Puppets and Performing Objects in the Twentieth Century

Recent markers of the increased visibility and popularity of puppet theatre have been the three International Festivals of Puppet Theater presented by the Jim Henson Foundation in New York City since 1992. At each of the bi-annual festivals there has been a related exhibition at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. In 1996 the exhibition was titled “Puppets and Performing Objects in the Twentieth Century,” and it chronicled the Euro-American use of puppets, masks, and other objects in performance over the past hundred years. Conceived and designed by Leslee Asch, the Executive Director of the Jim Henson Foundation, the exhibition was co-curated by Asch, Barbara Stratyner (the Library’s Curator of Exhibits), and myself.

“Puppets and Performing Objects in the Twentieth Century” differed from previous Puppet Festival exhibits in that it sought a broad overview of the western rediscovery of objects in performance. That historical phenomenon, by tapping into the non-realistic, anti-logical, and even fetish roots of puppets, masks and other performed materials, was an antithetical response to the development of European tenets of positivism, rationality, and realism. Our exhibition began with a focus on Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, whose performance in 1896 marked a beginning of this rediscovery, and it followed major developments of the performance form to the present, including European and American object performance from the worlds of theatre, dance, performance art, film, and computer graphics. What follows are texts written by me for the exhibit installation, and photographs of the exhibit by Richard Termine.

Exactly one hundred years ago the course of modern theatre was changed when Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi brought the world of puppets, masks, and other performing objects onto the centerstage of western theatre. Over the past century Jarry’s seed has blossomed in the appearance of puppet theatre in all forms of performance. The performing object, whether it appears as one of the traditional forms of puppet theatre, or as a new form of abstract, found-object, or mechanical theatre, has proved central to the development of twentieth century performance. This exhibition unites examples from the various fields of puppet theatre, avant-garde performance, visual arts, and projected and broadcast media to examine what they all have in common: the performing object.

The most concise definition of “performing objects” is by Frank Proschan. In 1983 he described them as “material images of humans, animals, or spirits that are created, displayed, or manipulated in narrative or dramatic performance.” Performing object is a descriptive term for all material images used in performance, and puppets and masks are at the center of performing object theatre around the world. But the term performing object has a broader scope and includes techniques of performance not normally labeled puppetry which nonetheless share the same basic approach.

Ubu Roi and the Birth of Modern Theatre

In the late 1880s an eccentric French youth named Alfred Jarry got together with his school-boy friends in Brittany to perform an outrageous and absurd puppet epic in their homes. These shows, featuring a bizarre king named Ubu (a satirical caricature of the boys’ teacher), were performed with marionettes characteristic of centuries-old northern French puppet traditions. By the time he was twenty-three, Jarry had migrated to Paris, where he became involved with the Théâtre d’Art, dedicated to the new movement of Symbolism, and its concrete representations of abstract ideas. Théâtre d’Art director Aurelien Lugné-Poe produced all kinds of new plays, from Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt to Maurice Maeterlinck’s brooding, puppet-influenced gothic dramas. Symbolist painters and poets made theatre there as well, combining paintings, music, and poetry into new forms of performance art. Jarry, still obsessed with his puppet play, persuaded Lugné-Poe to direct a new production of it, and on December 10, 1896, Ubu Roi was performed. In the puppet tradition of comical satire, Jarry’s Ma and Pa Ubu are an amoral and ruthless, but also comic and human, couple who take over Poland in the manner of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The manner in...