Part 7 – The City of Eccentric Dreams

The Jan Hus Statue in the Center of Prague's Old Town Square

Meanwhile Prague was calling. I had been traveling for a couple of months through Europe, visiting friends and hunting down puppet theatres in Europe. The entire time I had essentially been making a Fibonacci spiral towards Prague, the heart of puppetry in Europe. Švankmajer, Skupa, Trnka, Faust, Don Giovanni, Kašpárek, puppetry as history complete with heroic martyrs. The Czech Republic, the eccentric core of Europe, the Surrealist dreamscape, to quote Andre Breton: “Prague, wrapped in its legendary magic, is truly one of those cities that has been able to fix and retain the poetic idea that is always more or less drifting aimlessly through space.” I had come to Prague for the second time, in the second half of April 2005, a little more prepared to unwrap it’s curious puppet mythologies.

Buchty a Loutky presents their version of The Hound of the Baskervilles

My first stop was the Švandovo Theatre to find Buchty a Loutky. Back in Hradec Kralove DRAK Director Jakub Krofta had highly recommended them. They were performing Pes Baskervillessky, their absurd version of the Sherlock Holmes mystery ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’. The lights went down. Someone played slow music on a piano. A tall bearded long-haired gentleman in a suit began to read from Sherlock Holmes. Behind him in an exceptionally funky homemade stage Sherlock Holmes and Watson suddenly appeared. Watson and Holmes were full sized actors who had crammed their heads into the tiny puppet stage. Soon the actors were replaced by little string puppets. At one point Holmes requested tea. Suddenly two full-sized cups appeared on the stage. Water was poured from above. Splashing helplessly on the tiny figures as well as into the porcelain cups. It was then consumed by a couple of puppeteers from the side as the play continued. Suddenly the actors would be in front of the little stage duplicating the movements of the puppets. A model train began to roam around the makeshift stage at one point. At another a puppet is falling and falling and falling, the miniature stage curtain descends suddenly the play stops and the bearded guy starts reading a book on swamps through a microphone. This goes on for five minutes before it starts to dawn on everyone that this is the intermission. He reads for 15 minutes. The evening continued with humor, absurdity and inventiveness blazing away in full glory. Holmes does indeed solve the case. Eventually the play ends as a cello lonely tune is bowed  offstage. And the players take a bow. I approached the guy with the beard… his name was Tomas Procházka. He is the director of the piece. We set an appointment to talk for later that week before their next show. I walked off thinking, laughing, obsessed with the play, my head positively exploding with ideas. I had seen much on this trip, but nothing had prepared me for this. I would return.

Black Theatre in Prague

The next evening I decided to visit one of the unique Czech black light theatres, Ta Fantastika to see “Aspects of Alice“, a truly weird variation on Alice in Wonderland. Black theatres tend to be quite commercial in their production design and sadly proliferate largely for the tourist market. Nevertheless as they are tangentially related to puppet theatre I felt I should see another one. This one appeared to be the best of the current crop. In the presentation Alice follows a magician by floating, always lots of floating in these shows, across a day-glow version of historic Prague. She meets some tall Jewish ghost puppets that carry her around in her hands. It was doubly odd since most of Prague’s Jews had been exterminated in World War 2 and these gangly puppets were largely nostalgic characters. Then there was a fairly successful clown show to cheer Alice up after getting depressed by the Jewish specters: lots of floating juggling day-glow bowling pins. After the intermission things turned down right odd. For no discernible reason Alice was suddenly topless and reenacting the Garden of Eden, with the snake represented by another topless woman. Now I’m fairly familiar with the Bible and many interpretations of the GArden of Eve story but I’d never encountered this interpretation before. The magician then becomes Adam. Alice/Eve becomes pregnant. She prays for forgiveness to a triangle with odd lines in it. (Was that the Trinity?) And the show ends. I’m not sure what that meant, but it sure was slick and bizarre.

Loutkář Means Puppeteer

The next morning I went to meet Nina Malíková, daughter of famed Czech puppeteer Jan Malik, an intelligent animated woman in her fifties, editor of the noted puppeteering magazine Loutkář, who was already being interviewed by a French student, Rachele, doing a Master’s thesis on Czech Puppet history. Eventually Nina, Rachele, an interpreter and myself were deeply involved in a discussion about the meaning and future of puppetry. Nina was worried that there would not be enough good puppet shows for children, since in the Czech Republic everyone wanted to do work for adults. I could only dream of such problems for America. “What about DRAK and other companies”, I said. “They do work for children?” “Yes”, she said, “that’s one show once in a while, but I want to take my grandchildren to puppet shows every week. We are supposed to be the land of puppets.” She had definite and high standards. She lamented that increasingly puppets were becoming a purely improvised visual phenomenon. (Several other puppet theorists have pointed to same defect in so much contemporary puppetry.) She also wondered if the future of puppets was to be contained within various filmic or digital media. I pointed out the use of strong texts by the students of the International Institute for Marionnettes in Charleville-Mézières France. Rachele added that there were writers in Avignon who were assigned to specific puppeteers. That was exactly what I saw at the Institute. I said that there had to be more of an emphasis on texts to bring puppetry to the next level. Nina looked at me and said… I want you to write about what you’ve been telling me for the next issue of Loutkář. We’ll translate it. And she also offered the same to Rachele. It had proved an interesting meeting indeed. (I did write something but I suspect it was too long. You are basically reading a variation of it write now.)

The Serbian Imitation of Don Giovanni. The best part of the show is outdoor display.

Not all in Prague was fascinating theatre and engrossing meetings. I couldn’t help noticing the predators of tourism as well: the strange bad tourist puppet shows and imitative black light theatres. Prague has so many genuine puppet attractions that it is also plagued by commercial puppetry trying to cash in on the Czech culture. There were so many cheap puppet shops that the authentic ones took a little effort to find. There are two Don Giovanni marionette theatres. The real one is at the National Marionette Theatre. I talked for a while to a Bulgarian girl who was passing out leaflets in front of the imitation Don Giovanni marionette play. She worked 12 hours a day six days a week doing little more than this. She was so bored with her job that she struck up a conversation with me when I turned around to walk away from a theatre foyer. She explained how a group of Serbians also ran many of the most exploitative black light theatres. She was stuck working for them a few years until she could get enough to go home.

The Bloody Stage of Buchty a Loutky's Urbild Remix

Returning to the Švandovo on my last night in Prague I found Tomas Procházka from Buchty a Loutky. I told him that their puppetry reminded me of old school Punk rock. Not the rage, but the D.I.Y. aesthetic. “It’s nice to say it. Because then we can say we do Punk. We do Punk Puppetry.” He explained how the troupe took turns coming up with ideas for shows. The group of five or six people had been influenced mostly through the strange puppet films of Jan Švankmajer, also probably the reason I found myself wandering around Europe looking for theatrical homunculi. Referring to that night’s entertainment Tomas said “You will see in this story the Švankmajer style. It’s made of rubbish.” The stage for this show, entitled Urbild Remix, was actually indeed constructed exactly in the Švankmajer mode. It was made from wood you might have found in your backyard. There were three puppet stages and extra curtains besides piled on top of each other. The show was billed as an adventure. There were chases, murders, mermaids, skeletons, American Indians and stage blood that literally flowed from the middle stage into a teapot, again homemade music, plenty of strange humor and a great comic introduction by the play’s director, Marek Bečka. And it was all a dream! I can’t possible summarize it. Except to say if you ever go to Prague if you must hunt down the performances of Buchty a Loutky at the Švandovo Theatre. I hear Rocky IX is particularly good.

Setting up a Mermaid for Buchty a Loutky's Urbild Remix

At one point in my two weeks in Prague I was exploring the Strahovsky Cloister libraries, particularly their surreal object collections, not too far from a desiccated baby dodo bird; it was then that I found I found a portrait, several centuries old, made entirely from seeds. As I looked at them locked behind the glass on a low shelf ignored by the hordes of high school students currently being herded through the place, I smiled to myself. This was exactly like one of the images in the short film Dimensions of Dialogue. Švankmajer had been here. And I promised myself that next time I visited Prague I would find the man himself.

Next time we conclude our journey in Salzburg Austria with the most polished and complicated marionettes of my whole trip.

Byrne Power
Haines, Alaska
2/20/12

And here is what you will need to explore puppetry in Prague on your own!!!

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For more information on Buchty a Loutky:
http://www.buchtyaloutky.cz/content.php?set=en

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or their haunt at the Švandovo: (Hint more shows are listed on the Czech version)

http://www.svandovodivadlo.cz/index.php?lang=en

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And to learn more about Jan Švankmajer begin here:
http://www.jansvankmajer.com/

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To see the authentic Don Giovanni puppet opera in Prague go to the National Marionette Theatre. This is an excellent place to begin.
http://www.mozart.cz/don-giovanni.php

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And if you do want to see a strange if commercial black theatre presentation Ta Fantastika seems to be the best one I’ve seen so far. And they are still presenting Aspects of Alice! (They have a video here too.)
http://www.tafantastika.cz/en/

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Other spots for real puppet shows Říše Loutek theatre. DRAK plays here on occasion.
http://www.riseloutek.cz/en

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Divadlo Minor is a good place for interesting children’s puppetry:
http://www.minor.cz/

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If you want to get more adventurous translate this…
http://www.divadlovdlouhe.cz/

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Highly recommended The Forman Brothers – Film Director Milos Forman’s sons are experimental puppeteers and high on my list to catch:
http://www.formanstheatre.cz/

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To learn more about Loutkář run this through a translation tool:
http://www.loutkar.eu/

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To buy a serious puppet try:
http://www.loutky.cz/en/our-shops/

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And finally to have a puppet commissioned for you! (as Reckoning Motions did) write to Lenka Pavlíčková. She does an amazing job!
http://www.praguemarionette.com/

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There are also puppet festivals!!
Get thee to Prague …

Classic Czech Faust Puppet from a Couple Hundred Years Ago (Note: the CSSR on the Postcard.)

I stole my way into the Czech lands by train. I arrived at the obscure town of Chrudim, looking for the Muzeum loutkářských kultur Chrudim (The Museum of Marionette Culture in Chrudim) in the heart of its medieval core. Passing the central plague monument I eventually found the museum located in the Renaissance Mydlář building. Museum Manager Alena Exnarova, a very knowledgeable woman, and one of her assistants, a spark-plug of a guy named Radek, graciously spent an hour and a half giving me the Czech history of puppets. (A history I’ve already spent some time writing about back in Antidote Art #1.)

Alena Exnarova then Manager of The Museum of Marionette Culture in Chrudim

What was curious to me then was that Czechs had been doing mature puppet plays ever since the 1700s. They had been performing medieval church puppetry before that but were highly influenced by wandering Punch and Judy Men and other homunculoid riffraff drifting over from England and Germany. The traveling Czech puppeteers would give miniature versions of famous plays and novels for people who might not be able to see the real thing or read. It was during this time that classics like Macbeth, Don Juan and Faust put down their puppet roots. And this also proved to be a significant influence in helping to keep the Czech language alive while under a ban from the Austrians after the devastating Battle of White Mountain in1620. This was the battle that destroyed the Reformation that Jan Hus had started nearly a century before Martin Luther. Puppets therefore occupied a very special place in the Czech psyche for while their Austro-Hungarian overlords spoke German, the puppeteers performed in Czech: a language too far beneath them for the Austrians to notice.

In the Chrudim Storage Rooms with some Rather Knowing Puppets

Puppets were sometimes a way of presenting messages that the authorities overlooked. Kašpárek, the Czech Punch, sometimes made salty comments about the Austro-Hungarian Empire. By the late 1800s more was being done for children as the trend was developing in many countries. Many children looked forward to getting miniature puppet theatres as Christmas gifts. Yet before World War One there were thousands of roving puppet troupes, some for children many still for adults. They even started a puppet magazine called Loutkář (puppeteer) in 1912… and it continues today.  Later Joseph Skupa invented the characters Spejbl and Hurvinek who actually made such anti-Nazi remarks so as to get Mr. Skupa thrown into a concentration camp. The Soviets, ironically, as they had done in other Iron Curtain countries, encouraged puppet theatres. And yes there were many times when the audience saw something beneath the obvious surfaces, they were used to reading the allegories. I realized that alone of all the countries in the world the Czech Republic was the only country I could think of where puppetry was not just woven into the warp and woof of its history but was positively heroic! Astounding.

The Skeleton has Meaning Beyond Merely Death Imagery in Czech Puppetry

It was a fascinating history from a fascinating museum in an undiscovered little medieval town. They also housed a library of 70,000 multilingual books, magazines and other items pertaining to puppet history. The museum was supported by the Czechs because puppetry is respected as a vital art form by the Czech government. The museum also serves as a focal point and aid to the Amateur Puppet Festival in Chrudim. The amateur festival is held each July for Czechs only, but foreign guests are also invited. It is a pretty big deal and might warrant a return to Chrudim someday.

Radek Shows Me the Back Rooms of the Museum

As I concluded my interview with Alena Exnarova I asked her about the meaning of puppetry. “The puppet has limitations but then again it can do things actors could never do.” She explained that there is a life to puppetry that will continue even with all of the modern digital screenal gadgetry. What were some of the new trends in Czech puppetry I asked? Radek explained that there was a movement translated as something like Illusion Theatre.  It was a return to certain aspects of the roots of traditional puppetry particularly the used the hidden puppeteers. In other words while Americans hardly knew much beyond the Muppets except in a few isolated zones, most of us having not even seen puppeteers standing on the stage with their puppets performing, some Czech puppeteers have already been there, done that and have started to return to the mystery of the hidden hand by behind the puppet.

There is no European spiritual program that allows one to return to states feeling vaguely in touch with the ineffable. It’s not like a trip to Asia. Instead one often just feels as stupid as a laundry bag in need of some real education. (Oh thank you American public school for partially teaching me English and English alone!) And I was hardly finished with my lessons in puppet history. I was now on my way to receive a few more instructions and to tag along with a Czech puppet troupe across some of the most dangerous roads in Europe.

DRAK Puppets at the Museum of Marionette Culture in Chrudim

A short one-hour train ride the next day took me to my next destination Hradec Kralove. My purpose in coming to this town was to visit the DRAK (an acronym that spells ‘dragon’ in Czech) Theatre. And to meet with Jakub Krofta, son of Professor Joseph Krofta, who did, and continues to do, so much to change Czech puppetry. Jakub is the de facto director of the theatre most of the time and was rehearsing a new play with actors in bear costumes. When I arrived I spent the first two or three hours interviewing and chatting with Jakub. After giving me a tour of the facilities, that I must say inspired a little wistful envy, Jakub gave me much of the history of the theatre and so many interesting perspectives that it would be difficult to begin to unravel it all here. As I watched them rehearsing their bear play I felt a need to speak out from the Alaskan perspective. Bears sniff around with their sensitive noses. If you ever see this play you might notice the bruins sniffing around a bit… now you know why.

DRAK's Jakub Krofta Rehearsing a Play About Bears

Petra Wearing the Bear Suit Without the Head

I was temporarily adopted by the troupe and was even invited to travel the next day with them back and forth to Prague on the crazy Czech roads. I felt honored. I got to know several of the cast and crew, including the petite Petra Cicáková an unusual actress/clown/puppeteer and folk musician Filip Huml. Driving on the narrow Czech roads to the wild music of a Balkan brass band was one of the more disturbing adventures I’d ever experienced. Cars passed each other in waves on the two lane highways. Once a car drifted out into the opposing lane from some three cars back and passed three more in front of us an instant before a semi-truck plowed forward on that same lane. It didn’t comfort me to later read that indeed the fatality statistics for the Czech roads are basically the worst in Europe, all fueled by the incredible (and incredibly cheap) beer. Our able driver passed at least 60 cars on the night time ride home.

The Enchanted Bagpipes Filip Huml on the Gajdy

And the play, The Enchanted Bagpipes, contained a life-size puppet or two and several actors and musicians in devil costumes. The music was curious, rewritten versions of Czech folk tunes while the lead character, Filip Huml, a Czech musicologist as well as actor, played the gajdy, the Moravian bagpipe. Quite an earful! DRAK had over time been moving more into an area that used circus techniques and masks as much as puppetry. This coincided with some of the developments at Teatr Lalka and Teatr Groteska. The message of the piece was intriguing as well. The bagpipe symbolized the Czech soul. The devils tempted Filip to surrender his bagpipes. They used the authority of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the cold uniformity of the communist system and finally the randy cash of the Americanized West. I was happy to see that the old Czech tendency to use puppetry and theatre for questioning the reigning powers was far from moribund.

Petra Cicáková Tempted by the Devils After the Show

Finally in a side note, as I strolled around Chrudim, Hradec Kralove and Prague I noticed something. There is a kind of connection between Alaska and the Czech Republic. Back in the U.K. men often wore a sort of uniform short post-skinhead hairstyle. In the Netherlands a very absurd waxy hairstyle predominated for male fashion. Poland was a bit formal. France a bit more stylish. But in the Czech Republic men didn’t seem involved with any particular hair trend: Short, long, beards, mustaches, shaved headed it just didn’t seem to matter, just like back in Alaska. I felt visually quite comfortable. This has nothing to do with puppetry, or does it???

Hanging Out with the Cast of DRAK's The Enchanted Bagpipes

Next time we finally enter the puppetry capital of Europe… Prague.

Byrne Power
Haines, Alaska
2/15/12

For more information on DRAK:

http://www.draktheatre.cz/en-home

Go see them in Hradec Kralove!

The Museum of Marionette Culture in Chrudim is remodeling until June 2012

But this website might be helpful until then:

http://www.puppets.cz/

Eventually their English page will be back up.

Part 5- Finding the Roman Polanski Puppet

Teatr Groteska's Balladyna in April 2005 Krakow

I arrived in Poznan, Poland a day after Pope John Paul II died. After spending a requisite amount of time being thoroughly confused by Polish housing numbers I found myself at the main entrance of the Adam Mickiewicz University along with what started off as fifty or so mourners to the late Pope and which eventually grew to a march of what appeared be about twenty thousand people. I was searching for the Teatr Animacji for puppet shows. I passed it and didn’t even recognize it. The building was much grander than I was imagining any puppet theatre would be. Eventually the next day I would find it in a massive colonnaded grey cement building. I also discovered that all cultural venues in the country were closed for a week. This included puppet theatres. I also found that no one in the offices of Teatr Animacji spoke a word of English.

Cannons fire nearby at the Warsaw funeral mass for Pope John Paul II early April 2005

I continued on to Warsaw. And I met my friend Marta Czanik at the train station. Again the city was in mourning for the Pope. I attended one outdoor service that was extremely moving amongst over 100,000 thousand Poles. Although the puppet theatres were not performing that week there were a few people in the theatre. Marta came to my rescue in regards to the titanic bulk of the Teatr Lalka (teatr = theatre & lalka = puppet) and set up some meetings for me. We interviewed the artistic director for Teatr Lalka, a Polish woman with a strong character named Joanna Rogacka. Sitting in her dark office in the Palace of Culture and Science, the massive Stalinist Gothic building at the center of Warsaw, listening to this regal woman unravel the history of puppetry in the communist era, provoked quite a few thoughts. The gray morning light drifted through the windows shading the woman and her assistant Anna Bojarska is high contrasts. The furniture surrounding us was old heavy dark wood. Pani Rogacka explained that the Soviets encouraged puppetry as a form of art, though Teatr Lalka had a more elaborate history. She explained that how back in the forties a man named Jan Wilkowski began to change the presentation of puppets by stepping from behind the curtain to work with the puppets themselves on stage. Also there was clearly an influence upon the Polish style by the Russian puppet genius Sergey Obraztsov. This moved the world of Polish puppets closer towards a more artistic idea. She showed me photos of elaborate stage shows, including some tantalizing images from their version of Homer’s Odyssey. I was missing one performance  because I was on my way to Krakow. But I certainly got the idea. At a certain point the interview, rather the monologue, was over. I had been granted my time. I was brimming with questions. But she was indeed a busy woman, and I was indeed fortunate to have been granted an audience. I watched a rehearsal of a story about a noble bunny rabbit, some strange looking black creatures and shadow plays. I also watched the troupe put on a clown play that reminded me of a cross between Laurel & Hardy and a child’s version of Waiting for Godot. I owe Marta good words for translating the entire interview for me. I couldn’t have done this without her.

THIS is what a puppet theatre looks like in Poland - Teatr Lalka, Warsaw

It was soon time to go to Krakow. The city was thoroughly fascinating and well worth several visits. I also detoured for a day to visit Auschwitz, which left me with conflicted emotions about the nature of our presentation of the tragedies of the past. At last I made my way over to Teatr Groteska, which was housed in another large old domed cement building. Inside, up the four or five flights of wide marble stairs, were housed examples of the theatre’s sixty-year history. I was also allowed into the puppet storage facilities. An usher named Olga told me that she had become so fascinated with the reactions of children to puppets that it had become the thesis of her doctoral dissertation. She arranged interviews for me with one of the actors of a mature puppet play, Balladyna, which I would see later in the day. But first it was time to watch a kooky version of Little Red Riding Hood. The interesting thing about all of the daytime performances was that they were all full. The theatre had made arrangements with schools across southern Poland to bring kids to the theatre. I was told that over 90,000 students a year viewed the various shows.  Now that’s how it should be done!

Again... When visiting puppet theatres get yourself into the backrooms!

The afternoon show, Balladyna, was full of high school students. This was a serious work with some eerie raggedy puppets, puppets that reminded me somehow of Auschwitz, used in a way I’d never seen before. Live actors interacted with the humanoid shapes as they manipulated them. And somehow at one moment they were actors and in the next they were the puppets. The story was a dark Polish legend of sorts from a work of classic Polish literature. It was clear to me that puppets could easily do work as serious as Shakespeare’s plays if they so chose. Afterwards I spoke with one of the actors, Franciszek Mula, about the differences between puppetry and standard acting. This was actually his first puppet work. He explained that puppetry was far more humble than theatre work; that the actor had to give space to the puppets, which actually went against the obvious inclination of actors to be seen. When I asked if he would pose for a few photographs with the puppets he replied with a knowing smile, “Of course, I’m an actor.”

Franciszek Mula demonstrating the difference between actors and puppets in Balladyna

A couple of days later, after seeing one more performance with a Chinese theme and a wild use of masks, smoke and balloons (!), I had an interview through a translator with the slyly sagacious director of Groteska, Adolf Weltschek. He too explained that the theatre started as a result of the Soviet push towards classical culture at the end of World War 2. Essentially the way it worked was that the Russians thought that there were four pillars of culture: Ballet, Opera, Theatre and Puppets. That is why every Polish puppet theatre was so large. They had been financed at great expense by the Soviets. He also explained more of how the censorship issues worked. How the text of the play would be submitted to the censor for approval and then how the images might contradict the text to get another message across. He also offered me his theory that all Polish artistic puppetry was influenced by the Russians. And in fact, unlike the Czechs, the Poles did not have such an involved history of puppetry. There were some folk puppets. But the real burst in Polish puppetry had come after the Second World War. When I asked how this transference might have occurred he said probably during the war when Polish and Russian troops were fighting side by side. Before the war he said puppets were nothing special in Poland, just a folk art, but in Russia… And there was no way to get to Moscow on this trip!

Adam Weltschek, Artistic Director for Krakow's Teatr Groteska

As I was leaving Adam Weltschek, descending the marble stairs, my translator stopped. She pointed to an older funky looking puppet and remarked with pride, “This is the Roman Polanski puppet. When he was 12 years old he used to work with this puppet.” Teatr Groteska in Krakow had just become yet another crucial element of this poetic topography of puppet history.

Next we travel to heart of puppetry in Europe – the Czech Republic

Byrne Power
Haines, Alaska
January 25th 2012

For information on Krakow’s Teatr Groteska run this page through a translation tool

http://www.groteska.pl/

And this one on Warsaw’s Teatr Lalka

http://www.teatrlalka.waw.pl/

And get yourself to Poland!!!

Die Schaubude, a puppet repertory theatre: One very good reason to live in Berlin

On to Berlin… The name alone conjures up some powerful images: Prussian soldiers, 1920′s decadence, Hitler, the Russians ripping the city to shreds, the Cold War and dances on the crumbling Wall. It’s all there and much more: A city obliterated by the past and a perpetual construction zone preparing for an unrealized future. City workers spend time erasing neo-Nazi graffiti, while the overwhelming Turkish presence raises questions yet to be answered. What does Islam mean in secular Berlin?

My very good friend Millay Hyatt met me at the Ostbahnhof. Millay has an endless curiosity about many subjects. She took me to a Stanley Kubrick exhibit, an abandoned amusement park, rows of endless communist era buildings and a monumental Soviet World War 2 memorial, among other places. She also aided me immensely by becoming my interpreter for two puppet theatres.

The Figure Circle performing elaborate shadow puppets to music.

The first theatre, a shadow theatre called the Fuguren-Zirkel (Figure Circle), was run by an affable Austrian named Georg Jenisch. We watched romantic and psychedelic displays of light and shadow along with the music of Mozart’s Magic Flute. His entrancing figures were elaborately cut from malleable plastic or even flexible plastic mirrors to give an effect of not only shadow puppets but of light figures as well. Strange little figures  danced around in a large circular window, the size of a pair of outstretched adult arms, and it seemed impossible that there was only one man behind the stage. His figures were based partly on Turkish shadow puppets. But he was also clearly influenced by the work of the brilliant silhouette filmmaker and shadow puppeteer Lotte Reiniger. He was also a musician himself and composed music for his performances at times. Georg thought his figures should only move to music and never speak. This was similar in style to the Salzburg Marionette Theater where he had indeed worked. Puppet art had been more innovative in the 90s, he felt, yet he seemed to feel it was regrouping. Overall it was a courteous and friendly interview.

Fuguren-Zirkel (Figure Circle) a magical one man show by Austrian, Georg Jenisch

It was then time to see Das Weite Theater performing a piece called The White Hammer at Die Schaubude Theater, which was the funniest piece of puppet art I’ve yet to see. A small cuddly white bunny hops out onto the stage. It eats what appear to be real carrots. A sinister female puppet slinks out onto the stage and then without warning pounces upon the critter and slices open the rabbits throat in an exceptionally bloody scene of red cloth blood. I know this doesn’t sound funny. But trust me the abrupt U-turn between cute little bunny and mad slasher was outrageously funny. I mean who expects a white rabbit to be mercilessly slaughtered within the first few minutes of a play. (Don’t worry though the bunny’s ghost returns near the end of the evening.) The rest of the play was a comic farce based on whodunnits. Blockheaded puppets carved by Czechs moved in frantically satirical actions. One buck-toothed woman spun around in circles every time some the possibility of danger was even hinted at. The farcical movements were given to them by Torsten Gesser and Irene Winter. It was mostly just the two of them with as many as six large wooden hand puppets at a time. And they turned out to be excellent interview subjects. Millay Hyatt provided  excellent help by translating their predominantly German speech.

The White Hammer from Das Weite Theater

As we spoke I began to piece together the story of puppetry behind the Iron Curtain. The Communist state, through direct Russian orders, funded puppet theatres. For years an artistic council planned the repertoire, which was mostly Russian Fairy Tales and folk tales. Before the Wall fell there were 17 serious puppet theatres in East Germany. Shows for adults began in the early 1980′s, notably a puppet presentation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Die Dreigroschenoper or as it is know in English the Three Penny Opera. (Brecht was known for his leftward leanings.)

Was criticism of the government present in these puppet shows?

“The puppet theatres did not feel as much pressure as the standard Theatre and the Opera did.” said Irene. “There was  always a way to express criticism through puppetry in the GDR. You didn’t do it in a blatant way though, you used subtlety. People in East Germany were used to reading between the lines. So the audience could tell when something was being said.”

Was it done by allegory?

“Here’s an example?” Irene continued. “ We did a version of satirical Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. There were soldiers in the forest watching everything. They were spies for the Queen. You didn’t have to spell out what this meant. Everyone knew it was a criticism of state paranoia. The spies in the forest were even wearing the uniforms of the state police. So we always expressed criticism. And sometimes the audience would read criticism into works where none was intended. And they would be thinking ‘Wow! They are so daring! They actually said that?’ But there were colleagues of ours who did try to speak in a more directly political way. And they did have trouble with the authorities”

Torsten added, “ Then, you did have a feeling that people actually heard you when you were being critical. Nowadays when you are critical they laugh; they don’t listen, nobody cares. But then, you definitely had the sense that criticism was effective.”

Did more people come to the puppet theatres then?

“Theatre was much more affordable back then.” Torsten remarked. “And it was considered a necessity. People were encouraged to go to the theatre from a very young age. The thought was, ‘If we can’t provide them with consumer goods, then we’ll provide them with culture.”

Torsten Gesser and Irene Winter of Das Weite Theater in Berlin

And after the Berlin Wall came down?

“It was a 180º turn.” Torsten said, “We had a professional career. Now we are freelancers.”

“In West Germany they weren’t working with puppets in a professional way.” Irene pointed out.  “There weren’t university courses on puppetry. So West Germans were more self-taught or following older folk traditions. But there was no professional training.”

They had been cut off from puppetry in the West. And so it was a bit of a shock for them to see the accommodations that might have to be made to continue as puppeteers in the Western mode. Irene lamented some of the changes.

“So after the Wall came down the East German style began to become more of a popular entertainment mostly for children, although there was some movement the other way. But in the West is was more of an entertainment and in East Germany it was an art.”

Das Weite Theater Irene & Torsten

When I asked them if they did shows for children they said “No! We do shows for families.” And the distinction was important for them. They didn’t want to be confined to the kiddie ghetto.

“When we have material, we think about what we are trying to convey, we don’t think about age groups.” Torsten explained. “ We try to get across the central idea, what we find fascinating in the material.”

When we did speak of contemporary children and their fixation on screens, they concurred with guignoliste Pascal Pruvost about the tangible reality of puppetry in communicating with modern kids. Irene called it the “live sensual nature” of the puppet.

Finally I just asked them the most basic, yet most difficult question: What is Puppetry?

Irene burst out laughing “Puppetry can do everything!”

Torsten agreed “It can portray thousands of images and fantasies.”

(Next: We travel to Poland to find some of the largest puppet theatres in the world.)

Byrne Power

Haines, Alaska

1/11/12

When in Berlin you MUST visit…

http://www.schaubude-berlin.de/

And Das Weite Theater

http://www.das-weite-theater.de/

And don’t miss The Figure Circle

http://www.figuren-zirkel.de/

And remember to run these through translation tools if your German isn’t up to snuff. But it doesn’t matter if you don’t speak German, you’ll still find yourself truly impressed.

We walked three floors up to an attic room with a pitched ceiling and exposed beams at l’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette (ESNAM) in Charleville-Mézières, France. A Polish student, with the nearly unpronounceable name Przemyslaw Piotrowski, dragged in three scruffily constructed crosses as the room darkened. He also had several nameless placards like the one that read I.N.R.I. hanging above Christ on the cross. He handed one to an audience member with a faint smile foreshadowing death. He handed out another. Then he set up the crosses and began to reveal how each of these people died and their relationships. They were just people from his life. People he was intimate with. He was the crucifier. The story was predominately about his complicity in their deaths. In the end he crawls to a light emanating from a box. He finds a small door. He knocks on it and prays in Polish. Finally a dark eerie face comes to the window. But there is no sound coming from it. He finds that it is just a mask. But a mask for whom? He doesn’t know. He stops there waiting for an answer.

Przemislaw Piotrowski performing his piece based on a text by Thierry Panchaud

Before we can find out we descend again back to the long dark hall downstairs continuing on to the next student performance. This time we pass through the long blackened hall into a room where a woman is reading names and stories on a wall. It felt like autumn with dead twisted branches on the floor and walls and walnuts in rows on the ground. The voice continued reading from brown pages on the wall. It is the elfin black haired girl again. She is of Russian ancestry from Romania. Her name is Aurélia Ivan. When she introduced Julia’s piece she seemed shy and quiet with a whisper of a voice and an open smile. But now no one had any trouble hearing her strong words as she read from the wall in her dark dress while holding a wicker basket full of walnuts. She was transformed from  petite girl with a gentle smiling face into the strongest of women. She spoke directly and with authority, but also quite sadly and compassionately. She finally leaned over while reading a list of attributes describing a proud man named Jean (John). She pronounced his final name, ‘Jean le mort.’ (John the dead.) Then she picked up a walnut and looked at it. She backed down this hall beckoning us to follow. The text was an extract from Valére Navarina’s longer dramatic work, La Chair de l’Homme (The Flesh of Man).

Aurélia Ivan reading from the wall with a cemetery of walnuts below her.

Aurélia then stood behind a wooden drawer that had been filled with sand. Then slowly she picked up a strange twisted root with a little plaster face attached to it. Faces inspired by the work of artist Jephan de Villiers. And she brought it slowly forward speaking in its voice. Then she planted it in the sand. Then she brought forth another root in a quite different shape with a different motion, with a different voice and planted that in the sand. By the time she was finished she had more than a dozen of these root creatures in this box carrying on a conversation in different voices about how they would eat the body below them. We followed her and walked through a jungle of phrases hanging from the ceiling which were in French and a little too poetic for me to quite understand. Finally we stood before long scraggly bare branches whose shadows grew as she waved her illuminated hands before them. Suddenly they  seemed alive. She came to a door, rapped with her knuckles and it opened. She turned to us with her basket full of walnuts and bid us to leave through the door. As we left she handed us each a walnut, the fruit of decomposition, the possibility of something new.

Aurélia Ivan and her Hungry Roots in Valére Navarina’s La Chair de l’Homme

I stepped outside into the light my head exploding with ideas. I viewed a few other student shows but these few quite exploded my concept of puppet theatre while confirming exactly why I had taken this journey. I had been attracted to the general idea of puppetry, suspecting that as an obscure art it contained ways of communicating that been barricaded in other art forms. Yet here was a form that could speak to children, everyone’s first prejudice about puppets, yet could also in the right hands deliver strong philosophical ideas as well. I didn’t necessarily agree with all of the content of what I saw. But I didn’t need to be kicked in the head to realize that this was indeed a powerful medium for ideas. And it had both ancient rules and a new vitality. It was also clear to me that it could communicate in a way that could possibly move beyond the postmodern dilemma. And this was the time to explore it.

The day ended with my talking to Julia Kovacs and Aurélia Ivan and photographing parts of their presentations after their evening shows had finished. As I was talking with Aurélia, who was quite serious and curious about why I had come all the way from Alaska to watch the student performances, there was an older French man who stood near us occasionally supplying French or English words to help the conversation along. As I was finishing my discussion with her she said “Oh! Do you know who this is?” Of course I didn’t. “His name is Francois Lazaro.” And then she proceeded to tell me he had been a teacher there for 15 years and had is own puppet theatre in Paris, the Clastic Theatre. And I turned and said, “So I guess should interview you?” He agreed and we set up a time the next day. And I walked back to the hotel that night, my head bursting with ideas, realizing that I had just had an unrepeatable day. I thought of the performances I had seen and the people I had met. And the way that puppetry could speak volumes in the right hands.

Clea Minaker's puppet trash heap

The next morning I met student Clea Minaker from Canada at a café for coffee and an interview. The first thing she said to me was that not all of the presentations were as serious or philosophical as the ones I had seen. The other set of performances had a lot crazier pieces. Her own piece was evidently built upon a mountain of consumer rubbish as she was coated in latex sheathes. (She had shown me the structure the evening before. A photo of the performance briefly glimpsed lead me to conclude that it must have been a wild piece.) Clea also explained the way the school worked. Oddly enough, there were only fifteen students in the school at any one time. The course lasted three years. And the same fifteen students moved together from an understanding of traditional puppet techniques, theatrical history, acting skills, experimental ideas and live performances. Several important European puppeteers passed through Charleville-Mézières with their shows. And the education was all for free, including the room and board. The students didn’t even need a college degree. They just needed to demonstrate their interest through past projects, speak passable French and survive the winnowing process. Clea also came back to the same line of thinking that Pascal in Paris had, that in today’s world puppet theatre provided a real tangible presence rather than yet another televised electronic spectacle. (Not that she was against puppet films.) The live performance was the chief importance of puppets in our times. So here at the International Institute for Marionettes it was quite clear that they were quite consciously leaning against the currents of the day. Clea certainly spoke of a profusion ideas herself and understood the importance of fighting against the tide of virtual electronic images to find something new. That is what struck me about the school in general: It was a place that profoundly encouraged intellectual searching and questioning in both a theoretical and a practical manner. These students truly were asking serious questions. Puppets were not seen as yet more mindless entertainment but as a means for provoking real thought.

François Lazaro of the Clastic Theatre

Later I met Francois Lazaro for a beer in a café and we had a fascinating conversation about puppets, theatre and philosophical ideas. He had been performing puppet shows since 1966. We discussed his influences: Beckett, Švankmajer, even Tarkovsky. He also was quite aware of the special nature of puppets to reality in this media saturated age. For him puppets held revolutionary possibilities, not in the political sense, but in changing our view of things. He felt that traditional theatre had come to a dead end and was borrowing increasingly more from puppetry to stay alive. As we were talking Aurélia dropped in and joined the conversation. We all talked about the reality principle a little more. Aurélia was just as serious as Clea and Francois in her feeling that puppetry was a unique art form for the present moment. She planned on producing her own plays. And she had the intensity and commitment to pull it off. When she asked me how I even knew to come to see the students perform she locked eyes with me in a way that showed the need to have the question answered earnestly. She would be joining Francois’ troupe after graduation. These puppeteers understood the need for engaging the brain, a desperate shortage everywhere these days. They knew well that this world of simulated knowledge, cheap information and hollow entertainments could only be opposed by something as small, humble, tangible and intelligent as puppets. It was a way forward culturally, a way out of the maze, possibly a way to actually get people to laugh or cry or miraculously to reconsider their ideas, especially those created in virtual miasma of this 21st Century.

But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.  Matthew 19:30

(Next time we discover shadow puppets in Berlin and have a serious laugh.)

Byrne Power
Haines, Alaska
12/23/11

…………..

To learn more about Clea Minaker’s recent activities:

http://cleaminaker.wordpress.com/

To discover what Aurélia Ivan has been doing since 2005:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/TSARA/206935446038225?sk=wall

To learn more about The Clastic Theatre this link might be helpful:

http://www.clastictheatre.com/

For more information about the Institut International De La Marionnette (en Français):

http://www.marionnette.com/fr/

And about ESNAM (en Français):

http://www.marionnette.com/fr/Esnam/Presentation

They used to have an English page but there are translation tools… Here is an English version of the course of study:

http://www.premiumorange.com/marionnette/pages_recherche/uk/esnam_prog_etude_uk.htm

Back in 2005 when I was traveling across Europe looking for puppet theatres I did not plan on visiting every country. Sadly there would not be time for Sicilian puppets in Italy or a good old English Punch and Judy show. But I wanted to make an arc from France into Central Europe and back. There were several reasons for my journey: among them pure fascination, a desire to visit European cities with a purpose beyond sightseeing and a love of the art form. I also suspected that there was more going on in the realm of puppetry than could be seen from my media saturated American perspective. In 2000 I had visited several puppet theatres in Bucharest, Vienna and Prague while making my irregular visit through Europe. I had also been considering ways to incorporate puppetry into some other presentation. I had a mistaken notion that puppets might be added somehow to another form to create something new: Mistaken because I didn’t fully grasp what puppetry itself could do yet. But I strongly suspected that there were ways to present ideas through the use of puppets that had been minimized or even cut off in other art forms. With that in mind I decided not only to visit puppet theatres on this trip but also to interview puppeteers for a possible magazine article or two. I assumed quite correctly that the puppet masters would not have phalanxes of bodyguards keeping regular folks away. I knew that there was something here yet I wasn’t expecting to strike gold. But that’s what happened in my own creative thinking when I arrived at the Institut International de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mézières in the north of France.

l'École National Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette (ESNAM) a 2005 brochure featuring several of the students I saw.

Now I really had no expectations at all about what I would find there. In fact it was the most dubious stop on my puppet trip. All I knew was that it was called the International Institute for Marionnettes (Marionnettes meaning all puppets in French.) and that there was a school attached to it. I didn’t know exactly where it was situated within the town. I didn’t know if there was any puppet theatre connected to it that I could visit. I had discovered their website. I had written to someone about possibly conducting an interview in English with someone. I rerouted my email to someone else with a promisingly English sounding name. My inquiry was never returned. But I did notice in a French language version of the town’s website that it seemed to be saying that the students were giving midterm presentations that were open to the public. I would miss half of them. But I committed myself to going and booked a hotel reservation for two nights. Vague indeed, however I figured that at worst I’d probably be in another French town with an old town square and some decent food.

Inauspiciously, the train didn’t take me all the way there. Track work forced me to arrive in Charleville-Mézières by bus. I couldn’t find a city map for sale at the station. So I memorized the train station’s map and started looking for my hotel. I found the street and then noticed a sign that said “Institut International de la Marionnette” with an arrow pointing my way. I sighed. Now I won’t have to spend my time hunting the place down. I dumped my heavy baggage onto the bed of the hotel. Then I realized that it was past three o’clock and that I really should get out there and find the institute. After turning the wrong way once I came upon another sign on the road. I turned to look in that direction. There next to a three story tall statue of a marionette figure built into the side of a building I saw the Institute. I entered sheepishly and asked “Parlez vous Anglais?” at the front desk, to which I received a “Non”. Then I tried in my halting French to discover if anyone there did. Another woman came out. Her English was only slightly less halting than my French. Was it possible to interview anyone? Alas no. The teachers had just finished reviewing the student’s works and were engaged in long meetings discussing them. Were the student presentations open to the public? Well, yes. They took my name and put it on a list for the 7PM shows. A group of perhaps ten people shuffled behind us then left the building. The woman I was talking with exchanged a brief word in French with someone behind me then abruptly turned to me saying, “You can go with them.” Where? “To see a few presentations. But you’ll be missing two of them.” So I hurried out to catch up with the small band of pedestrians as they rounded the corner of the building.

I walked with them perhaps five blocks mystified as to where I might be going. I heard a woman speaking in a familiar accent. She was a Canadian woman who has come to see her daughter’s performance. I had missed seeing her daughter’s piece, she was with the earlier group. But she explained a little bit about the school, l’École National Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette or ESNAM. At length we came to a large old arched wooden door. The woman leading the parade opened it and we entered a compact antique stone courtyard. A girl in her mid-twenties was standing near old rusting equipment. She was wearing a black dress; her hair was pulled back. She would not have been out of place at a New York dinner party. Hanging on a rusty pipe were several woolen scarves in black, beige and brown. She picked one up and placed it around someone’s neck. She began to talk about the word, la parole, how it brings humor, sorrow and many other qualities. She eventually placed scarves around every neck. She looked directly into everyone’s eyes as she repeated her gesture. When she bestowed a scarf upon me she said that la parole leads to silence. Evidently this was to be a philosophical piece related to the pain in relationships. After she finished dispensing the scarves she pushed the remainder of them away to revealing a dark stairway leading down to a dungeon. We all must bow to step down these stairs as we enter the dark chamber illuminated by two or three small lights. After we have huddled together in the dark she descended slowly with dim lights attached to her palms. She crept along the side of the walls, reminding me of Cesare, the somnambulist, from The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, until she came to what appeared to be a small homemade meat grinder. She placed a few small smooth stones inside and “ground” them into sand. She continued her comments about words and silence as she continued to follow a row of smooth rounded stones on the side of a stone wall. She disappeared through a doorway and with the slightest of gestures beckoned us to follow. We entered an even darker more claustrophobic room. Piles of stones lay on the floor. She slowly organized them into a spiral. Then she followed the stones to what looked like a slightly oversized ant farm with a frozen shadow puppet person floating in silhouette inside. She then slowly poured sand into it burying the figure ‘alive’. Finally she spoke again about words and silence. The last thing she said to us was that the very last word will be ‘Believe.’ She picked up a large rounded stone and walked off alone into a blackened corridor, the rock illumined by light emanating from her hands. And the piece was finished and she came back for a bow almost in tears at the intensity she had put into it. Her name was Julie Trezel.

This was the only the first performance. I may not have concurred entirely with the philosophy of the piece but I was completely captivated by the presentation. I certainly wasn’t expecting this. But before I could consider it too much we were walking towards the next show.

ESNAM Student performers in 2005: Julia Kovacs & Aurélia Ivan.

We passed in front of an old church, practically a cathedral, and we entered a building near it. We stopped in a workshop with a couple of circular saws. By this time I was fully expecting that the saws would be a part of the next performance. (And why not?) Then a petite black haired girl in a long dark dress spoke to us. She said that the piece by Hungarian Julia Kovacs would begin in just a moment. As the time passed I was introduced to the Canadian woman’s daughter Clea Minaker and she was interested to talk with me about the school once the performances were over. She informed me that each of these midterm performances was to be done in collaboration with a French author and that it was essentially a lesson in working with a text. At last Aurelia, the raven-haired girl, led us into a darkened room that was smothered in black felt. She sat us down on wooden benches as we stared into the impenetrable void. All of the lights were extinguished.

Julia Kovacs and her puppets demonstrating the nature of war.

In the pitch blackness of that hall a white light was projected some ten meters away from us against a rough textured pale stone wall and against a tall brunette girl who was dressed in a white robe. Her hair was minimized being pulled back. She appeared to us almost as a statue from classical antiquity. Written words scrolled horizontally on the wall, against her human form. She began to speak in a clear burning voice. From what I could gather with my faulty French she was speaking about war and about what kind of people we are in relationship to war and to fear. The projection and the lights vanished. In the utter dark she held a wooden box that was then opened in a way loosely reminiscent of Pandora. Light shone from the box. She moved spectrally towards us asking questions as she paused to place broken puppets on nearly invisible black boxes. Where does war come from? She advanced closer and closer to us with her crippled marionettes. All were white or dirty beige, and while missing limbs, they were clearly homunculi, though none had defining features, hair, clothing, even color. She continued speaking about war and fear as she little by little drew nearer and nearer to us. She stopped directly in front of us before two waist high felt covered platforms. Transfixing our eyes she removed the last two puppets from the box. Though, like the others, they were both featureless and white they were also both completely intact and quite clearly male and female. I say they were featureless but this was not true of their faces. While hairless and unclothed, like unfinished dolls off of an assembly line, their faces were genuinely distinct, even riveting. This may have something to do with their eyes, which caught the light and reflected it back. The puppeteer then began to speak through the female form. She turned to look at the male puppet and she began to ask him about fear and war and life. The robed girl then changed positions slightly and began to articulate the male figure in more defiant gestures and to speak his voice. Basically he said that there is no reason to fear, these things are all just a part of life. You have to be strong, get used to it. The female continued to plead with him to help her understand. He became more incensed, more frustrated. She in turn was pleading now too much, too pitifully and he in turn was now frighteningly angered. The puppeteer, though directly before us the entire time, so inhabited the characters, that she had disappeared into each of them by turns. Finally she posed them each in their habitual attitudes: the female homunculus in a supplicating position, the male in defiance. The white robed specter finally turned away from them repeating her questions about war then sadly proclaiming all that remains is the blood. The lights were then extinguished.

Julia Kovacs from Hungary at ESNAM performing ‘Si le vent le dit’

The small audience applauded the riveting performance with vigor. The program notes explained that Julia’s piece was an extract of a longer work by Perrine Griselin, entitled ‘Si le vent le dit’ (If the wind says). I was so entranced by this performance that I couldn’t even remember to record the audio for it after the second session later that night. But one thing was certain… my impressions of what puppetry was and could do had just been smashed to pieces.

But I was hardly finished with my tour through the student performances at ESNAM.

(To be continued soon…)

Byrne Power

Haines, Alaska

12/22/1

For more information about the Institut International De La Marionnette (en Français):

http://www.marionnette.com/fr/

And about ESNAM (en Français):

http://www.marionnette.com/fr/Esnam/Presentation

They used to have an English page but there are translation tools… But here is an English version of the course of study:

http://www.premiumorange.com/marionnette/pages_recherche/uk/esnam_prog_etude_uk.htm

1

It was a pleasant Parisian Sunday afternoon in March 2005. After watching several men tightrope-walking high up in the trees of the Buttes Chaumont Park as part of the French Arbor day celebrations we strolled over to the small Theatre Guignol Anatole. I had come to visit Les Petits Bouffons (the Little Buffoons) de Paris. Pascal Pruvost was a wiry stubble-headed man with a striking countenance. Bernard Willeme, his laconic partner in Guignol crimes, stood by. When asked by my friend Corinne which story they were going to perform today he replied in French “I have no idea yet.” The show was only a half-hour away. Both men were around 40 years old and certainly did not fit the American stereotype for the kind of people who perform with puppets for children. But I suppose that is because too many Americans equate puppets solely with cute and goofy Muppet-like creatures.

Guignoliste Pascal Pruvost ringing the traditional bell before the performance

Eventually it was time for the show. Pascal took a large old brass hand bell and walked around near the entrance of the compact outdoor theatre and rang it. This was the traditional signal that Guignol was about to appear to work his mischief. Guignol is the French relative of Punch in England,Kašpárekin the Czech Republic, Jan Klaassen in Holland, Kasperl in Germany: all descendants of Pulcinella of the Comedia del Arte in Italy. He is not as viscous as Punch but will always eventually find a way to get the Gendarme in trouble. To these American eyes, deprived as we are of a native Punch variation, he reminds me of the old Warner Brothers cartoon character Bugs Bunny. The brilliant thing about these performances is the way get the children involved. Although involved is too polite a term. In this episode the officious Gendarme was eaten by a large puppet crocodile. After the Gendarme’s demise, Guignol arrives on the stage to have a picnic and to go fishing. The crocodile lurks just off stage; the children go nuts trying to warn the hapless Guignol. They shout. They point. They even stand. Guignol turns to the kids several times and says, “What are you talking about? I don’t see a crocodile.” They point furiously at the corner of the little stage. He continues fishing. A big tug is felt on the line… the children are almost pulling their hair out. Of course, in the end Guignol survives because he is Guignol. And you can’t kill Bugs Bunny. You can’t kill Guignol.

The kids are alright. Les enfants sont bien.

On Monday I took the metro out to the 20th arrondissement to find the office of Les Petits Bouffons. I was greeted by Pascal and Bernard in their small stuffy studio. They showed me dozens and dozens of puppets that were hanging from hooks on the wall. Pascal explained that they did longer shows like Beauty and the Beast and Puss’n’Boots, not forgetting to mention a few very bloody fairytales that did not find a home in the English-speaking world. They also had a futuristic (!) Guignol show. As comical as these shows could be these guys were very serious about the Guignol tradition. And even if they performed a standard fairytale Guignol had to at least be a minor character in the show, a butler or a waiter. In my interview with Pascal we discussed the meaning of puppets in this postmodern age. He pointed out that children have changed even since they started the troupe in 1991. Kids are now so immersed in television, games or computer screens that, even at a very young age, they come to the puppet show with very different expectations than they used to. As a result they are even more surprised than they used to be. You see the stage of the puppet theatre resembles an enormous television screen to the child’s untrained eyes. So they expect something like a movie. But then as they watch something strange happens. The puppets become real. They talk to the children. They come out from the stage in three tactile dimensions. They are completely unpredictable. All of Les Petits Bouffons’ performances are improvisations based upon many traditional plots.

Pascal Pruvost of Les Petits Bouffons in the studio.

Guignoliste Bernard Willeme with his background art

But the rascally Guignol or the anarchic Punch stand very far down on the puppetry scale of respect. Pascal said when it comes to puppet festivals “They don’t want to see us. It’s all become about the Performing Object. It’s become quite artistic.” Yet even though Guignol performances are folk art of the highest order they are basically ignored in the world around them. Yet it’s guys like Pascal and Bernard, with a passion for the strange little rogue, that keep the tradition alive: Guys like these and the thousands upon thousands of French children and their parents who accompany them to relive their own childhood Guignol recollections. I felt kind of proud of them for holding down the fort without much recognition or financial reward just because they value the reality of the puppet over the artificiality of the televised screen. Impressive.

More specimens including the Gendarme, the Devil and even a Czech Spejbl hanging around the Bouffons' atelier.

In 2008 the 200-year anniversary of Guignol was held in Lyon. The future of puppetry may indeed come down to performers like Les Petits Bouffons de Paris. The future is always built upon the past. Guignol is a slice of living history. Next time you are in Paris (or Lyon) check out the little buffoon

Meanwhile the Journey into European Puppetry continues with a visit to the surprising École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mézières.

Byrne Power

Haines, Alaska

11/27/11

For More Information about Les Petits Bouffons de Paris

http://www.guignol-paris.com/

More puppetry on The Anadromous Life

http://theanadromist.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/antidote-art-1/

http://theanadromist.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/antidote-art-2/

The more voices there are, the more spin there is. The truth becomes that much harder to find. In the end it’s all just noise.

From George A. Romero’s zombie film Diary of The Dead

……….

I’ve been officially been writing The Anadromous Life for a year now, since November 8^th 2010. My only commitment has been to do this for one year. The year has passed.This seems to be a good moment to reflect on what I’m trying to accomplish and what I feel is the point of doing this.

The Flag of What Country? .... © Byrne Power

I suppose a good place to begin is to wonder who has been reading this and whether it has communicated anything. On a purely statistical level it has been curious to watch the numbers grows. WordPress has of course provide all sorts of statistics. It is easy to become obsessed with the numbers. But numbers are always abstract and mean very little in reality. One piece of data is interesting though. By the time you read this I will have had 14,000 hits on my sites on my way to 15,000. But what does that mean? 14, 000 people? Certainly not. If someone drops into The Anadromous Life and them clicks on several photos, each click is counted as another hit.

And speaking of photos, I have become quite skilled at finding the largest and most interesting photo files imaginable. I know that many people drop onto the site searching for a good reproduction of Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding album. I’ve had 147 people come to the site based on the search term “John Wesley Harding”. The all-time search phrase is some variant on “Mickey Mouse Evolution”, well over 1,000 hits, which doesn’t exactly thrill me. But hey what do I know? Maybe they are indeed all coming here to expose the creepy little rodent and his nefarious relationship to our society. Then I would indeed be glad. But I will continue to use interesting illustrations, most of which seem to be from promotional material or public domain. Because I know that a person who drops looking for a still from the Texas Chain Saw Massacre might just see that that the photo is not on some questionable site but rather is connected to a few thoughts and stick around to read the rest. I have indeed had a few comments that seem to reflect exactly that process.

And when it comes to comments I am always happy to have well considered remarks. There have a been a few that have strayed from course, which I have tried to treat with equanimity. But so far I have been lucky. No “Dude, this sucks!” ridiculousness yet. No flame either. No endless columns of comments filled with internet irateness? I’m pretty sure that’s mostly because I’m such a small fry that I haven’t attracted the trolls and anonymous ranters yet. But they are out there. And if they thought it mattered they would congest the site. Not that I would actually let them do it mind you. I’m not interested in the numbers of comments, but I am interested in the quality. And the more quality comments on point the merrier. So don’t feel shy. And certainly don’t feel like you can’t comment on the older posts as well.

One word I rarely use to describe what I’m doing is ‘blogging’. Why? Isn’t this a ‘blog’? I suppose you could call it that and I wouldn’t correct you. But in my mind these are essays, pure and simple. They happen to be on a computer. When I visit blogs, I tend to notice that often people just seem to be using the concept as a sort of modified extension of a journal. Fortunately the social networking sites seem to have taken up the slack on the day to day stuff. “Whoopee it’s snowing!” Click Like please. “Eating an awesome ham sandwich with German mustard!” Like. “Lost my wallet today.” Am I supposed to Like this? Whereas blogging is a bit longer and a bit more like a public journal. At best one gets insights into something the writer feels strongly about or an interesting observation. But then again it can be a random series of obsessive details or personal thoughts that really didn’t need to be shared.

This happened when MySpace first started gaining popularity. The diary, which fulfills a real need for private reflection, moves online to become shared with friends and passersby. But what happens when the private begins to disappear? Facebook has really refined this. Now we are swamped in the rather superficial lives of our friends. Mark Zuckerberg has gone on record as having a real antipathy towards privacy on many occasions. And while Facebook is quite (too?) useful, it has also changed its users to live more along the lines of Zuckerberg’s predilections. I’m determined not to live in that world. The world is still filled with mystery. It still takes time to know.

However I am most evidently in the minority. A majority people I know, and if you are reading this you can ponder your own complicity, seem satisfied with the headlines and captions that make up our contemporary existence. I can follow what is happening in the Occupy Wall Street world as people pass videos and articles around. Like. It doesn’t occur to folks that propaganda is happening. They seem to be in control. Like! No one wants a Big Brother providing all of our information. But few notice that we are now infused not by massive singular force, but by a blinding multiplicity of little brothers and sisters. Our communication has become more insectoid, brushing our antennae in short bursts and bytes. Like…

There is a moment in George Romero’s zombie apocalypse film from 2008, Diary of the Dead, when a character muses on the meaning of communication and news once we have killed off the mainstream Big Brother. What is left is the endless blogs and various other means of antennae brushing. But then what is left is ultimately noise. (See the quote above.) It’s a chilling reflection made by the man who essentially invented the modern concept of the zombie that seems to reach out to us wherever we turn these days. All of the blogs and postings turn out to clutter the choices rather than inform them. Romero is saying essentially saying. Television was bad. But this is worse.

Salmon Heads as Anadromous Puppetry .... Photo ©Byrne Power

And so I am thrown back like a salmon against the current. What is the point of adding to the noise? Well I have to remind myself of a few principles: One: I am not writing the daily noise down. Period. Two: It is worth communicating with individuals. It is worth creating. Good conversation still has value. Three: I’m not going to write short and sweet. Each piece takes what it takes. As I stated in my first couple of essays, I’m fighting against the stream by writing with as much truthful observation and content as possible. While I might from time to time write about food, I really don’t care if anyone knows what I ate today. Four: The point of these essays is to ultimately get published in a real world book, not to remain online, This site will indeed someday be shut down. Five: Endless minute communications from ourselves, AKA Little Sisters and Brothers, will be as damaging as that from any larger entity, it will be more insidious and make us laugh more.  I care that a few people actually understand what I am trying to say, rather than have hundreds ‘Like’© me.

Meanwhile I will make my attempt to live and write The Anadromous Life for a while longer online and swim against the stream. I encourage whomever is reading this to find a way to fight your way against the stream too. My real goal: To point away from the virtual toward the real and the true.

Byrne Power

Haines, Alaska

November 8^{th 2011}

……….

Here are a few links to the earliest essays on this site:

Welcome to the Anadrome

http://theanadromist.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/welcome-to-the-anadrome/

Rules of Engagement

http://theanadromist.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/rules-of-engagement/

Looking for the New Samizdat

http://theanadromist.wordpress.com/2010/11/28/looking-for-the-new-samizdat/

Faux Pas

http://theanadromist.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/faux-pas/

As you might be able to glean from the title, this little essay most likely isn’t going to be a paean to the glories of the age. The glass isn’t half full. It’s plastic with the logo of some mindlessly happy product scrawled on it, brightly colored, crushed, lying next to broken beer bottles at a dodgy roadside rest stop on a highway that looks the same wherever you are in 21^stCentury America.

Times Square 1945 The End of World War 2 .... (Click on the photo for an enlargement)

Try this: Find a photo of a crowd scene from sometime before the 70′s. How about Times Square, New York City, in 1945 the day the war ended. Make it a good large photo. Look around in it. Investigate these these ancestors of yours. Look at them closely. I don’t know about you, but here’s the first thing that pops out at me: I can’t find anyone who is poorly dressed. Everyone seems to be wearing clothes that look good on them. Now I know if I were on the ground I would find some tawdry elements, guys with grease stains on their ties, ill fitting suits, cheap dresses, etc. But this would just be a poor use of basic ingredients. The next thing I notice is Times Square itself, there are a few large junky billboards but the architecture of the City impresses itself upon me much more than advertisements.

Times Square ca. Now ... (Click to Examine the Chaos)

Now let’s play the game a little longer: Let’s look at the same place in contemporary times. Now the first thing that assaults me is the chaos of the advertising. (And if you actually walk through Times Square you are overwhelmed in Sensurround by multiple and massive television screens.) The architecture has receded from view and the populace has become an extension of the endless logos and contradictory swatches of color. Visually humanity seems to be a silly and sad afterthought. There is no dignity left in jumble of clothing, which seem to have been chosen primarily for their cheap comfortable utility and not their aesthetic qualities. Don’t believe me? Start at the bottom and look for one good pair of footwear? And continue up the bodies looking for some signifier beyond comfort. You might find a couple of articles of fashion worth a moments notice. But the feel of the crowd as whole? Disconnected, lackadaisical, nervous, listless too. The word angst comes to mind. Ironically folks today have much more individual choice in fashions than any generation in history.

Cut and Paste Humanity in Times Square New York City

Let’s make another comparison. Pick a fashion magazine. Let’s say Harper’s Bazaar. Now let’s go back to the 40′s or 50′s again. What do we see? One simple elegant image of a woman wearing a rather attractive dress, one simple caption and the title of the magazine. And that’s basically it.

A clean uncluttered aesthetic - Harper's Bazaar September 1947

Now let’s move to the late 70′s and let’s look at a cover. What do we see? A big face with eyes meant to grab you if sitting behind another title on a rack, and a riot of truly bad graphics that practically cause the publication’s title to disappear. Almost every American fashion magazine had exactly the same aesthetics. This was the disco age; an era of shlock if there ever was one. Eventually this began to seem trashy to the folks in the trade.

A Cluttered Harper's Bazaar Cover Late 70's

And so believe it or not by the early 90′s there was a change. By say November of 1994 one could find classy covers again on Harper’s Bazaar: One classy image with somewhat tasteful blocks of copy on one side. (Although that pesky barcode kind of throws the general image slightly askew.) This coincided with the era of the supermodel and a time when there was more popular recognition of fashion photographers. It was also the Grunge era and other forms of Alternative music that valued honesty more highly than in the late 80′s or again by the late 90′s.

Harper's Bazaar November 1994 - An Attempt at Simplicity

But look at a recent 2011 cover of Harper’s Bazaar, or nearly any contemporary American magazine. It’s obvious that the war has been lost. Buried beneath the graphic hell is a hollow plastic pop singer in pseudo shimmery style. Meanwhile that barcode sits there doing it’s fugly commercial duty.

The Messy Sheen: Harper's Bazaar 2011

More Ugly/Pretty

Barcodes? Gotta have ‘em I suppose. But why are they always on the front of the magazine, squatting there like a cigarette butt ruining any decent attempt at an artistic layout? Why aren’t they on the back of the magazine? It’s a very little thing really. And I suppose you have a right to say why are you even bothered by it? Get a life! And I get your point. These things are small.

Except for one thing: It isn’t just one thing!

No Comment.

We are drowning in a kind of graphic squalor. Everywhere we turn we are sinking in advertisements, propaganda, logos, political signage, photographs, faux textures, demanding collages, edited nightmares.

As recently as the early 90′s alternative artists of various stripes were working to bring a challenges to these hard angular commercial forms that surround us at every turn. But the popularity of the Internet and computer graphics sent the culture straight to graphic damnation. We’ve all been subjected to shoddily designed websites. But it isn’t the weird amateur sites that have warped us as much as it is the big ones where we have to spend a certain amount of time conducting our affairs. It is Facebook, Yahoo!, eBay, MSN, Google, Amazon, etc. It is the tyranny of the angulated blocky assault of words and pixels, photos ands megabytes that threatens to turn our lives into a series of headlines and captions.

Graphic Purgatory

What Seems Normal

And we wear our headlines and captions in an endless stream of T-shirts and corporate logos. We even label our own skins. What is the meaning of getting a commercial logo stenciled onto one’s body? Or of Bible verses about love tattooed directly above the ass crack? And a search for ugly tattoos is beyond my ability to convey for shear odious queasiness. Evidently we are desperate to communicate to others who we are – directly, immediately through any visual means necessary . After all who has time to talk to everybody? Better just to let images speak for us. Yet somehow so much gets cheapened by the hollowness of our insecurity. It is much harder to just be, than it is to “express yourself”.

1st Corinthians 13 as a 'Tramp Stamp'

The Ultimate in Fetishization

Our speech is shortened into simplistic words. I get the feeling sometimes that the caveman is not an image from our past but rather a prophecy of our future. Did humanity ever stand around saying things like “Ugh. Me like.” ? I seriously doubt it. But are we that far from a time when they will say “Dude” “Sucks” “Rules.” “Ka-Boom!”? In other words our language is becoming dangerously close to being a series of slogans and ad copy. (This is one of the scariest aspects of the film ‘Idiocracy‘.) This is nowhere more evident than in what somehow passes for political speech. Even more graphic onslaughts can be found on the cruel bumper stickers produced by both the Left and the Right.

Anti-Bush Pro-Liberal Political Speech (Click to Read)

Anti-Obama Pro-Conservative Political Speech (Click to Read)

The endlessly noxious visual noise we surround ourselves with is not simply a little thing. Why do people in the past, people more prejudiced than we supposedly are, with less psychological insight than we possess and a poorer understanding of nutrition and health, seem more at home on there skins than we do? The answer to the question can be found in the aesthetic environment we have chosen to surround ourselves with. Our debris reveals a people with a very thin sense of reality and personal identity.

Fairly Standard Students

More Unremarkable 21st Century Folks

Our protests will go nowhere if we think the problem is merely, or even primarily, economic. There is a strange cancer the eats at the core of 21^st Century reality. It doesn’t really matter what your politics are. It will continue to devour us until we can look it in the eyes and see our own complicity. There are no easy solutions. But it does take courage to see what we, and I include myself here, have become in this cowardly new world.

As Long As Everyone's Having Fun

A Search For Human Dignity

Owen Barfield, a friend of C.S. Lewis, once described how our societies become that which our imaginations create for us. In his 1957 book ‘Saving the Appearances’ he wrote: Even if the pace of change remained the same, one who is really sensitive to (for example) the difference between the medieval collective representations and our own will be aware that, without traveling any greater distance than we have come since the fourteenth century, we could very well move forward into a chaotically empty or fantastically hideous world. But the pace of change has not remained the same. It has accelerated and is accelerating.

Byrne Power

Haines, Alaska

October 25 2011

Amanda Knox Near The End of Her Retrial

I am not really given to writing about tabloid news items. They are generally worthless. And current events require time to be digested. But recently the appeal trial of Amanda Knox caught my attention. I didn’t really get enticed by the speculation of whether she was innocent or guilty. What interested me more was the way that her case was a metonym for a generation. Or rather that her story shows a gaping hole in the understanding of the world for those coming of age in early 21^st Century America.

Amanda Knox was extremely typical of her generation prior to the events surrounding the brutal murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia Italy in 2007. Raised in a Roman Catholic Home, with a Catholic education, yet also, in the casual syncretism of the times, a student of Yoga, enough so to demonstrate the namaste gesture on several occasions. ( And like many in her generation I would doubt that the mixture of Christian belief and Hindu practice would even register in any way as inconsistent to her.) (Yeah I realize I’m treading on perilous ground even pointing this out.) Yet also in the same flux of the current American climate she wasn’t exactly setting a spiritual tone with any consistency. Her defense for what she was doing that night was smoking hash and having sex with her then boyfriend. And so she was utterly typical in that regard as well even down to watching television later that night. Likewise she posted silly photos of herself on her social networking sites and wrote things for public consumption that should have been private journal entries. Again standard fare. When she found herself embroiled in what was to come, she acted with pretty much the same naivete and groundless positivity that are also the hallmarks of our times in our land. In other words, how many American souls under thirty would have been caught in a similar way by their misunderstanding of the fact that world is still actually a very large place with contrary rules in different places and that there is enough darkness to go around several times over?

Amanda Knox Appears To Be Having Way Too Much Fun At The First Trial in 2009. 'Appears' Is The Operative Word.

And so in the confusion of the original investigation and trial Amanda Knox acted in wildly inappropriate and culturally naïve ways. In America high school and college age girls just plop down on a floor or rug anywhere. They’ve been doing this since the culture radically loosened up in the Sixties. Then comes the yoga and the cartwheels. Actually according to the most astute observers what Amanda was trying to do was to relax, to get her mind off things, a little stretching, various positions. Unfortunately in her simplistic American mode, where therapy is the number one choice for all problems, she misidentified her problem. Feeling better about herself wasn’t the answer to her dilemma. Relieving her own stress wasn’t going to impress the Italian officials scrutinizing her. And if she ever thought People and Us magazines were tacky, she obviously did not ken to the carnivorous nature of the European tabloid beast. Photos of her during her original trial are filled with smiles, funny faces, funky grimaces. It’s almost as if she imagined she were immune and the American consulate would eventually just rescue her from this absurd situation. And so perhaps she acted like the usual entitled American student. Nothing to get hung about, strawberry fields forever. And the full reality of her situation didn’t start to seep in until around the same time she was declared guilty of murder. (At least that’s the perception.)

I didn’t really pay much attention to the court proceedings the first time round. Pretty American girl gets caught in weird Italian murder scene. So? The world is filled with much crazier and darker things. Then a month or so ago I started to notice a few of the photos being released through the various news agencies. I was arrested by the change in Amanda’s expressions. Suddenly she was no longer the average goofy US college student. It wasn’t just the weight loss or skin broken out with worry. It wasn’t merely the dark eyes with the sleepless blue tinge beneath them. The expression had completely altered in some less definable way. I knew what it was. She had been broken.

The Happy-Go-Lucky Amanda Knox Has Disappeared

In 21^st Century America brokenness is a state to be avoided at all costs. It suggests losing one’s identity or even one’s mental stability. We prescribe drugs to avoid anything resembling brokenness. The fellow travelers of brokenness, sorrow, depression, grief, et cetera, are to be shunned like a blackening case of bubonic plague. (We have pills for that sort of thing.) There certainly are circumstances where being broken is a terrible thing. Torture, for instance, breaks and doesn’t heal. However, it does not follow that all instances of brokenness are bad. And in fact I would like to suggest that in our feelgood positive American dreamscape, where the disappointments of life are relegated to political rantings, real brokenness is a much needed antidote to the casual oblivion of our hydra-headed selfishness. We are encouraged endlessly to be empowered to follow our dreams, our desires, our hearts. Yet we never seem to recall that power corrupts, that dreams are unreal, our desires can easily be poisonous and our hearts desperately tortuous and impossible to fully know or trust.

Imagine if Amanda Knox had been entangled in a similar mess in a culture even more distant from us than Italy’s. Let’s just move the peg one notch over to Russia. There, sitting on the ground is positively considered unhealthy, especially for women. There American smiles are seen, as they are in France, as extremely suspicious and evidence of a shallow character. And how does their judicial system work??? Any clue whatsoever? And if someone is sent to jail there will we ever see them again? I often talk with twenty-something friends who go traveling to places as distant culturally as Guatemala, Thailand or Vietnam. They come back with wonderful stories. One gets the feeling that the world is their playground to explore. Yet they rarely know anything about these countries before they go. And not much more when they return.

Young Americans frighten me for their ignorance about the customs of the world beyond their borders. They scare me for the collective assumption that as long as you have a little digital electronic device you can just contact home. But you know what? 6,000 miles away is still six thousand miles away. It costs real money to cross that divide. And although that other culture may have Facebook access, beneath it’s 21^st Century gloss, it’s still other and deserves real respect. And really, before you go to China you’d better pick a few books and do some serious reading.

A Very Different Amanda Knox In The Final Days Of Her Retrial

But when I looked into the stark images of Amanda Knox during her retrial as she faced being put away for a long, long time I could see a change. The game was over. Life was no longer about the parties and chilling. It was not about trips to mall or about having fun, whatever that means. Living was no longer an entitlement. Suddenly something much more serious was happening. The brokenness was producing the very thing that Dostoevsky said we humans lacked the most: gratitude. I certainly won’t claim to know what really happened in Italy. But I do know this. No psychopath could’ve given her closing statement. But she was wrong in one major degree. She said she was the same person that she was before the trial started. I’m sure she was trying to tell the court that she was the same innocent girl as when she first started. But in fact she was quite far from ever being that naïve American girl again. When the verdict was read there was a momentary confusion of language. Then it became clear that she had indeed been acquitted. And at that moment she broke completely. But the breaking was filled with gratitude. Amanda Knox had been given the possiblity of a new beginning.

Amanda Knox Shortly Before The Verdict

I wish that kind of breaking upon all of the confused positive folk of our fearful generation.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, after ten years in the gulag and five more in exile, said it best:

It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful success I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either–but right through every human heart–and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an unuprooted small corner of evil.

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.

…

All the writers who wrote about prison but who did not themselves serve time there considered it their duty to express sympathy for prisoners and to curse prison. I…have served enough time there. I nourished my soul there, and I say without hesitation:

“Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!”

From the Gulag Archipelago

Part IV, Chapter I; Vol. II The Ascent

Byrne Power

Haines Alaska

10/11/11