NYTimes.com: OF all the things we pay money to sit in a theater and watch, puppets are surely the strangest. By and large they are not particularly good at the thing we most often ask them to do — imitate us, that is — and yet people (some people anyway) love them precisely for their limitations. Puppetry may even be enjoying one of its periodic revivals right now. “War Horse” is such a hit in large part because of its marvelous lifelike horses, and in “Compulsion” last winter a marionette of Anne Frank was the only character with enough stage presence to stand up to Mandy Patinkin. In our enlightened era some fortunate puppets have been allowed privileges denied to the likes of Howdy, Kukla, Ollie and the rest. Basil Twist, arguably the master of avant-garde puppetry, has incorporated them into a drag show, while in “Avenue Q,” they get to talk filth and have sex.
Friday, October 28, 2011
‘69°S.,’ Shackleton Tale, Comes to BAM Next Wave Festival
NYTimes.com: OF all the things we pay money to sit in a theater and watch, puppets are surely the strangest. By and large they are not particularly good at the thing we most often ask them to do — imitate us, that is — and yet people (some people anyway) love them precisely for their limitations. Puppetry may even be enjoying one of its periodic revivals right now. “War Horse” is such a hit in large part because of its marvelous lifelike horses, and in “Compulsion” last winter a marionette of Anne Frank was the only character with enough stage presence to stand up to Mandy Patinkin. In our enlightened era some fortunate puppets have been allowed privileges denied to the likes of Howdy, Kukla, Ollie and the rest. Basil Twist, arguably the master of avant-garde puppetry, has incorporated them into a drag show, while in “Avenue Q,” they get to talk filth and have sex.
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3 comments:
I would like to talk about this show but this comment will go a bit of a different direction. The purpose of theatre is to tell stories. I am sure all my dramaturge friends would like a more precise definition but for the most part, telling stories is what we do. The next purpose of theatre in this simplistic diatribe is to make people feel things. Feel what the actors are feeling. Feel what the writer and the director feel as the message and the emotion of a piece. Well, if you are presenting the story of Ernest Shakelton and you want people to feel the story, you need to stage this show in and industrial freezer warehouse. The audience should sit in a 28 Degree room. Not cold enough to hurt someone but cold enough that the audience needs to wear coats and feel cold. Most of you will dismiss this as a silly notion and you are right but think of transformative nature of performance such as this.
I would love to see this show. Having marionettes operated by performers on stilts is a fascinating idea. It would give a completely different experience than a show such as Avenue Q, where the actors are right next to the puppets they are holding in their hands. The pictures of the show suggest that puppetry is used purposefully, not just as spectacle. The massive imposing images of the puppeteers behind the puppets work well to portray the imposing vastness of Antarctica and the frozen far-south portion of the world.
Although briefly, the article raises the concern of using spectacle for spectacle's sake, having no other apparent connection to the show. This is often a huge problem with puppetry in productions. The show the becomes "about" the puppet, like Warhorse, where a big selling point is going to see the amazing horse, not necessarily the story itself. If done correctly, puppetry should integrate seamlessly into the production and come from a truly justified place. It sounds like in 69S, they hung onto an idea that was neat and made the play serve that device. Considering the choreographer threw out almost the entire show, perhaps the mechanics of the show should have been examined as well.
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