No Strings Attached

Will Schutze and I sit in a van rolling down US-75, hopping into the air briefly every few seconds as the vehicle bounces over bumps in the road. As we head towards downtown, Schutze’s lifelong friend Elliot, in the passenger seat tinkering with a camera and tripod, puffs on a cigarette barely making contact with his lips. Lying next to my feet are a dusty top hat and a brown suitcase – the tools of Schutze’s trade.

Performance is Calling

Will’s bed is in the back of the van separated from the rest of the vehicle by a curtain, and when he’s not living in Dallas with his parents’, Will ekes out a living sleeping inside his car like a hermit crab that visits its family on a regular basis. Performance is Will’s calling, and in recent years he’s gotten tangled up in puppeteering. For Will and his close circle of friends and family, the shift into busking – or street performance – wasn’t a shock.

“I thought he’d do something in show business,” Elliot says. “We put on plays when we were kids.”

Elliot Kaiser, Will’s friend and neighbor since the two were in elementary school, helms the A/V equipment during our excursion to Pegasus Plaza. Kaiser’s experience shooting videos of Schutze and his gang of friends skating or pulling pranks led to his involvement in Will’s more recent projects filming his performances as Mr. Bonetangles.

“We’ve always been interested in it [film], more or less. We used to make videos in high school. I was always filming them when they would go on skating exhibitions,” Kaiser says.

Recently Schutze and his crew (including Kaiser and Alex Wagner, a cinematographer) turned their teenaged fascination with video and media into several projects involving Will’s performances including straightforward footage and a possible TV pilot. However, for most of the time since Will started performing in the fall of 2008, he’s kept both his plans and performances running at a modest pace.

“I just thought of it as an odd job to save up money to go out to LA. I got out there and everything happened all at once. I got an agent. I booked this commercial. They were really excited. They were like ‘Wow you’re awesome. This is great!’ and then nothing else happened,” Schutze says, reflecting on his time spent trying to make it in Hollywood.

From L.A. to the State Fair of Texas

Before he made the neo-classic American pilgrimage to that Mecca of lost dreams and cosmetic abundance, though, Schutze experienced puppeteering for the first time and felt an immediate connection with the craft. At the State Fair in 2008, 22-years-old and unsure about his future, Schutze performed as a puppeteer and emcee under the helm of John Hardman. Hardman, who’s behind many of the puppetry attractions at North Park Mall near Christmas and runs the “World on a String” show for the State Fair, trained Schutze for a month before his debut. Hardman’s approach – hands off and organic – led Schutze to appreciate the puppets as more than toys.

“Every time I had a coach or a teacher, it just drove me crazy. I just wanted to figure things out on my own. It was great that John was just like ‘Here go play.’ It just fit perfectly,” Schutze says.

Schutze’s first lesson in the puppet biz was that the majority of a puppeteer’s time is spent taking care of parts and maintaining the puppets with new clothes and coats of paint. With less than a week before the actual show, the puppeteers at the State Fair begin to rehearse their performance.

This focus on foundation and development seeped in Schutze’s creative process now that he busks full-time (although he still performs at the Fair every year). While Schutze loves the time he gets to spend out performing on the streets and meeting pedestrians, he devotes more time thinking about new directions to take his show and clever additions.

The Star of the Show

Even the name of his troupe’s main star – Mr. Bonetangles – took on this type of creative evolution. Starting off with the song “Mr.