Puppets on Stage. Shadow puppetry is an ancient art form that originated in Asian cultures. A flexible, two-dimentional cutout figure is controlled by rods, performing behind a backlit translucent screen. By skillful manipulation, the unseen pupeteer magically brings to life the shadows cast on the screen by the puppet and light source.
Usually made of cloth, a hand puppet is a flexible, glove-like structure. The puppeteer inserts a hand and manipulates the figure by moving fingers and wrist. This method can be traced to prehistoric times, when storytellers used their hands to make shadows to illustrate their tales. It evolved evolved into the use of highly sophisticated objects of wood, plastic, paint, and fabric. Gift of Hazelle and J. Woodson Rollins. A rod puppet has external wooden sticks or wire rods attached, allowing the puppeteer to manipulate its movements.
Some puppets, notably those created by Jim Henson, combine both hand and rod manipulation. We start by attaching suspension strings from the shoulders to the control.
The rest of the manufacturing has to do with tradition, invention and patience. If an animal is being built, a horizontal control is preferable; a trick is to cross the strings tied to the paws in order to limit their movement so as to render their walk more realistic. The next steps are the painting, wig-making, costume designing and improvements the ballast of elements, the positioning and breadth of manipulation bars, etc.
Finally, the puppet is put to the test. To avoid the tangling of strings when putting away the puppet, a [ chesnais ] a small device invented by French puppeteer [Jacques Chesnais] can be used. If not, a ribbon can be tied around all the strings every 20 to 40 centimetres, and the puppet is then slipped into a long and narrow pouch tied at the top, with the control bar on the outside.
Special trunks with compartments can also be used in which to separately hang the puppets. Classifying string puppets in terms of their control function, we can then distinguish several groups: puppets without controls from Northern India Rajasthan, Punjab ; puppets with only one or two horizontal sticks as controls Sri Lanka , or with controls in the form of H or T that allow to hang the puppet and on which the buckle manipulation strings are simply placed on top Burma ; horizontally controlled puppets; and vertically controlled puppets.
Aside from these, there are also combined manipulated puppets. In the Figurentheater Triangel, certain characters are manipulated from below by Ans Boerwinkel using [glove puppets] and taken up from above by Henk using string puppets. There are a number of [rod marionettes] that use a rod to suspend the puppet and strings to move the arms and legs, like that of [Lafleur], the main character of the Amiens tradition for whom it is imperative that he be able to lift up his leg horizontally in order to bestow his famous kicks ….
A rare traditional string puppet can be found in Southern India: the [ salaki gombeyata ] of Karnataka, or the bommalatam in the Tanjore region Tamil Nadu. A nod transmits pulsations to the shoulders and head of the puppet. In North-west India, the nishka puppet presents on its chest a kind of miniature theatre with two doors that open, revealing a drawing, which is the image of its soul. India has a wealth of this genre whether in Karnataka [ yakshagana gombeyata ] , in Rajasthan [ kathputli ka khel ] , in Orissa [ gopalila kundhei ] , or in Kerala [ nool pavakoothu ].
North-west Pacific Coast Native Americans used articulated puppet masks during their shamanistic celebrations. The string sometimes ran over the great beams of the house the clan residence and were pulled by hidden manipulators who received their cues from the songs. The sisiutl, a mythical snake, would be conjured up, the dancer concealing it in his palm and releasing it during the dance.
The sisiutl would then fly about, pursued by the dancer until he suddenly caught it. Then the dancer, by sleight of hand, would put the sisiutl in his mouth and begin to vomit and spit blood, as if trying to rid himself of the spirit. The giant in the latter production is nine metres high, suspended from an automobile scaffold, which was manipulated by a crowd dressed in red servant costumes that would pull on ropes.
Pepys recorded seeing other Italian puppet showmen in England and in the King ordered that a puppet showman should be allowed to perform at Charing Cross. Puppet theatre became fashionable adult entertainment in 18th-century London and several marionette theatres were established, including Martin Powell's puppets, which opened in St Martin's Lane in , Punch's Theatre in James Street and the Patagonian Theatre in Exeter Change. Powell's theatre, in a tavern in Covent Garden, used marionettes to lampoon famous people and satirise current theatrical fashions, such as Italian opera.
In a company of fantoccini, or Italian marionettes, introduced a new wave of European puppet theatre to London. By there were four puppet companies in the West End as well as an oriental-style shadow theatre show called 'Ombres Chinoises' or 'Chinese Shadows'. By the end of the 18th century puppet shows at large fairs many of which featured the marionette version of Mr Punch almost died out because they were too expensive to operate.
In Signor Brigaldi's Italian marionettes were a great success when they appeared at an exhibition hall in London — which was renamed The Royal Marionette Theatre. They played in Manchester and Liverpool before returning to London and establishing themselves in a specially-built marionette theatre in Cremorne Gardens. By the s, however, the days of the permanent marionette show were past and travelling marionette shows became popular instead, performed by family troupes including the Tiller-Clowes and Barnard family troupes.
Our collection includes a set of 35 Tiller-Clowes marionettes — the largest set to survive from a 19th-century touring marionette theatre in Britain.
The collection also includes a number of 'speciality act' figures, including a juggler with stringed juggling balls which can balance on his hands, feet or head , three Chinese bell-ringers, two stilt-walking drunken clowns, an expanding skeleton and a trick puppet with three heads.
The tight-rope walking marionette was based on the real French tightrope-walker Chevalier Blondin, who became legendary for crossing Niagara Falls on a tight-rope in Puppetry declined in the early 20th century, with audiences drawn to other forms of entertainment, including music hall , variety and cinema. To remove or change the head something that happens a great deal in the Opera dei Pupi , it is a simple matter to slide the head up the rod, releasing the end of the hook and making it possible to disengage it from the torso.
The simplest rod marionettes are jointed figures with no more than a single rod to the head. Far more common is an arrangement of two strings attached to the hands which allow for free gestures, and this was adequate for most of the dramatic work performed at a period when gesture was essentially a support to speech and realistic movement was not a requirement.
Before the later 19th century leg strings were not thought of as a necessity for marionettes. Emphasis on realistic walking would only come later with the all string figure. An idea of walking and especially a bold stride for a warrior, who might also need to take up a strong posture, were achieved by making one leg marginally shorter than the other.
By a slight swivelling movement of the wrist the performer could shift the weight of the figure from one leg to the other in such a way that the shorter leg would swing forward in a way that evoked a step.
This device was widely used, whether for the tiny Casa Grimani figures in Venice or the large pupi of Sicily and helped provide an image of a typical puppet gait. Today in Palermo a string to the left knee allows a puppet to strike an attitude, or bend the knee to bow if so required the traditional Catanian puppet has no knee joint.
With Lafleur of the Cabotans of Amiens and the Pierke of Ghent a leg string had the additional function of offering a kick to sort out a situation, rather in the same way that a stick could solve most problems on the glove-puppet stage. In the Czech-Slovak tradition it is possible to find concealed leg strings that pass through the body of the puppet.
The origins of this are unclear, but there are a small number of Italian 18th-century figures with concealed stringing. It is possible that the technique derives more from automata than from any mainstream marionette tradition. Sometimes the right arm of a puppet would be controlled by a second rod.
Generally this was for a special strong movement and was particularly effective for fighting. The Poesje of Antwerp were noted for the heavy clubs which swung freely from the right hand and could be used to good effect most of the older figures have replacement leather noses because of blows from clubs. Mestre Salas, the master of ceremonies with the Bonecos de Santo Aleixo, is equipped with a club which is directly controlled by a rod.
Today the main use he makes of it is to chase recalcitrant animals in the Garden of Eden or to beat the priest who also has a rod to his right hand so that he can take off his biretta.
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