History of Radical Puppetry
a lecture and slide show in progress
The history of radical puppetry is the history of puppetry in service
to
the people, the tradition of puppetry as the voice of the everyman, the
expression
of dissent, protest, the real and human concerns of daily life.
This
history of puppetry and the vitality of puppetry itself has been
watered
down and buried in commercialization in this country. In recent
years
however there has been a renewed interest in puppetry, as the
bankruptcy
of corporate mainstream media becomes more and more apparent.
Puppets
are immediate and authentic. Hewn from scraps of cloth, paper and duct
tape,
they are the quintessential tricksters--court jesters without the
court,
able to cross boundaries of both opinion and propriety, enabling us to
critique
society and government with handmade beauty and wit.
So here I give you a brief history of this poor person's art. Puppets
are
seen in every nook, cranny and culture of this world but for brevity's
sake,
against my deepest desire to expound upon the wonder's of puppetry for
many
hours, I will focus here on traditions in Europe and the US and
specifically
on puppetry existing outside the sanction of the status quo.
Starting sometime after 600 AD and continuing through 16th century,
puppets
shows were mostly seen in service to the church, enactments of Bible
stories.
A turning point came in the 15th century, with the advent of the
morality
plays--dramas in verse, which featured personifications of the 7 Seven
Deadly
Sins. "Old Vice" in particular became a popular rogue and comic,
who
spoke to common experience with debauchery and vulgar humor and thus,
the
stage was set for puppetry to be delivered into the hands of the
people;
The puppets were expelled from the church.
The English puppet shows of this time were called motions and were
mostly
the banished moralities, emphasizing slapstick and bawdy humor. The
puppeteers,
called "motion men" traveled around England along with the tinkers and
gypsies.
Puppet bawdies were in fact popular in many places in Europe at this
time.
There was Hanswurst in Germany, who had been kicked out of the early
puppet
versions of Faust for his rabble rousing and negotiations with the
devil.
And in Turkey, the shadow puppet rogue, Karagioz, acted as a live news
service
for the people, satirizing local events, taking pot shots at the
government
and spreading the retail gossip of the day.
The 17th Century saw the violent transition from a pastoral economy to
industrial
capitalism, the destruction of the commons and the rise of popular
resistance
movements such as the diggers and the ranters. In England in 1642
Cromwell
and his puritans locked the theaters due to fear of spreading
revolutionary
propaganda, but the puppets somehow slipped through the cracks.
For 18 years the only theater in England was roving outdoor puppet
theater.
The Lord Mayor of London tried to ban puppet shows during this time, as
well,
but then he died and the shows returned, irreverent as ever with the
Lord
Mayor, himself, appearing the Devil.
Interestingly, the first mention of Punch is seen shortly after this
ban
in the late 17th century. With government closure of legitimate
theaters,
Punch took to the streets as a vehicle of dissent. A derivative of the
Commedia
character Puncinella, Punch reigned as king of the puppets in England
through
most of the 18th century. He was the commoners hero,
critiquing
through slapstick and satire, breaking all the rules in a time when
conformity
was imposed upon every sphere of life. Punch mocked god, the law,
the
landlord, king, judge, policeman and even tricked death by avoiding
hanging.
In France a similar trend was happening, starting with the French
version
of Punch, Polcinelle, but then quickly being superseded by the French
Guignol,
another people's champion, a goodhearted fellow with the simple costume
of
a silkworker. Saxony banned puppetry in 1793 and by 1852 French
government
was demanding that texts be committed to paper--no improvisation
allowed!!
Puppetry was particularly controversial in Lyon, a hotspot of
revolution.
Apparently Napoleon III's police state was nervous about people
gathering
in groups and so Guignol shows came under surveillance. Petitions to
perform
puppet shows in Lyon were refused.
So in both England and France puppetry was treated as a criminal act,
puppeteers
were refused licenses offered to other professions. Thus
itinerant
puppeteers were regarded with suspicion and accused of promoting crime,
as
they drew crowds of poor people into respectable business areas. Sound
familiar?
And yet this limitation was also strength. Roving puppeteers set up
instant
stages and used improv as an immediate response to local and state
events.
Unlicensed, illegal and thus unhindered by the censor.
In the late 19th and early 20th century there was a surge in the
technical
aspect of the form within the bourgeois theater in both Europe and the
US.
Puppetry sought to amaze with trick marionettes and hidden levers and
some
of the first giant puppets were seen in the Opera of this time. A
parallel
movement of radical and experimental puppetry was taking place within
the
avant-garde.
In 1888 Alfred Jarry, the eccentric anarchist puppeteer performed an
early
version of Ubu Roi, a brutal and irreverent slap at bourgeois morality
and
stupidity. The play received instant notoriety, not the least of which
was
that the first word the king utters on stage is "shit!" The play
debuted
as a marionette piece and was later played by masked actors, retaining
much
of it's original puppet quality.
Though the artists that experimented with puppet forms are too numerous
to
name here, notable are the Dadas George Grotz, Oskar Kokoska and John
Heartfield
whose satirical marionette performances were shut down at the end of
WW1
for disrespect of the political authorities. From 1919 until Hitler's
rise
to power in 1933 Bauhaus artists experimented with puppetry and
performance,
bringing their paintings and sculptures to life in a sort of precursor
to
later performance art. Among the best known of those artists are
Klee,
Kandinsky and Oskar Schlemmer. Hitler of course, quickly suppressed the
experiemental
art of the Bauhaus.
Undisputed leaders of puppetry in Europe, the Czech puppeteers also had
a
tradition of radical puppetry. When the Czech language was banned by
the
Austrian Hungarian empire in the 19th c., puppeteers continued to
perform
in Czech as an act of defiance. Later, during Nazi occupation
Czech
puppeteers organized illegal underground performances with anti-fascist
themes,
tours of adult puppet plays with subtle allegorical points
imperceptible
to the censor. In the concentration camps, Czech women made
puppet
shows from scraps of nothing to keep up their morale. Eventually
the
Nazi's suppressed all Czech puppetry and over 100 skilled puppeteers
died
under torture in the camps.
While puppetry came to the US along with Europeans, we don't hear about
US
puppetry in the radical sense until the 1960's, when we also hear of
giant
puppets in connection to radical or protest puppetry for the first
time.
In 1961 the German artist, Peter Schumann came to this country and
shortly
after founded the seminal Bread and Puppet Theater with the motto that
"theatre
should be as basic as bread." Their work in protest of the
Vietnam
War put Bread and Puppet on the cultural map of this country. Later
moving
to a farm in Vermont, Bread and Puppet hosted their annual Domestic
Resurrection
Circus a fantastic blend of spirituality, politics and pageantry which
spawned
a generation of puppeteers and which continues to influence the world
of
political puppetry today.
European notables from this time period are The Welfare State and Dario
Fo.
The Welfare State, founded in 1968 blends political street theatre,
public
spectacle and celebration and is a precursor to community art as we
know
it today, as well as to popular art events such as Burning Man.
Seeking
to re-establish popular theatre traditions of the working class Welfare
State
drew from Carnival, the Feast of Fools, the fairground, the mummers and
the
tradition of subversion as entertainment. Welfare State brought
together
theatre, food, fire, puppets, stilts, arts education and
more.
One of my favorite of their actions was their burning of a 60 foot
crooked
parliament on Guy Fawkes Day.
Nobel prize winner, Dario Fo, broke with mainstream theater in
the
late 1960s, giving up a substantial income to follow his politics. Fo
helped
found a theatrical organization dedicated to the proletarian
revolution,
bringing theater to the people in factories, stadiums, villages and
school
dorms. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Fo used clowning, puppetry, masks
and
humanettes in his satires of government and government intelligence.
His
play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist was so successful in exposing
state
repression that his group were subjected to provocation and persecution
of
all kinds.
In the lineage of people's puppetry in this country is the longstanding
In
the Heart of the Beast Mask and Puppet Theater. Founder and
Director
Sandy Spieler worked with Peter Schumann in the late 60s and returned
to
Minneapolis where HOBT made their first piece in 1973. Their
MayDay
parade which continues to this day, involves over 500 people from their
local
community who help call in the sun and raise the tree of life each
spring.
On the West Coast, Wise Fool got started at the Nevada Test Site
actions
in 1989, while the protests against the Gulf War in 90-91 firmly
established
us as part of the west coast radical scene.
In 1996 members of wise fool worked with other activists at the
democratic
national convention in Chicago and from this union Art and Revolution
as
born. As well as the beloved SF contingent art and revolution
projects
have sprung up in urban centers all around the country.
And then there was Seattle N30, 1999. Despite vast media coverage
of
police violence only, Seattle was truly a carnival of resistance,
resplendent
with puppets, masks, dancers, creative roadblocks, banners and
music.
This lovely chaos continued into Washington DC the following Spring and
to
the democratic and republican national conventions that summer.
Police repression of Puppetry began to escalate in DC, when they closed
the
convergence center and rose to a frenzy in Philadelphia that summer
when
police held puppeteers and puppets locked in a warehouse and later
threw
over 100 skeleton puppets in a trash compactor. Later that summer
in
LA the convergence center sought a received a writ of protection,
forbidding
the police access to the convergence center.....
So the last years we have seen another surge of political puppetry and
puppet
events--The Insurrection Landscapers, Spiral Q, Shoddy Puppet, Puppet
Uprising
and the Black Sheep Festival on the east coast, Puppetropolis and Red
Moon
Theater and the Combustible Puppet Cabaret in Chicago, Cry of the
Rooster,
Risk of Change and the Illuminated Fools on the west coast to name just
a
very few names.
And here we are today! We continue forward in history as the unnamed
puppeteer,
hidden behind the mask of the puppet, giving voice to the people.
Educate. Agitate. Animate!!
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