Hell's Bottom Congress Of Puppets : the E.S.P.i.a.n.s.

Aloha friends/folk/family

We all breathe the same air everywhere.

Aroha

Aroha Nui

The Hell's Bottom Congress Of Puppets multi media Satire ( The ESPians ) will have a 12 part song cycle - to be released on alternate Wednesdays in Print through StreetSensemedia.org and as web creations for emotional seeding of the social media on this web page CongressOfPuppets.blogspot.com

To contribute to this production via the Street Sense Vendor App...

Street Sense Media App lets you pay vendors if you don't have cash! For iOS and Android. http://streetsensemedia.org/app vendor #671 Saul Tea

The 2D cartoons are storyboards for the Puppet Show Music Video Parodies of the System of Heartless Profiteering which endangers the futures of populations to enrich the crowd Utah Phillips called "The Bum On The Plush ".

The videos will premier in the interval, at the speed of production by a homeless disabled climate refugee chasing the true Oscar award - the Garbage Can Puppet Award of:

Establishing a sanctuary for homeless and refugee pregnant women in an organic garden that incorporates a school for midwifery & obstetrics into a center for disaster relief preparedness training.

Until there are no pregnant women living homeless and in fear of the depredations of extinction causing materialists on the future of that child - in the entire world - then the producers of this material will also be emotionally, socially and spiritually unhomed.

We all breathe the same air, everywhere.

Water is life.

To contribute to the production and to the Hoped for practical workshop garden that serves the Midwifery in finding solutions to the individual situations of Economic And Ecological Refugee Pregnancy, Saul Tea is vendor #671 on the StreetSenseMedia.ORG/APP

https://www.streetsensemedia.org/article/real-talk-about-truth-and-deception/#.X5HMe9BKhPY

King of the Road:

Saul Aroha Nui Tea’s path to healing through puppeteering

BY JAKE MAHER

jake@streetsensemedia.org

Saul Aroha Nui Tea describes himself as a

“climate refugee:” He recently moved to D.C.

after forest fires in California and a dispute with

his landlord, a former friend, persuaded him that

it was time to leave the West Coast.

The move to D.C. was just the latest in a life

of frequent change. Tea, born in 1975, says he

spent about 20 years hitchhiking across the country and has

been to D.C. and every one of the 48 contiguous states state

except Delaware.

“The guy in that old song, ‘I know every handout in every

town and every lock that ain’t locked when no one’s around,

king of the road?’ That was me,” Tea said.

The cartoons from his childhood have become some of his

most important influences. “It was Jim Henson that saved me

all this time,” said Tea, referring to the creator of the Muppets

and Sesame Street.

Tea had an abusive childhood. He has lingering PTSD from

being physically beaten at a Catholic school in his hometown

of Milwaukee. “The only place I had safety in all that time,”

he said, “was watching the Muppet show, Sesame Street, all

that stuff.”

Since 2016, he’s been channeling those comforting memories

into his own puppetry as a form of therapy. His latest work is

a multi-part folk opera featuring a cast of the “Hell’s Bottom

Congress of Puppets.”

His first work for Street Sense Media was based on a Street

Sense Media writers’ workshop prompt asking writers to

reflect on the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Tea gathered his

notes and ideas for certain puppet characters and wrote a song

celebrating her life.

For this project, he’s taken a step back to create a collection

of Weird Al-style parody takes on popular songs for the

puppets to sing, centered around his observations on the

experiences of poor people. The folk opera will also provide

more background information on the characters he’s been

working on for some time.

His first draft of the project, he acknowledged, lacked in

accessibility for the audience. “For me, as a childhood PTSD,

active schizophrenic trying to get things to make sense using

seven-dimensional media like print and puppets and music

and stuff like that,” he said, “that’s a whole lot for someone

to take in at first glance.”

Part of the challenge is that Tea’s work draws on a personal

mythology built on a wide range of experience and thought.

Tea developed his puppetry working as a camping outfitter for

a program for veterans with PTSD in California. He would put

on puppet-emceed talent shows for the community when they

went on a camping trip to enjoy a fireworks-free Fourth of July.

“The drum circle until you’re tired around the fire, and then

when everyone’s exhausted they take turns off of the drums,

and then you can sit and talk comfortably in the middle of the

drum circle around the fire — the PTSD scenario that comes

out of that is incredibly transformative for a lot of veterans, and

that’s what I focused on for my adult life,” Tea said.

Animal rights is another of the themes in his work and

the inspiration for the character LMNOP Soup, an elephant,

based on his time working for the Barnum and Bailey Circus

in the early ‘90s before an experience with a member of PETA

persuaded him to leave the organization.

But the most important foundation of his puppetry is his

favorite Muppet, Oscar the Grouch.

All of his puppets are made from material he’s found

scavenging in garbage cans. The puppets in the Hell’s Bottom

Congress of Puppets are made from trash from the Logan

Circle area, known in the 19th century as Hell’s Bottom, then

a notoriously dangerous part of the city.

Tea prides himself on working with recycled materials

and rejects a culture of disposable goods, which he considers

to go hand-in-hand with traditionally European values and

specifically land-use practices. He drew parallels between the

gentrification of Hell’s Bottom — the District refused to renew

the liquor licenses of any bars in the area in 1891 leading

to an increase in the value of the neighborhood — with the

more recent gentrification of Logan Circle and the District as

a whole. D.C. was ranked as the city with the 13th highest

proportion of gentrifying neighborhoods by the National

Community Reinvestment Coalition this year, a drop off from

2019, when it was the highest ranked.

“All the real trendy white people have moved there now and

it’s a real nice place and everybody loves this neighborhood

on 14th and U — and man, are there a ton of people just

dying outside their doors,” he said. “Oscar the Grouch is

crawling out of garbage cans around here and his goal is to

tell everybody, ‘Guess what? You’re false, you’re freaky and

you’re fraudulent.’”

A concern for marginalized people is at the core of his

puppeteering. He said that the basis of the folk opera would

be the experiences of poor people, and he is outspoken about

his support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

“The Black Lives Matter movement is very, very simple,”

he said. “It’s because for 150 years, the people in this country

weren’t allowed to get loans if they weren’t standard colonial

white people.” The Federal Housing Administration refused

to offer mortgages to Black people from its founding in 1934

until the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968.

Indigenous cultures are also a major source of inspiration

for Tea, who said he identified with the protagonist of Aldous

Huxley’s “Brave New World.” He said he has camped

extensively with members of the Hopi and Dineh nations and

derived his puppets in part from Hopi kachina dolls. Kachina

dolls are figures that represent spirits of animals or ancestors

or of deities and elements that are part of the Hopi religion.

Tea is at a time of transition in his life. He legally changed

his name in January of this year to Saul Aroha Nui Tea, after

realizing through therapy that his given name triggered flashbacks

to traumatic incidents from his childhood. “Saul Tea” is meant

to sound like “Salty,” and Aroha Nui is used as a greeting and

pleasantry by the Maori people, the indigenous people of New

Zealand. Tea said he spent a year in Rotorua, New Zealand, in

1992 with a half-Maori family as part of a high school student

exchange that had a profound impact on him.

He recently began wearing an eye patch over his right

eye because after an injury to it he’s suffered persistent

hallucinations of children being abused, part of the trauma

from his childhood.

Part of his reason for coming to D.C. was hearing the NPR

program Studio 1A, broadcast by local station WAMU, housed

in American University in D.C. From being chosen to read

the rules and policies to the room at various 12-step program

meetings, he discovered he had a natural voice for radio, and

was encouraged by people he knew to pursue a career in

broadcast journalism. Hearing the broadcast from D.C. was

the push he needed to move to the District.

After moving to D.C. and chatting with a Street Sense

Media vendor, Tea realized that the writing, podcasting and

film classes offered were a good opportunity to expand his

work in puppeteering. Broadcast journalism is the long-term

goal, but for now he’s focusing on perfecting the Hell’s Bottom

Congress of Puppets. He relates them to a metaphor he heard

while camping with the Lakota and Blackfoot tribes, when he

was told that if promoting understanding and harmony and

other Native American values were “gloves” that fit his hands,

he should wear them.

The puppets, Tea said, “are things that are clearly good

gloves to my hands as therapy tools.”

8 // STREET SENSE MEDIA // OCT. 21 - NOV. 3, 2020

VENDOR PROFILE

STREETSENSEMEDIA.ORG // 9

Real Talk About Truth and Deception

BY SAUL TEA

Artist/Vendor

This is page one of a 12-part song book accompanying the “Hell’s

Bottom Congress Of Puppets” folk opera,

created by Saul Aroha Nui Tea.

The song is loosely inspired by The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

Look for the rest of the opera in future editions of Street Sense and find music videos made with puppets of the characters, along with more information about the project, at

CongressOfPuppets.blogspot.com

10 // STREET SENSE MEDIA // OCT. 21 - NOV. 3, 2020

Thursday, November 5, 2020

Love's Voice

Monday, October 26, 2020

Real Talk About Truth And Deception

Saturday, October 24, 2020

The Schedule of Production

Thursday, October 22, 2020

Street Sense Debut of "Hell's Bottom Congress Of Puppets" and Introductory Interview about the Artist

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

the Congress Of Puppets @ Street Sense Media while LMNO Pea Soup is off ...

Monday, October 12, 2020

The Hell's Bottom Congress Of Puppets