Puppetry - a Surreal Endeavour?
Wendy Passmore-Godfrey
October 2008
Hans Bellmer was a German surrealist artist who created wooden doll parts that he displayed in disturbing configurations. Robert Williams writes that “dolls and mannequins are almost by definition surrealist objects”
It is doubtful that early puppeteers, who remain un- known but may date back to caveman days, thought about their activity with the philosophical, political and social attention with which
Andre Breton and other followers, in the early 1900’s, considered the art movement called Surrealism and yet puppetry, and specifically object puppetry, could be called the ultimate surreal endeavor.
Depicting the Dream State:
H.W. Janson, defines the aims of the Surreal movement as “pure psychic automatism… intended to express … the true process of thought” and to “transpose the dream to canvas”. (Page 662) The traditional puppet plays, frequently of gods manifesting themselves to humans suggest that the audience and the actors have entered a dream- like and fantastic mind space that the Surrealists strove to achieve.
For example the Indonesian puppeteer – the dalang – is supposed to be a conduit from the gods carrying their messages through the puppets directly to the people.
The legend explaining the first marionettes in India tells of the gods Shiva and Pavarti entering into dolls and making them dance. Puppetry in Indonesia, China, Turkey, Vietnam and India is rooted in traditions that are thousands of years old and was woven into the religious and spiritual activities.
The first use of puppetry is speculated to have been in a shamanistic ceremony of cavemen days.
The work of Salvador Dali, often called a surrealist artist, strives to show the “ambiguities besetting our perceptual processes” (Lynton page 178) paints dreams and visions that distort or melt. Puppets are masters at transformation, both literal – the fly apart skeleton of vaudeville fame - and figurative. Audiences find themselves caught up in a puppet’s quest, believing, without actually seeing, that a puppet smiles or that its heart beats.
Freudian elements
The Surrealists were also very interested in psychotherapy and Freud’s notions of the unconscious. Puppetry is often used as a therapeutic medium and it is well documented that patients find a conduit for expressing their thoughts or finding their voice with a puppet. Sometimes people find they express through a puppet, what they didn’t even know they knew or believed and thereby “explore the complex depths of personal experience” (Williams Page 197) that was the Surrealists goal. Alternatively they find talking to a puppet versus a person is sometimes easier. This is because puppets are perceived as having no ego, they make no judgments and they are sympathetic, unbiased listeners. Being metaphorical puppets can also synthesize complex issues into smaller understandable bits.
Elements of Chance
Janson also points out that chance played a big part in the Surrealists visual art production as evidenced by Jean Arps’ dropped paper work,
the collage and frottage effects of Max Ernst,
or the “biomorphic abstractions” (Janson page 663) of Joan Miro.
Puppetry, as with any dramatic event, has a great deal of chance built into it, as the ephemeral experience in time can never be recreated. In object puppetry (versus marionettes etc. ) there is an even greater element of chance as the puppet is manipulated directly by the human, placing it, as Roman Paska would say “directly in the space of accident, utterly negating the possibility of a clockwork performance”. (Page 40)
The Marvelous
Norbert Lynton defines the Surrealist movement as an effort by artists to “open up the super- reality of fantasy, dream and imagination”. (Page 170) Breton (writer of numerous Surrealist manifestos) suggests the movement celebrates the “marvelous” and “mobilizes the imagination”. (Williams Page 195) The very nature of puppetry insists the audience engage their imagination and suspend their disbelief in a collective pretense that a ‘dead thing’ is ‘alive’. Apparently one of Breton’s favorite quotations to illustrate the surprise of Surrealism, was from Lautreamont: “Beautiful as the accidental meeting of a sewing machine with an umbrella on an operating table”. (Lynton page 170) The surreal nature of puppetry can go beyond the poem, beyond the painting and allow for the actual meeting of these objects and the subsequent development of character, relationship and more!
The Object
Breton also wrote that the Surrealism offered “a whole new way of experiencing objects” (Williams Page 198) A puppeteer chooses to make an object a subject. The object may look like a subject i.e.: a humanoid or it can be from the world of inanimate objects. However the relationship between object and subject is in flux with the genre of object puppetry. “The object is no longer a theatre accessory or a form expressing a plastic or aesthetic concept” writes Brunella Erila “instead it is the starting point for the question who is speaking and what are they speaking about?” (Page 11) A chunk of wood can be a puppet and can be either anthropomorphized as an immovable, solid yet earthy person or be quite literally a chunk of wood.
Paska writes how the object in the genre of object puppetry is treated differently”the puppet itself is objectified… not a prop exactly but an object whose potential for signification is just minimally transformed by use or context. In the theatre of objects, ‘puppetness’ is ever only a concept or a possibility”. (Page 41) The puppeteer supplies all the energy for the performance – almost as though they are the object and the object is the subject.
What is real?
Rene Magritte, another surreal artist, further explores the idea of object, subject, words, labels and reality. According to Lynton, Magritte was a “painting philosopher” He struck at “the traditional core of art, at the source of what art’s agreed value as a source of communication: the convention by which we identify an image with the thing it represents.” (Page 180) In his piece entitled “The Use of Words 1” he has painted a picture of a pipe and written the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” – (This is not a pipe) although a painted pipe as a ‘platonic version’ of a pipe may be more truly a pipe than the object itself. And even the real object may be more than it appears – “in psychoanalytical terms, any object may be a fetish, a substitute for something else (Williams Page 203).
In the same way – a puppet is not what it represents, it is not the old man, the dog or the even the mythological dragon. It is the both the essence of an old man and the symbol of all old man. The genre of object puppetry pushes this further where the puppet is not even a representation of the part it is playing.
The same as Magritte’s painting of briefcase can be labeled as “Le ciel” (the sky) in The Key of Dreams
an object puppet that looks like a brick can be something or someone completely different.
Juxtapositions
Surrealists sought to encourage a trance- like disorientation in their audiences by using shock and surprise, sometimes through bizarre juxtapositions as in De Chirico’s work or the collages of Ernst. Eruli writes “Object puppetry in separating the form from the utilitarian function that has been assigned to the object by the realist convention, recaptures the surrealist aesthetic behind collage and the unexpected or playful misappropriation of the object “(Page 12) It is an egg beater and yet it is a bird at the same time, or even better it is the representation of ‘service’, or the emotion of ‘confusion’.
Signs and conventions
Even if the puppet is representing a human character, the representation is full of conventions.
Robert Williams points out when considering Picasso’s Guitar 1912 that there is a sophisticated principle at work and that is the “Arbitrariness of visual signs in general”. He quotes Kahnweiler, “… the true character of painting and sculpture is that it is a script. The products of these arts are signs, emblems not mirrors”. (Page 180) In Guitar there is the idea that a hole can be represented as a cylinder extending from the sculpture, a hand puppet has no knees and yet it sits, it has no voice and yet it talks, it has no life and yet it lives. A puppet’s appearance and its actions cannot mirror humans or animals instead they are signs or symbols of life, showing the essence of life.
In the genre of object puppetry the convention is even more remote. As Paska writes, what the puppet looks like is ultimately irrelevant - “The signifying properties of the puppet as a passive formal object or sculpture are ultimately unnecessary to the objects kinetic signifying activity as a puppet actor in a performance context.” (Page 39)
Brecht
Bertold Brecht is described as a Berlin Dada artist by Robert Williams (Surrealism grew from Dada). He writes that Brecht “developed an approach in theatre in which the audience is constantly reminded that they are in a theatre and … are prompted to maintain a certain detachment and exercise their critical faculties”. (Page 191) Despite the suspension of disbelief that puppet theatre encourages the audience would hardly be un-aware that they were watching inanimate objects in performance. Michael Meschke, Swedish/Polish puppeteer, reports that Brecht once said “puppet theatre in itself represents the alienation effect – which is the cornerstone of my theory”. (Page 153)
In object puppet theatre even the illusion that the puppet is ‘alive’ is constantly broken. As Paska writes” (puppeteers) aim for a series in which the illusion of being is consciously fragmented by the intrusion of awareness into the structural mechanics of animation, the real nature of the objects employed and the real time of theatrical activity.” (Page 41)
Reappraisal
Brecht’s ideas are closely linked to Formalist ideas of de- familiarization emphasizing the boundary between literature and life. Peter Barry writes that Russian Formalist, Shklovsky, believed de-familiarization or ‘making strange’ enables us to see the familiar world as if we were seeing it for the first time and thus laying it open for reappraisal.
This thought ties back to the suggestion by Williams that the most lasting and deepest challenge of the Surrealist movement is its attempt to “Develop a comprehensive way of seeing and living – a strategy for everyday life”. (Page 204)
Puppet Theatre and particularly Object Puppet Theatre has all attributes of a surreal endeavor, fantasy, dream and imagination, exploration of ego and id, surprise through ‘alienation effect’ and the juxtaposition, interchanging of subjects and object. As well puppetry incorporates the element of chance that is inherent in a human time based activity and challenges it’s audiences with new and different signs and signifiers.
Puppetry therefore has great potential to meet the Surrealists goal to de-familiarize the natural world and invite audiences to re-examine ‘life’ and look on the world in a new way.
References:
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. 2nd Edition. Manchester: Manchester University Press 2002 Jansen, H.W. History of Art. Harry N. Abrams Inc. NY 1977
Lynton, Norbert. The Story of Modern Art. Cornell University Press NY, 1980
Kominz & Levenson, Editors. The Language of the Puppet. Pacific Puppetry Center Press, WA 1990
(Roman Paska, Notes on Puppet Primitives and the Future of an Illusion)
Williams, Robert. Art Theory: an Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 2004
Waskiel, Francis & Lecucq, Editors. The Worldwide Art of Puppetry, UNIMA 2000 -
(Brunella Eruli, The Use of Puppetry and the Theatre of Objects in the Performing Arts of Today.)
Meschke, Michael. In Search of Aesthetics for the Puppet Theatre Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi, 1992
|
