Puppetry has been with us since time immemorial, and in every corner of the world. Today there are hundreds of puppet festivals. And there is PIF – standing strong, fifty-nine years old, one of the six oldest puppet festivals in Europe. That’s no small thing!
So why does it endure? I sometimes wonder what we’ve managed to learn in these fifty-eight years, and what we’ll learn in this, the fifty-ninth.
I continue to watch performances in various theatres and at various festivals. Marionettes seem to be making a comeback, even the ones on long strings. And they’re always met with delight. Is it because we admire the puppeteer’s skill, or because we simply enjoy watching manipulation on display?
Tabletop puppets, animated directly by hand, have long been popular – as if they were the easiest to manipulate. And lately we’re seeing more and more tabletop figures that can’t be animated, only moved from one place to another, nothing more. Or model theatre, where the puppeteer likewise has complete control. Or so it seems.
And in the world of people, we’re increasingly seeing those who, without a shred of critical thought or an opinion of their own, follow whatever trend comes along, letting themselves be swept up by the crowd or manipulated by some odd politicians. It’s as though whole masses of people – entire nations, even – are turning into collective puppets: someone pulls a string, and the whole group makes the same gesture, looks in the same direction, nods as one, and sings the very same note in unison.
It brings to mind that eighteenth-century caricature depicting the world as a puppet show, with politicians pulling the strings of the citizenry. Once, that was just a joke. Today, somehow, the joke stopped being funny.
But this kind of manipulation, one that demands blind obedience from its puppets, is in fact a complete negation of puppetry itself. Puppets aren’t stupid. They can’t simply be manipulated at will. They know how to rebel. They show their own will. And that’s why a performance in which the puppeteer flaunts their power and arrogantly tries to bend the puppet to their command simply doesn’t work.
The symbiosis of puppet and puppeteer is the finest example of successful collaboration. The puppeteer listens to the puppet, knows what it can and cannot do, what it wants and what it absolutely does not want. They come to an understanding. They spend time together, often and for long stretches, working side by side, getting to know one another, testing each other out…
In puppetry, what is shown matters just as much as how and by what means it is shown: through marionettes on long strings, the mischievous guarattelle (the traditional Italian glove puppets), elusive shadows, still figurines, or a puppet brought to life by six puppeteers at once. Or even an excavator. Yes, that too!
Puppets give unstintingly, and each of us takes from them whatever we can, whatever we want, whatever we know how to take.
What will we carry home from this year’s PIF?
The official program editor Livija Kroflin,
PhD, Full Professor
THE MIRACLE OF REVIVING THE INANIMATE (And is it really inanimate?)
Ever since God created the first man from dust and breathed life into him, man has been trying to imitate Him. Legends, stories, and fantasies are full of homunculi, golems, and monsters like Frankenstein’s. But we also see evidence of this in everyday life. Wendy Passmore-Godfrey says: “our human inclination is to animate objects around us, whether we put words in our dog’s mouth or kick the tyre when the car has broken down on the side of the road.” When I would stumble into the table as a child and cry, I was told: “Hit it back!” I never did because I knew that the table was stronger and that it would hit me again. Just now, I got into a heated fight with a jar that wouldn’t open. It really didn’t want to! I don’t even want to tell you the things I say to the artificial no intelligence of my laptop when it acts wilfully. After all, this text was written for decent people. People call it the meanness of dead things. And they argue with them. Even those who would be mortally offended if you told them that such behaviour was irrational, childish or even, God forbid, puppetry.
Puppeteers, on the other hand, are not ashamed to admit that deep down they are actually animists. Perhaps some of them conceitedly believe that they are the ones who bring the inanimate to life with their “divine” breath, but others know that, even in the seemingly inanimate thing, there is already at least a seed of life. They know how to use it and, in their hands, objects really come to life. (In the hands of former, they become clumsy.) Animistic (puppetry) thinking seems to be gaining popularity. On television, I see a toilet bowl moaning to a psychiatrist and a dirty kitchen bowl crying for help because negligent people have left scraps of food in it all night.
For more than half a century, PIF has demonstrated the wonder of animated matter, its spirituality, and the transcendence of the material world. In the plays, you can see the different ways in which this happens.
We are most used to puppets in human form, but those can surprise us as well. We will see traditional marionettes, which, although capable of a wide variety of tricks and skills, are rarely seen on puppetry stages. Probably because they require special skills. We’ll see how a balloon becomes a character and a boy’s best friend. A dog will speak in human language. An axe that will commit a crime is not only a tool and not only a prop – it is also a character with its own free will. Some plays will show how a puppet, defying expectations, can better reach the core of the problem and evoke stronger emotions than a live actor. The characters of a little bear and piglet will help children become aware of their own behaviour in friendship: their differences of character, disagreements, and reconciliation. Tabletop puppets, seemingly realistic, will also allow the otherwise invisible Mrs. Dementia to become a character herself, and will strongly impact the audience, evoking intense emotions, compassion and understanding, even though their hands are the size of a walnut. Even a play performed without words will be eloquent in its thunderous silence about militarization, war, and enormous tragedy, expressed through the interplay of figurative puppets, each of which is breathed into life by several animators.
The presence of evil forces in today’s world, with a contemporary motif of looming mechanical organ transplantation, is vividly illustrated in the play based on an old legend, retold countless times throughout history of puppetry, about Mephistopheles and Faust. We will see a puppet with a detachable head, which portrays the confusion of the character, his contradictory feelings and his uncertainty when faced with a new situation. Wood fragments of various shapes will create a real forest – a puppet forest. In one lively show, the puppet remained only at the level of a sign, but the life-giving breath of the whole performance comes from the three actors and their inspired play around the puppets. Another play speaks in very loud silence about the current problem of migration, all through puppets, live performance, projections, acrobatics, and model puppetry. Through the combination of live performance and object theatre, one play examines the meaning of art. Indeed, what would the world be without art! And without puppetry!
We tend to think of mechanical puppets as soulless automatons and barely acknowledge them as theatre puppets. However, they will show us the fantastic world of the medieval Gothic era, full of secrets and magic, fights, wars, parties, weddings, fear and joy, love, and beauty.
A puppet always needs and loves its human. It knows how to help the actor, just as the actor complements the puppet with their skills. The puppet and the actor make up the character together. In one play, we will see actors and their tiny puppets using their (albeit limited but very purposeful movements) to emphasize the words, behaviour, and emotions of each character.
It is a miracle how figurines, that cannot be animated, can depict a whole world with very modern problems. The scene seems to be set for children’s play and the actors seem to be playing: they move the figurines and stop them in a certain situation. However, through them we experience a tragic event more strongly and we reflect more deeply on the world in which we live, on responsibility and other ethical issues. We are drawn into this world and feel as if anyone and every one of us could be such a figurine, manipulated by others.
Faith in the puppet is also evident in a slightly different depiction of Pinocchio, where the puppet does not turn into a boy. Instead, a character of a naughty boy represented by a live hand with an attached ball as its head turns into a real puppet – a rod puppet, and thus fits in with other rod puppets.
A puppet knows how to open our inner eyes, to help us see the world in new ways, tear our heart out or heal it, make us cry with laughter, or make us cry and then laugh. Sharply and directly, it shows us the world as it really is. It can also quite easily transcend it. The puppet is amazing. A puppet is a puppet … is a puppet.
The official program editor, Livija Kroflin,
PhD, Full Professor
