The International Festival of Puppet Theatre

Figure 1.

“The Apple Cart Lady” puppet in The Golem directed by Vít Horejs as the Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre’s entry in the 1998 International Festival of Puppet Theatre. Photo: Jan Frank.

Figure 2.

Yehuda Almagor in Teatron Theatre of Israel’s production of Kafka, or The Search Goes On at the 1998 International Festival of Puppet Theatre. Photo: Roni Neeman.

This fall was a wonderful time to be a puppet in New York. Work was plentiful, and with Julie Taymor’s masterful puppetry in Lion King dominating Broadway, and puppeteer Basil Twist’s Fantasia- influenced Symphonie Fantastique an SRO hit downtown, the line separating mainstream entertainment from cutting-edge invention never seemed slimmer. The International Festival of Puppet Theatre arrived in this lively New York environment in September for eighteen days, during which sixteen countries, one hundred sixty-six artists, and four hundred and ninety-eight puppets participated in twenty-eight productions.

Two trends dominated the Festival. One was the use and adaptation of traditional theatrical or literary works which were then refined within the context of puppetry. One adaptation, A Harlot’s Progress, was derived from the visual arts. Other productions which approached and occasionally applied pressure to traditional theatrical or literary works included performances derived from the Sweeney Todd/Demon Barber legend; the Jarry absurdist icon Ubu; Christopher Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris; a “free” adaptation of Kafka’s Report to the Academy which included additional material from other Kafka works; a puppet/dance piece inspired by the sixteenth-century Jewish legend of the Prague ghetto community, The Golem; and three one-act ghost plays collected and adapted by the American journalist and scholar, Lafcadio Hearn. Hearn traveled to Japan in 1890, fell in love with the country, and translated these ghost stories into English, anthologizing them into a collection entitled Kwaidan (literally, Ghost Stories). Conceived and directed by Ping Chong (New York), with puppetry coordinated by Jon Ludwig (Atlanta) and art direction and production design by Mitsuru Ishii (Japan), Kwaidan was a stunning and very beautiful piece of theatre [Theatre Journal 50.4: 521–23]. Traditional “Punch and Judy” puppetry was obviously a rarity at this Festival.

A second pervasive trend was the generous sharing of the performance space among live actors, dancers, puppet manipulators, and the puppets themselves. In some productions, like the Welsh company Green Ginger’s raucous staging of Slap Head: Demon Barber, the line between performing puppet and performing human was intentionally blurred; one was left pondering who was being manipulated, the puppets or the audience. A more serious metatheatrical problem was posed in the brilliant Israeli piece, Kafka, or The Search Goes On produced by the Teatron Theatre. Although there was skillful use of puppets and puppeteering, there was an even more searing metamorphosis into the physical body, the mind, and the soul of the chimp/performer. This transformation converted the piece into a Beckettian tragicomic enactment of the chimp/performer’s despairing attempts to escape from both his cage and his human demons. Often the work at this puppet festival approached such provocative themes. Ubu and the Truth Commission by the Handspring Puppet Company of South Africa both commanded and received serious consideration [Theatre Journal 50.1: 105].

A less moving venture into ideological puppetry was the French/American co-production Dieu!: God Mother Radio. This collaboration between Roman Paska, who adapted, designed, and directed the piece, and Massimo Schuster, who performed and operated the puppets, explored religious fanaticism through a loose adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s chronicle play, Massacre at Paris. The central conceit of the performance was a re-creation of the sixteenth-century French religious wars as analyzed by a loquacious late night radio personality on his talk and music show. Opening with a recording of Randy Newman’s biting composition, “That’s Why I Love Mankind,” the radio show rapidly segued from late night talk and music into an ersatz horror show reminiscent of...