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From Pulchinello to PrincetonDateline: 2nd November, 2008I recently visited the Little Angel Theatre, England's oldest puppet theatre currently struggling to raise money in the midst of a credit crunch in order to produce its Christmas show following a cut in funding from Arts Council England. The injustice of it made me indignant. Don't those fools know how important puppetry is? I asked myself. In reality, though having been taken into the chivalrous world of traditional Sicilian puppet theatre (Opera dei Pupi) on many childhood holidays and been enchanted ever since, when I wondered how puppetry entered British culture, I found myself uncertain. In idle mood I was pushed to think back further than a Victorian Punch and Judy show on a pier but it starts long before then with puppet performances being used to teach Bible stories in medieval England, and they also get a mention in Chaucer. In truth, though, puppets were probably brought over to England even earlier by the Romans. Shakespeare mentions puppet shows and they featured in Elizabethan society both in the private homes of the affluent and at fairs, markets and other public gatherings, still using bible stories, but also performing contemporary pieces and adaptations of stage plays. Under Cromwell, when regular stage plays were prohibited by statute, puppet theatre flourished and with the Restoration came an influx of entertainers from abroad bringing with them Italian commedia dell'arte-inspired marionette troupes who introduced Pulchinello, later to become known as Punch. In fact, thanks to Samuel Pepys and his diary, Punch has his own birthday - 9 May 1662 - a date that is now celebrated annually in Covent Garden. Puppet theatre thrived outside of London too, thanks to the custom of travelling fairs and strolling puppet showmen and their booths who took their shows across the land. The convention of puppet shows as adult entertainment persisted over the centuries with purpose built puppet theatres co-existing with booths on street corners and performances at fair grounds. The public were treated to elaborate marionette shows complete with scene changes and effects, Italian Commedia fantoccini, Ombres Chinoises (shadow puppets), comic opera, melodrama, caricature and satire. And of course Punch and Judy. Before long Punch and Judy, for reasons of cost and practicality, became almost exclusively a travelling, glove puppet show, and this was the form which endured to enjoy a huge resurgence in popularity on Victorian piers, in street-squares and at social gatherings of the period. This was the period that engrained Punch and Judy into the fabric of our culture, a fact now recognised by it being awarded the status of "an official icon of England", as bestowed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. That's the way to do it!Inevitably as the century changed, the fortunes of puppetry waned - not just the Punch and Judy tradition but puppetry generally struggled in the face of competition from other forms of amusement and the onset of war. The decline however was not terminal and neither was it particularly long-lasting. A period of recovery took off in the mid-1920s and over the following decades professional puppet companies emerged, new puppet theatres were built and a marionette show toured for ENSA in WWII. The popularity of marionette cabaret in Working Men's Clubs in peace time attested puppetry's survival. During the second half of the 20th Century puppets featured frequently in pantomimes but puppetry was kept alive for general consumption through the medium of television. From Muffin the Mule's first kick in the late 40s, puppets have appeared on television without cessation whether imitating human form in Andy Pandy and Bill and Ben or taking on a more anthropomorphic nature in Basil Brush or US import Sesame Street. In the cinema we had the Von Traps yodelling about lonely goat-herders, Pinocchio and Elvis Presley singing Wooden Heart whilst puppets danced. Entertainment, it seems, has never been without puppets and every generation of children born since the war has had its puppet idols. Andy Glazzard of The Time Machine Museum is certain that the high prices now paid for puppets of the period - £28,000 for a Captain Scarlett - evidence more than just the rarity of the object themselves: "Buyers collect them because they have a place in their hearts" and he witnesses a puppet's ability "capture of the imagination of the 5 and 6 year olds" to this day. We may look back nostalgically to our childhood and remember them as being 'our programmes' but many appealed to children and parents alike - Steve Zodiac rocketed through the universe in Fireball XL5 reflecting the reality of the space race and Pinky and Perky caused an outrage when an episode was banned for being too political; a generation later when The Muppet Show had its final broadcast, the series had been seen world-wide by an audience estimated at 235 million. For grown ups there was the satire of Spitting Image and of course the more menacing side of the art form too, not just from Muppet creator Jim Henson's forbidding The Storyteller or Tales of the Unexpected but also in thriller and horror movies - creepy puppets were everywhere.
Puppetry seems to be have been effortlessly taken into cinema and TV and continued to be exploited as a medium by a seam of contemporary visual artists, but what also seems apparent is that this is a period where live performance was essentially consigned to the realm of children's entertainment. Whilst many other cultures, particularly in Eastern Europe and the Far East, continued to accept puppetry as a form of legitimate adult entertainment, here it was largely dismissed as an art form for children giving credence to the perception that as we move on from childhood we cease to be engaged by the world of puppetry. The 60s saw the opening of the Cannon Hill Puppet Theatre and the Little Angel Theatre, followed in the 80s with the opening of the Norwich Puppet Theatre and The Biggar Puppet Theatre in Scotland and the maiden voyage of the Puppet Theatre Barge, and yet it seems we had only a few precious harbours where live puppetry for adults was sheltered and nurtured by the likes of Trestle Theatre and Faulty Optic and later Indefinite Articles and Improbable Theatre among others. "And those sublime horses - to call it puppetry is a bit like calling what went into the Sistine Chapel grouting" (Paul Taylor on War Horse at the National Theatre in The Independent ).There can be no doubt that things have changed since then. The skills of puppeteers are in evidence across the live entertainment landscape, even though funding for the art form outside the mainstream continues to fall behind. Blind Summit's puppets were a key component in Anthony Minghella's Olivier Award-winning Madama Butterfly, most recently seen at the ENO earlier this year, which garnered much praise for the "daring concept" and the puppetry which was described as being "on a level of genius". The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's Dido and Aeneas had the singers manipulating the puppets in "a fascinating exploration of intimacy and artifice, rhetoric and silence" (The Independent) whilst Shakespeare's Globe welcomed the return of Footsbarn Theatre to London with their specially conceived show A Shakespeare Party.
The stunning adaptation of His Dark Materials at the National Theatre used puppets as one of many tools in a technically complex production, and their recently revived epic, War Horse, features impressive, life-size horse puppets created by South African-based Handspring Puppet Company as the principal characters, thereby reversing the usual practice of puppet characters being subordinated to the human ones. The Menier Theatre's hugely successful Little Shop of Horrors brought the spoof-scary to puppetry with Audrey II the foul-mouthed, carnivorous singing plant, but for the real thing you can seek out Faulty Optic and their bizarre nightmarish productions, most recently DeadWedding a macabre take on the Greek myth of Eurydice, or the riveting Shockheaded Peter. The West End continues to host The Lion King now in its 10th year and Avenue Q, which opened in June 2006 and closes next year. But if it's smut you're after you won't be left without when Princeton's sex-life comes to an halt, you just have to find a less conformist venue. Puppetry has been part of a current theatrical trend - the consuming interest with all-things of circus, burlesque, cabaret and variety tradition. Puppetry's disciplines are making their mark in these fields but not in any way your granny would recognise. Ventriloquist Nina Conti is no ordinary music hall turn, as she and her dirty-mouthed puppet, Monkey, explain evolution and still more impropriety is to be had at the hands of Shitty Deal Puppet Theatre, this time tinged with political comment in Complete History of Oppressed People Everywhere, whilst Clementine the Living Fashion Doll looks to be a promising source of filth at the Drill Hall. Then there are also multifaceted companies such as Dynamic New Animation that work across the spectrum presenting works devised for children, for adults and for cabaret. The Edinburgh Fringe has always been home to a smattering of 'novelty acts', one such was the cabaret slot of The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre which couldn't be more different from Lambchop within the limitations of them all being socks. The increasing number of shows at the Fringe which include puppetry as one of their performance disciplines or are puppet theatre performances is increasing year on year a fact that has been remarked upon in many circles, and this year Puppet State Theatre Company's captivating show The Man Who Planted Trees deservedly took the Total Theatre Award for Story Theatre. In a different realm are Thingumajig Theatre and Forkbeard Fantasy with their giant outdoor processional models whilst at the other end of the scale you have the contrasting charm of pieces such as Hand to Mouth's A Spoonful of Stories where glove puppet and tabletop skills are exercised on a variety of kitchen utensils in their re-interpretation of familiar fairy tales. The number and success of puppet festivals held in the UK attest a nationwide reawakening interest in this most versatile of art forms. Whether it is in the enchantment of a magical show for children, the incongruity of a cuddly puppet having sex, the low-tech sock or the majestic beauty of graceful life-size creations, we are willing to suspend our reality and to be engaged by the puppets who can act in a way that actors cannot and do things that actors cannot do. The design and modelling of puppets is a true craft; they are created to perform a specific role, to have innate character and expression, and when handled by a practised puppeteer they become an extension of each other using their resources and skills in ingenious ways, capable of expressing any emotion and eliciting any emotion. Thanks to puppetry's intrinsic versatility it can be included in virtually any theatre-maker's vision, it is limited only by human imagination. It is any wonder then that puppetry has survived across the centuries. Sandra Giorgetti
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