Living Among The Puppets ... A Magical Land With No Racial, Ethnic Or Cultural Hangups

July 21, 2009
Written by Janet Connor in
Common Ties That Bind
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larger-than-life-sized Chimp puppets by Ruphin Coudyzer
Larger-than-life-sized Chimp puppets by Ruphin Coudyzer.

In May 2006, France’s Royal de Luxe Theatre Company brought “The Sultan’s Elephant” to the streets of London. The elephant, a 42-ton mechanical puppet constructed mostly of wood, was operated by more than ten puppeteers through the use of motors and hydraulics. The show also included a giant “Little Girl” marionette. For four days, the Little Girl and Elephant, (both over four-stories tall,) astounded audiences as they strolled through the city, causing traffic lights, and other “street furniture” to be removed for the performance.

In this techno-savvy age, it seems comforting that we still crave theatric spectacles in the simplicity of an ancient art form like puppetry. Ok, so Royal de Luxe’s techniques aren’t exactly simple these days, but the principles are the same, and more importantly, so are audiences.

If you’ve been paying attention to the theatre world, you may have noticed a growing trend. Puppets are everywhere. A rising interest in Asian art has focused attention on China’s shadow puppetry as well as Japan’s Bunraku puppets. At the Lit Moon World Shakespeare Festival last year, one of the favorites was “As You Like It,” performed by the State Puppet Theatere of Bourgas, Bulgaria. Puppets are opera. They’re featured in “Avenue Q,” and “Wicked” on Broadway. At London’s National Theatre, audiences are awed by life-size horse puppets galloping about the Olivier in “War Horse.”

Although it may seem like a new idea to some of us, “Puppets on Broadway are nothing new,” says Paul Mesner, of Paul Mesner Puppets in Kansas City, Mo. Mesner is a veteran puppeteer, explained that “Puppets are a marvelous kind of actor with a different presence. An audience is able to impose more of their own emotional self onto the puppet, and that medium expands a director’s possibilities in telling a story.”

Paul Mesner puppets’ production of The NativityPuppets have been telling stories for thousands of years. The first puppets were likely hand shadows created by ancient cave dwellers. Debate exists about whether puppets first appeared in China or India, 2,000 or 4,000 years ago, and references to puppetry in literature date back to 420 B.C. Virtually every culture on earth has embraced puppetry.

Puppets came to America by way of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Imigrating puppets were presented as entertainment, but the first puppets to appear in America, were actually made by Native Americans for the purpose of religious ceremonies. These ceremonies were held at night in order to keep manipulation methods secret; not for the sake of preserving showmanship, but because they were viewed as a sacred mystery. Elements of mystery still exist in today’s puppet productions. An expert puppet performance always leaves the audience asking, “How did they do that?”

If you think puppet shows are for children, think again. Across the U.S. and around the world, puppeteers are attracting adults to theatres. Handspring Puppet Company, located in Cape Town, South Africa, has been doing shows targeting adult audiences since 1985. According to Handspring founder, Basil Jones, “I guess we are always trying to push the boundaries of what puppet theatre can do or become. We are also interested in how puppet theatre can intersect with the cultural and social fabric in South Africa.”

Handspring is responsible for creating the life-size horse puppets used in “War Horse,” a play based on Michael Morpurgo’s novel about World War I as seen through the eyes of a horse. The almost skeletal puppets, constructed with nylon cord, cane, plywood, bicycle brake-cable, gauze, and leather, are manipulated with such expertise that until a horse dies, and the puppeteers swiftly roll offstage, the audience is seldom aware of their presence.

Handspring deals with hard-hitting issues, but so does conventional theatre. So why bother with puppets? Why not use live actors? If you’ve ever taken a child to a puppet show, you know their response to puppets is much stronger. The same is true for adults. “What puppets do on stage is reinvent and reinvigorate very primary, and simple human actions and aspirations,” Jones says. “They make simple actions heroic. They reintroduce a kind of existential drama into the small things we do. As the puppeteer Enno Podehl taught us, they reintroduce the epic into the quotidian. It’s very seldom that one sees human actors working at such a primary and fundamental level. Human actors do not have the power to reinvent the essential drama in as strong a way as puppets do.”

Perhaps simplicity is the key after all. Perhaps the mesmerizing power of this ancient art stems from the lure of blank-slate puppets, able to tell our story with a new slant, minus any preconceived notions about the world or each other. Perhaps what we all want is a little reinvention, reinvigoration and reintroduction. Perhaps we are a bit envious of our puppet counterparts because they do not make judgements based on our race, ethnicity or culture.

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Common Ties That Bind