Spotlight A highly successful exhibition of puppets from all over the world and ages past has just been mounted at the Opera House.
The World of Puppets Richard Bradshaw Yves Joly, the veteran French puppeteer whose company recently visited the Perth Festival, has an item in his show in which a young couple steal away for a naked dip. The couple is acted by a pair of hands appearing above a playboard and their clothes, which they coyly remove from each other and fold into a neat pile, are just what you would expect hands to wear ... gloves. But once stripped, their nakedness is so absolute that you feel it is almost indiscreet to go on watching; almost impolite to continue looking at the puppeteer's naked hands. One would be hard-pressed to represent this item in an exhibition of puppetry. Two gloves would hardly invite a second glance, let alone a first and a photo of one hand taking a glove off another hand would be unlikely to recapture the slightly wanton moment of the young couple stripping. On the other hand, a figure hanging in an exhibition might look full of a life and a character which it fails to achieve on stage. This may be because the puppeteer does not have the necessary skill or because the puppet itself is constructed in such a way that it cannot move as the puppeteer wishes. In the puppet theatre it is possible to imagine a juggler’s ball having more character than the juggler regardless of how plain the ball is or how beautifully made the juggler is. The ball would then be the better puppet but would hardly make compelling viewing in an exhibition of puppets. A puppet is something which is used by someone in such a way that it appears to have a consciousness of its own. In the same way that costume and make-up help in the human theatre, very often the way a puppet is made helps both puppeteer and viewer to establish a character. At an exhibition of puppets we can only judge the puppets by appearances and we all know the dangers in doing that. I am reminded of a puppet in an English collection. Although it is a puppet of a cave-man it is known as “the splendid gentleman’’ because every time the owner of the collection takes it out to use, it responds so well he is forced to say: “What a splendid puppet this is!” Despite the note of caution that emerges in this preamble, we have recklessly gone ahead and mounted an exhibition of puppets at the Exhibition Hall of the Sydney Opera House and I am delighted to be able to say it contains some “splendid” puppets and that it will give visitors a good overall impression of puppet theatre around the world and particularly in Australia. We have called it The World o f Puppets. This year, 1979, is a significant year in 12
THEATRE AUSTRALIA JUNE 1979
The King of Hearts from a production of Alice in Wonderland by the Pilgrim Puppet Theatre of Hawthorn, Melbourne. puppetry in that it marks the 50th anniversary of the international association of puppeteers, UNIMA (l’UNion International de la MArionnette). The anniversary has already been commemorated with ceremonies in Paris, Liege and Prague, the founding cities, and is being celebrated with puppetry festivals throughout the world. The first of these festivals took place in Hobart. Tasmania, in the first week of January. At a recent festival of puppetry in London the Secretary-General of UNIMA. Dr Henryk Jurkowsky (of Warsaw) claimed that UNIMA is the oldest international theatre association and that this is not surprising because, as itinerant performers, puppeteers would be the first to feel the need for world co-operation among artists. The exhibition at the Opera House has been mounted by the Sydney Opera House Trust and the Marionette Theatre of Australia Ltd and special thanks are due to Bill Passmore, the designer, and to Tim Gow of the MTA who assembled the material. For us at the Marionette Theatre of Australia 1979 is also a significant year because it marks our first year of autonomy. This company grew from Peter Scriven’s Tintookies and has been nurtured by the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust from its founding in 1965 till now.
The idea for an exhibition grew in our store room at the Trust where a large number of puppets from productions of earlier years hang unseen by the public. Unfortunately the puppets of Peter Scriven’s first productions were destroyed by fire in 1969. At the time his production of The Explorers was out on tour so puppets from that show are the oldest of the MTA’s own puppets on exhibition. From its tour of Asia in 1976 the company brought back puppets from Sri Lanka, India and Burma and these form the basis of our inter national collection. We notified UNIMA centres around the world of our intention to mount an exhibition and posters, photos, slides etc were sent from many countries. The most remarkable response came from a man in Glebe, Sydney, whose uncle, a puppeteer in Mexico City, had given him two handsome glove-puppets which he made especially for the exhibition. Then we contacted individuals and groups in Australia and were overwhelmed by what was offering. In Sydney alone we had marionettes from Egypt, shadow puppets from Greece and some magnificent armoured figures made here, by Sicilian puppeteers, in the traditional style. Probably the oldest figures in the exhibition are the marionettes made over a century ago in the Penitentiary in Hull, England. They were brought to Launceston. Tasmania, by the daughter of the governor of the jail and are representative of traditional marionettes in Victorian England, such as the dissecting skeleton and the chair-balancer. The oldest Australian puppets are two nicely carved marionettes of an old Australian couple made in 1936 by Kay and Alan Lewis for a show which, appropriately enough, centred around a tour of the world. Visitors to the exhibition are generally struck by the variety of puppet forms, especially the more recent departures from the traditional categories of marionette, shadow-puppet, rodpuppet and glove-puppet. The range of sizes is also striking with figures ranging from the delicate, fine-featured hand-puppet from Fukien, China to the large schoolteacher from Poppy and one of the large figures from Momma's Little Horror Show. When this exhibition ends a smaller one will be prepared to tour factories under the auspices of the Trades and Labor Council. Meanwhile there is a pressing need for a permanent home for the Marionette Theatre of Australia, a place where we can perform to small audiences and also put the puppets, posters, photos etc. in our collection on permanent view.