While closer to rock opera than classical music, this cabaret-style show, accompanied by live cello and percussion, is a playful and poetic update of the 19th-century puppet opera.
Friday, February 07, 2020
"HEN" - Gender Fluid Puppetry at The Mouffetard - Théâtre des Arts de la Marionnette, Paris
While closer to rock opera than classical music, this cabaret-style show, accompanied by live cello and percussion, is a playful and poetic update of the 19th-century puppet opera.
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2 comments:
HEN sounds like a beautiful blend of a lot of art forms while also discussing a very important topic. The idea of a piece existing in a form of plurality, by evoking numerous emotions and representations, instead of forcing an audience to see one perspective is also very interesting and contradicts most standard theatrical set ups. Additionally, I think the inclusion of puppets, and using those to emphasize the idea of representation coming in different forms and contradicting absurdist beliefs combines together numerous ideas that this piece talks about. I am also very intrigued by the construction and creation of this puppet, since the pictures are so unique and jarring- but I think that is another addition to how they are able to create diverse representation in puppet form. Puppetry- especially in this form- is a great way of both connecting the audience to something to grab their attention without adding in bias that can come to play when using a real actor.
This was a really interesting article. I find that I am often drawn to articles focusing on international theatre because It seems like every country is addressing similar issues through their own individual form of theatre. Gender and the fluidity of it has certainly been on our minds recently. Theatre and its community have been at the forefront of this revolution in America, and it's interesting to see how that also runs true internationally. I have always been curious how other nations are addressing gender non-comforming people, and the fluidity of gender, especially the french, because their entire language is gendered. A chair is feminine, and a cat is masculine. There are very little gender-neutral pronouns in the french language, so this idea of HEN as a pronoun, grammatically, is really interesting. I also love the puppet show aspect of this performance, and the adaptability this puppet has throughout the show, but the author brings up a wonderful point at the very end, how do you get the people who need to see a show like this, to come? And I think that is something we, as theatre-makers, deal with all the time. Most theatre is very liberal, and most theatre-goers share similar beliefs, so how do you avoid an entire audience of confirmation bias? I do not know, but I think that is a question that needs to be on our minds more.
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