Innocent puppets have a kind of knowledge as well. The innocence of Carlo Collodi’s hungry Pinocchio, that of the happily murderous Mister Punch, or the innocence of Don Quixote destroying the puppet show - these have a kind of menace as well as wonder, something not so easy to banish. You can’t blame a piece of wood.” As these words may suggest, such innocence is itself not necessarily comforting. Its simplicity makes any falseness immediately apparent.” And then, also, “no one blames the puppet for its violence, and no one quite blames the puppeteer. The American puppet artist Janie Geiser - whose shows often dwell on questions of vulnerable innocence and its powers of resistance - said to me that, for her, “the puppet is without history, existing in the moment”, so that “there is a kind of existential innocence in puppet theater. There are hauntings and enchantments possible in this theater that belong to worlds most adults have left behind. The puppet’s speech is often close to the unformed babble of infants, the naked gestures of small children. It taps archaic appetites, refusing the control of narrow social rules and established forms of politeness. This theater feeds on intensities of imaginative love that are native to children at play, so ready to transform ordinary objects into something else, to give these objects a surprising life, to allow them to crystallize thoughts otherwise invisible. Puppet theater draws us closely to something like innocence.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |