​Ramona Jan - Marionettes

A suburban teenager from Livingston, New Jersey, Ramona Jan would sneak into Manhattan, unbeknownst to her parents, to play guitar and sing on the streets of New York. Raised on Punk and New Wave, Jan played in bands like The Comateens, Dizzy and the Romilars and Venus Flytrap. She became a seasoned street busker when she toured Europe with Venus Flytrap. “We were three girls before the Go Go’s were around, playing instruments and singing three part harmony,” says Jan. “We dressed like whores and raked it in.” They were arrested on several occasions back when it was illegal to perform on the streets for money.

Still in high school, she auditioned for the Herbert Bergdorf Acting Studio and was accepted. She says she was not a very good actor, but had a knack for putting herself out there. Call it her punk sensibility, but Jan is fearless and quite comfortable with falling flat on her face - like stage-diving into a Tuesday night crowd at CBGB’s. “I’m the kind of person that if I get an idea I don’t think beyond that.”

When Jan lived on the Upper West Side, she had a first floor balcony, which she thought would make the perfect stage. Her two roommates were Stanislavsky method actors. “Every day there was this whole barrage of women with baby carriages going to the park,” says Jan. “We need to do a puppet show!” she exclaimed. Reality Galaxy Puppet Theatre was born. They made their own puppets, performed two shows a day and actually made a living.

In 1997, she moved with her husband and child to Damascus, Pennsylvania. Jan opened Vintage Bling, an industrial art boutique, where she curates repurposed found objects. She has her own line of hats, lamps and handbags that patchwork her many lives as punk rocker, puppeteer, actress and artist. The beauty of her work rests in the overt histories and the DIY philosophy. I can see Betsey Johnson or Johnny Depp wearing one of her hats or see one of her lamps in Marilyn Manson’s den.

She is a member of Yarnslingers, a local acting troupe, where she performs regularly. For one of the Yarnslingers’ performances she made a marionette and a crudely-built control mechanism. Soon she was approached to build a twelve-foot puppet for a local high school’s production of The Little Shop of Horrors.

In the world of puppetry, the control mechanism is a trade secret and very hard to master. She bought and studied six rare out-of-print books on marionettes. She then found a series of YouTube videos by Dublin’s Grafton Street Puppeteer. She reached out to the puppeteer, but learned he was a recluse. She contacted Hannah Gorman, a puppet maker in the Czech Republic, where a traditional marionette scene thrives. Gorman had a control mechanism she was saving and gave it to Jan. The director of the renowned Harlequin Theatre in London was reluctant to share trade secrets, but finally sent Jan some schematics on control mechanisms.

In the United States there is very little interest in marionette work. Except for the movie industry, marionette work is not done on a small scale. “There is no one on the streets of New York doing it,” says Jan, surprisingly, where almost anything goes and competition is high.

Traditionally, marionettes talk to each other, but Jan’s puppets are cabaret performers. Her puppets have no set routine except performing their song. The daughter of a jazz bebop saxophone player, improvisation has always been a part of her creative process and her life. “You have to study it like it’s a new musical instrument,” says Jan. “The puppets are a string instrument with drums because you have to do the rhythm as well.”

While her control mechanisms are crude in comparison to skilled puppet makers, they do what she wants them to do. Sometimes she controls a puppet that would ordinarily take two or three puppeteers to maneuver, but, because she knows no other way, she just does it. “The best marionette operators are not always the most technically skilled,” says Jan. “The best marionette operators are people who wanted to be actors.” Decades later, the self-proclaimed bad actress is finally acting. When Jan is on, the strings disappear and her audience forgets she is there.

One of her puppets, Lucinda Sparkle, started as a Burmese marionette from the 1930s. “It was a man and I turned it into woman,” says Jan. Her puppets take on a life of their own. “In the middle of building them you see they are going in a whole other direction; you might want a juggler but you get an ice skater,” says Jan.

She makes all her marionettes from found objects and upcycled materials. Like a modern-day Frankenstein, her puppets are transmuted from common parts to a magical creation with artistically crude delineations. Her puppet, Dagney Steambrink, was once a Brat Doll. She searches eBay for doll appendages. When Jan performs her puppets hang from a macabre metal frame, still, lifeless, until the hands are lifted and the spirit takes over.

Jan’s stringed troupe awaits.