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| Rust (FIMFA Lx6, Maria Matos Teatro Municipal, 2006) |
"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living; it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities."
- Dr. Seuss
- Dr. Seuss
In our ancient and often misunderstood artform, puppeteers have access to the most precious of theatrical gifts. The primary tools of our trade - figures, objects and projections - do not respect natural physical laws in the way that an actor must. And because with these ultimate special effects we can conjure up fantastical worlds and impossible events, we are free to take our audiences on the most outrageous and absurd journeys. The only limitations placed on the artist are the bounds of their own imagination.
There are puppetry practitioners for whom a sense of nonsense is their lifeblood. They do not fear the use of rambling, chaotic storylines or non-linear arcs within their theatre making. They seek to create stunningly visual theatre that embraces the surreal and rarely leaves its audience in agreement about what it just saw or what it all meant.
The creative output of my own company, Green Ginger has been hugely influenced by European popular culture's celebration of the ridiculous. Victorian Britain provided Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense and Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, two classic books that found their way into the hearts and minds of all ages. Through the 20th century the Surrealist, Dada and Fluxus art movements gave the world an extensive visual language of the bizarre through film, sculpture, painting and other forms. By the 1960s, thanks to the BBC, new comedy forms found their way into UK homes; notably The Goon Show and Monty Python's Flying Circus, popular sketch-based shows that dared to dispense with the standard radio/TV format of scenes ending in a punch-line. Less of a direct influence, yet still significant in the foundations of our absurdist landscape were the plays of Alfred Jarry, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett and others.
My company has enjoyed the challenges associated with ploughing the fields of absurdity with puppetry, but we are not the most successful, nor the most courageous. We have admiration for the lyrical, visual worlds of Compagnie Philippe Genty and fond memories of the now defunct Faulty Optic, in whose performances, text would give way to streams of dark and surreal imagery served up without any sense of a coherent narrative. The popularity of these two companies tells something of the public appetite for a brave and strange theatre.
BIO
Chris Pirie (UK): Puppeteer, teacher and festival producer of Bristol Festival of Puppetry. Artistic Director of the company Green Ginger.
He played in FIMFA with Rust (Maria Matos Teatro Municipal, 2006).
