you're talking, I'm like, man, I really hope they know about this show. Right in their wheelhouse and the kids there would love, they responded well to me standing on stage doing spoken word for 50 minutes. I think they would absolutely love this here.

One of the many special aspects of Cellula is that these October performances you have coming up are the result of some unique partnerships. Can you guys speak, either Chris or Sherry, whomever, speak a little bit to the partnerships that you all have developed as you've created this upcoming production? Sure. One thing I'd like to say, and maybe Chris is just about to say it, but one thing that's so essential to the show is the key collaboration with the improvisational vocalist, Monkwe Ndosi in Libya.

Oh, yes. And they are so amazing as musicians and vocalists in this style of improvisation. And people say, oh, well, can you record them as a soundtrack? And it's, no, it's all live because what they're playing off of what they see, we're playing off of what we hear.

And then Chris, you want to talk about? Yeah. Partnerships? Yeah, and just that was exactly what I was gonna say. So much of the show is about collaboration and collaboration between different art forms, the art form of the jazz improvisational singing style that Monkwe and Libby bring into it.

And then the puppetry that we're doing and just how it crosses over is just continually fascinating. And it really creates this magical world where anything can happen. We also, of course, are partnering with Compass, which is helping us with a community night, which I think is gonna be really fun.

As an artist, one of the things I always really appreciate about Compass too is just the opportunity to be in community with other artists who think similarly and are doing similar things and maybe not doing similar things. And we get to cross-pollinate and share what we're doing with each other. And so that's a really meaningful thing for me.

We also have, there's a few other organizations in town that, well, I should also mention our director, Kurt Hunter is an amazing puppeteer and engineer and marionette artist who has helped us create really thinking outside the box of what is a puppet and what can a puppet be. And this show includes one of the most complicated puppets that I've ever built and seen because of all the different pieces that have to move around and do things to it. And I'm not gonna reveal exactly what it is.

You'll have to come and see it. Yeah, don't tell us. We wanna see it.

But it's, I will say that we performed this show for a festival of puppeteers back in 2019. And it was especially fun because of anybody in the world who could appreciate what we're doing behind the scenes. It was that audience.

And when we brought that puppet out and performed it, we got a really loud cheering from the audience just because they understood what we were actually doing back there. Or if they didn't, sometimes the magic is not knowing how it's done. And they just say, I don't know how two people could do that, but they did.

That's a big part of what excites me too about doing this kind of work. That is awesome. And for the listening audience, if you're not familiar with Mankwe Ndosi and Libby Turner, both of them are amazing vocalists in their own right.

Libby was one of the original vocalists for the original Sounds of Blackness ensemble. And also my oldest daughter's vocal instructor for a period of time. Yeah, going way back.

My oldest daughter's 25. So that tells you how far back I go with Libby. And she tried to teach me how to sing, but she's a vocal instructor, not a miracle worker.

And then Mankwe and I go way back as well, back to when she was part of a collective called FUOS, the Free Urban Arts Society. And that's when I first met Mankwe. And so we go back into spoken word and kind of jazz arts community, probably, oh man, all the way back to 1997, back in the 1900s, way back to 1997.

And both are just amazing with what they can do with their voice. And so now I'm picturing this entire, black light, glow in the dark puppet, storytelling through science, mother, daughter, kind of homage with these wonderful improvisational vocalists with amazing voices. I mean, they could both be singing R&B, jazz, soul, they could sing whatever.

And so I'm just seeing this whole thing and I'm like, yeah, me and my daughter will definitely be on the compass cultural night, community night. So I was just saying, I'm definitely sold. Good, good.

Yeah, one of the key things about Mankwe and Libby is how much playfulness they use in their art form and just in who they are. And it just makes us a great combination. Yeah, it's just amazing to be able to perform with them and to perform with the direction of Kurt Hunter.

And you were gonna add to that, Chris? I was just gonna say a couple of fun facts about Mankwe and Libby too, is they sing together as part of the Give Get Sextet, which is a group of really talented singers that you might see out in the community also. And one thing I just love as a side note on each of their resumes, Libby sang back up for Prince once on the Batman theme. So every time I hear the Batman theme, I'm listening for Libby, like, oh, there she is.

And then Mankwe also has performed with the band Atmosphere. Yes. So they're high cred musicians and we're so lucky to be able to perform with them.

Absolutely, I may or may not have stole Libby to do some background vocals on our third album as well. She definitely knows how to do her thing. So what is it that art, in your opinion, can do for science that a science textbook can't? Well, you know, the most surprising comment we got from an earlier time that we did Cellula was from one of these professional scientists who had brought their microscope to be part of this pre and post-show microscope gallery.

And he came up to me and he said, I never quite understood mitosis before. I've never quite understood cell division and now seeing it, I do. And I was shocked because one of the reasons I chose cell division is because I could understand the basics of it.

There's so many complicated things that our cells are doing every moment. And that one I could understand and I could envision how you could express it. And another thing, and this is a very technical response to your question, but another scientist said, my whole career has been studying mitosis and cell division, but I can't change between magnification levels instantaneously the way that you do on stage.

We have a whole day of setup to be able to shift from one magnification level to a higher magnification level. And it's very exciting to be able to just go from one to the other, the way you do boom, boom, boom, and just sparks new insights. Chris, do you wanna? Yeah, well, I was gonna add to that.

That same scientist also told us, admitted to us that after seeing the show several times, he started singing some of the little improv tunes and the little comic bits when he's working in his lab with the microscopes, you know. He called it soothing element, yeah. Yeah, so I do think that, you know, I know that it's affected them, the scientists that we've been able to bring into it, and just being able to make science accessible.

And, you know, we also, after we first created this show, it was almost 10 years ago, and we took it on tour throughout Minnesota, and we were performing in some fairly rural areas, even, you know, just setting up in a school gymnasium and having, you know, all types of kids come in. And one of the teachers before one of the shows was a little skeptical because she had kindergartners, and she's like, they don't know anything about cells. They don't, they're not gonna understand anything about what you're talking about.

And she was a little jaded and a little cynical. After the show, they were, you know, they had to fill a little bit of time as their buses, we're waiting for the buses and stuff. So we were doing a Q&A kind of thing.

And there was a kindergartner in the front row who raised their hand and said, so you mean all of this is happening right now inside of me? And it's like, you got it, you got it. That's all you need to know right now. And you don't need to know all the phrases and terms of mitosis, that you got it, you know.

And what we hope, what we always hope in our shows is that we inspire in children that magic of wonder and awe about the world around them. And that they'll take that either, you know, take it, take the science part and go and study and become a scientist or go and take the art part and go, you know, sing and put together interesting objects and, or take neither part and just enjoy the world around them, you know, and just experience. Or take the education part and decide to teach.

I mean, and that's, that goes into, you know, STEAM. And for those listeners who don't understand, STEAM is the acronym for science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. You know, STEM is always the catch phrase.

And thank goodness that the artists have stood up and fought for the right to not be excluded. And you guys are, you know, people like yourselves are a big part of that, that say, hey, wait a minute. You can't really have science without art, right? And all art is scientific, even for myself as, you know, as a literary artist and performance artist, all art is scientific in some capacity.

And I think the biggest example for me was when I went back to school and started taking some theater voice classes and the class was not about like how to sing or how to manipulate your voice, but it was about the science, the physiology of your voice and the parts of the body that are working together to create the sound. And so, you know, STEAM education is so important and that's what you all are bringing in a really fun and creative and brilliantly crafted way to the public audience. Yeah, we hope so.

Yeah, no, I'm excited to see that the national standards for science education have shifted to be more focused on getting students engaged in concepts and thinking and asking and Minnesota standards have also shifted the academic standards for science. They've shifted to follow because it's more effective than just memorizing facts. It's to, in the beginnings of the engineering design formula, it all begins with ask and imagine.

And really that's such a, that is where, you know, art really intersects where artists are asking and imagining. And so that's a big part of cellular are those two ideas of ask, imagine and then explore. Hmm, so the show is performed under black light and what does that add to the audience experience? Like how does that shape the way the audience feel the show? Well, some people may have limited experience with black lights.

You know, oftentimes you'll see it around Halloween or at a haunted house type of thing or something like that. But black lights are actually from a scientific point of view, very fascinating because it's a particular side of the light spectrum. So you can get into the science of how a black light works, which I'm not going to do right now.

But one of the ways, one of the fascinating things about it is that it's ultraviolet light. And so it reflects off of certain materials that make them really pop. And then anything that is black tends to disappear like pure black just disappears.

So we play with those extremes so that we can just make something boom appear and then disappear and then boom appear again and disappear again. And that is a lot of the magic of when you're watching it, you're not quite sure how it's happening and you give up thinking. We hope that the audience gives up even thinking that there's people doing this.

And they're just watching something happening. And then at the end, when we come out, one of my favorite parts is to show under actual light, this is what we're doing back there. This is what this puppet actually looks like.

And there's a little, sometimes a little disconnect because they're like, but that looks so different. Right, big reveal. Yeah, yeah.

So it really helps in creating an other world and creating this experience of like, you're sitting in the dark and you're watching these things glow and pop and really move in interesting ways. Yeah, and a lot of people use black lights for calming purposes. When there's a calm room in a classroom, a calm corner, often people use black lights.

So a lot of people find it very soothing to be under a black light. And yeah, so I think mesmerizing in terms of the swirl of color and then with the sound of the vocalists, the combined effect is very dazzling. Yeah, I'm trying to picture it all.

And I'm coming to the conclusion that it really sounds like something you just have to experience. Like you can't really visualize it. You just have to go and see it.

And we're in a world where families and young people are accustomed to screens, right? Everything's in a screen. What's special about people gathering in a room to watch a story and this particular story unfold live, right? What do you think is bringing that extra element in this screen world? For my daughter, Matthew, because she's gonna want to come. Well, that is the element that is so exciting about live performance and puppetry performance is the audience and what the audience brings in with their imaginations.

And just to say in this show, there's some of the puppets we're using are fairly small, like the size of a hand or a finger. And some of the puppets are enormous, like a 14 foot tall puppet. So there's quite a range of scale of what you're going to see.

And there's a lot of surprise, we hope, and a lot of delight. And so those are the things that as performers, we just get so excited when we can hear the audience's delight and we can hear their surprise and we can, because we react to that as performers and then we can play with that and kind of ride the roller coaster of responses that the audiences give us. Yeah, and the very first times we did Cellula, we were surprised by the vocalizing of the audience and the singing back to the cells.

So when the cells made sound, the audience would echo that back or be in communication with that. And then as we developed the show further, we had Libby and Mankwe invite the audience in to help sing along. And there just is such a feeling of warmth and rejoicing when Libby and Mankwe are conducting or bringing everyone's voice in the room together.

And really brings out that cells and cell division and cell science is one of the key things in life that we all have in common. There's a lot of divides right now. Well, let's come together and find here is where we all meet, here's where we all share.

And it's a marvel of nature that we all have inside of us. Yeah, just moving parts, right? That's moving at such a rapid speed, it's creating physical matters. It really is unique.

And you talk about the audience interaction aspect and there's somebody who loves watching basketball. I coach basketball and my wife will tell you, why are you yelling at the screen? They can't hear you. They can't, they're not gonna adjust to what you're doing.

Like, why are you yelling at the screen? And so, but you can yell approval at a live show, right? And then that fuels the performers to create that energy that wants to give you more excitement, right? And so no matter how much I yell at the Timberwolves, they don't change their mistakes. Well, and then I think also the ability, the opportunity to be able to look under the microscope before and after the show. And then when the, on the Thursday evening community night with Compass, there'll be an art activity.

So people will get a chance to respond to what they're seeing and what they're hearing at the Compass activity station. And another collaborator we have on the Friday night show is the Curiosity Studio, which has a really similar approach to inviting people in to explore. And people will be able to stop by their station and create an image or a message inspired by their cells and put it on a button and wear it home.

Very interactive, very interactive. So let's let the audience know when the dates of the shows are, the dates, the times. I know that you mentioned that Thursday is the Compass Educator and Community Preview Night and Compass is actually providing food for that free performance.

So you get a free show and you get fed. So let's let the audience first and foremost know what date that is happening. Sure, and everything is happening at Sabathony Community Center in the auditorium at 310 East 38th Street.

And that Compass Community evening is Thursday, October 23rd at 5.30 PM. And that is completely free. And the other shows are, you get to choose your own price for your ticket, including free.

And for all of these events, Native American tribal members have free admission. So the other after Thursday at 5.30, we have Friday at 7.00 PM, Friday, October 24th, Saturday, October 25th at 11.00 AM. And then Saturday, we have an evening show too at 7.00 PM because we found that the show is also, it's not just for kids.

People have told us it's a great date night and they met their spouse, had their first date with their spouse at Cellula. So that's always fun. But for all of these shows, the doors will open a half an hour before so that you can look under the microscope and the microscopes will be there after the show also.

And yeah, so we really intentionally wanted to bring the show to South Minneapolis, which is our neighborhood. And we're excited to be in the building where Prince once went to junior high. Yes, yes.

And yeah, and just are excited about bringing in youth and seniors. There's a group of elders coming from Sabathinee. And so everyone is welcome and invited.

Yeah, and Sabathinee has a beautiful theater auditorium for those of you listening who have never been there. It's really nice and cozy, creates a great environment. And I just wanna recap.

So we're looking at Friday, October 23rd is the Compass Community Night. You can come there and get food, show up at five so that you can look through the microscope, show at 5.30, correct? Yes. And then Saturday you have two shows, a matinee at 3.30, correct? Let's go back because Thursday is the first show.

Oh, Thursday. Thursday, October 23rd. And that's the one that's 5.30. So Thursday is the Compass Community Night.

Yeah. And then Friday you have a 7.30 show, correct? And indoors at? Seven. Seven.

You get there at 6.30. Yes, exactly. You get there at 6.30 and you can look through the microscopes and the shows at seven. And then Saturday you have two shows.

Yes. A matinee and an evening show. Should arrive for the matinee show at around 2.45? 10.30. Oh, it's a morning show.

Yeah, I don't know where I heard 2.30. Arrive at 10.30. For the 11 a.m. show. For the 11 a.m. show. And then Saturday evening arrive at seven.

Yes, arrive at 6.30. At 6.30 for the seven show. And then Sunday you have a no show on Sunday. You got, oh, you're resting on Sunday.

Yeah. Very Christian of you. Saturday is the last chance.

Saturday night is our final show in this run. And all of that information you can find out on our website, zpuppets.org. You guys are mind readers. That's what I was gonna ask next.

Where can they go to find out all this information? Yes. And we should also say that all of this was made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council thanks to legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. The thing that makes Minnesota stand out, the Arts Legacy Fund.

Yes, yes. If you don't know, Minnesota is leading the country right now in arts funding. And we are so lucky to have such funding and such artists and such a community here.

And it shows, because it's hopping all the time. Every weekend, almost every weekday, obviously I'm in the hip hop and spoken word and jazz community, the theater arts community, all varieties of theater and performance arts. The comedy scene is really growing here.

And a lot of friends of mine are standup comics that are now opening up for big names around the country. Like the Minnesota art scene is popping. There once was the kind of saying that there's nothing to do here.

Well, you can't even get to everything. There's so much happening in Minnesota right now. So big ups to all of those, the taxpayers and those legislatures that are making sure that the culture of creativity is vibrant and alive here in the Twin Cities.

I just wanted to double back on one more thing before we go, because you mentioned that native communities can come to, are invited to the show for free. And that, Chris, you have a connection with the Cherokee Nation and a number of your pieces include cultural references to native stories. I know we're kind of backtracking, but I wanted to make sure that we talked about that before we close, because it's important.

So give the audience a little bit more about that history and that mission. Sure, thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, so I'm a tribal member of the Cherokee Nation.

And when I was, I realized as an adult, and I have this clear memory of being with my grandfather when I was about six years old. And my grandfather took me, they lived in a small town in Oklahoma, which is Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where the Cherokee Nation is. And it's basically the end of the Trail of Tears.

And my grandfather took me in to get my tribal registration card when I was six years old. And I didn't put it together until I was an adult that that happened about just a few weeks after the Cherokee tribe ratified its constitution and declared itself sovereign from the United States. There was a period of almost 60, 70 years when the tribe was very, had basically shut down because the government had oppressed it so much.

I'm a direct descendant of the chief of the tribe went during the Trail of Tears. And so the family history and the genealogy and the ancestry has always been extremely important in my family and something that I've grown up hearing about in the stories. But as a child, and even as an adult, what I yearned for, what I really wanted was to know more about the culture and the language.

And we didn't, my grandparents lived in Oklahoma and were part of it, but we lived outside of Philadelphia. So we moved away when I was very young. And so I wasn't growing up immersed in it in the same way that a lot of people were.

But I always asked about that. And every time I asked some of my family, they would always kind of push me aside or say, maybe later, and I didn't understand until I was an adult, the reasons why. There's so many complicated reasons why nobody could or would talk about that then.

But now in the last 15 to 20 years, there's been this whole revitalization of native languages that are now endangered. And Cherokee is one of them. And there's a whole, much more interest and many more resources out there for people like me.

So about eight years ago, I started, at different times in my life, I went down the path of trying to relearn the language. And about eight years ago, I started really seriously to putting some time into it and started realizing what a complicated package that is. That it's not like learning French or Spanish because what you really have to do is learn an entirely new worldview and a different way of seeing the world.

And everything from how words are created and formed to the types of pronouns that are used to describe who we're doing something with that have nothing to do with gender, but they're everything to do with you and me, but not her and the three of us, but not them. And like all of these other factors of community, right? Which tells you something about, tells you a lot about the people who speak the language. And through that process of reconnecting with the language and reconnecting with a community of language learners and first language speakers, I've started really, it's been transformational for me to be able to understand who I am and where I come from and who my people are.

And also having grown up so influenced by Sesame Street, I learned English and how to write and read and the fascination for life through Sesame Street. And I kept thinking, I wanna do something like this for Cherokee, for a Cherokee language, for indigenous languages. But I kept holding back for a while thinking, I need to know more of the language to feel comfortable doing that.

And then I heard an elder speaking, talking about endangered languages. And she said, we're losing speakers faster than we have people learning the language. And if we don't do something right now, it's all hands on deck, this is an emergency.

Wherever you are, if all you know how to do is say hello and thank you and count to three, that counts. And we need it. And that's when I kind of bells went off and I was like, okay, I have a lot of experience with puppetry.

I have a lot of experience with education. I know I can bring stuff to this mission of trying to help get people excited and interested in endangered languages. And that's really when I started back in 2018, creating work that comes out of my own learning of the Cherokee language, where I was at at the time, literally, hello, thank you, counting to three.

And then as I've progressed, now I've got entire songs that are only sung in Cherokee that I've been able to create with my mentor and my teacher and running it by people who are first language speakers and getting their feedback. And it's just been incredible. And incredible to see, first of all, to be accepted by and realize that there is a wide range of spectrum of people who are indigenous.

I always thought I was weird and strange because I present white, but inside I've got all this stuff going on and all this history and genealogy. And then it took me decades before I realized that that's the experience of a lot of indigenous people. We don't necessarily fit into boxes.

And that seems to be what the world is always trying to do is put us into boxes. And so once I realized that, I started realizing the acceptance and the warmth of indigenous people all over the place towards each other. And that even in Minnesota where there's, I can count on one hand, the number of Cherokee people that I've met in my time here.

But the Dakota and the Ojibwe and the tribes that are in the upper Midwest, they're all facing the same struggles and we're all in it together. And we all try to help each other out and we appreciate each other and support each other. And that has been really incredible to me to be able to see that and experience that.

And then to take the work and take it into Oklahoma and perform it for my tribe. And the people in my tribe. And that's also been on a whole nother level, just really an amazing experience.

I was just gonna say that what it looks like, these are musical adventures into Cherokee futurism with a turtle and a wabbit. So taking traditional characters and giving them a 21st century spin and that expresses all of that complexity that Chris was talking about and envisioning a vibrant future for indigenous people and indigenous culture. Thank you for mentioning that.

You're a walking archivist. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're a walking archivist.

And particularly when you're talking about indigenous cultures, so often just if we're talked about at all, we're talked about in the past tense. Yes, as if you don't exist anymore. Yeah, yeah.

And to even think about us in the present can be a challenge, but it's such a radical thought to think of us in the future. And to think about futurism and know this is gonna be continuing. We're still here and we're gonna continue to be here for a long time.

I took a language and culture course and we studied language death and things like that. And really you can't understand a culture without being able to speak and understand the language. Right, right.

And so what you're doing is so commendable because like I said, you're a walking archivist. You are preserving something that modern society, because to the victors go the spoils, so to speak, is trying to suffocate out of existence. And we can't allow that because then once the history is gone, then what happened to the people is gone.

And our future generations need to know better and they can't do better if they don't know better. And so I commend what you all are doing. I mean, we've talked indigenous culture, we've talked European culture, talking about the origin of Rosenstein, right? Right, right.

We have talked STEAM and the importance of the relationship between science and arts. We've talked legacy and lineage. This has been a really deep and dense and broad conversation for the listeners.

We are talking with Z Puppets Rosensnaz with Sherry Aronson and Chris Griffith, co-founders. You can find them at zpuppets.com. The show is called Cellula. It is at Sabathony Community Center in the auditorium premiering October 23rd, ending with two shows on October 25th.

You definitely wanna get out and check this out. Amazing people that have put together a really unique view on, at least from my take on puppetry and science and education and arts and blended it all up into this concoction that uses black light and various size and scale, storytelling, familial history. It's all in there.

I mean, you guys really have it all in there. I'm excited to check out the production. So in closing, is there anything that I missed or that you wanna say to the audience besides get out to Sabathony and check out Cellula? Well, I think it's just in cells we trust.

We better. It's good to spend a little bit of a day just marveling at what our cells are doing. Thank you guys so much for joining us Z Puppets.

Again, the show is Cellula, October 23rd through the 25th. You can get all of your attendance and ticket information, pay what you can, but please do pay something. As you can tell from listening to this podcast, a lot of time, effort, ingenuity, creativity, supplies, materials.

Somehow you got Monkway Ndosi and Libby Turner to participate in this. So please make sure that you contribute when you go out to see Cellula. Thank you, Sherry.

And thank you, Chris, for joining us here at Creativity on Tap. I'm your host, Frank Centrale. And to the people of the world, all I have to say is walk in peace.