15 Editions - 15 Testimonies

15 Editions.

Since 2001, the public had the opportunity to witness the art of puppetry in its different forms.

In 2015, we wanted to give back a voice to the creators, to offer to the public another kind of testimony.

The creator's testimony on his own work.

15 Testimonies.

Kalle Nio: Magic and Puppetry

Lähtö / Départ (FIMFA Lx14, São Luiz Teatro Municipal, 2014)

The late master magician Tommy Wonder wrote about a trick named Zombie. The Zombie is a classic of stage magic. It’s a trick where a silver ball seems to float above and below the cloth the magician is holding. It’s a trick that in the hands of a skillful performer can be a miracle of living and floating ball or in the wrong hands it can look what it essentially is, a ball attached to a stick that magician is wiggling behind a cloth.

Agnès Limbos: Object Theatre

Conversation avec un Jeunne Homme (FIMFA Lx13, São Luiz Teatro Municipal, 2013).

When I was a child, my mother used to buy large packages of washing powder, which came with a gift deep down at the bottom: "The Bonux gif". I used to dive my hand in the white powder to find out tinny little objects (armchairs, tables, chairs…). Then, at my little table I used to manipulate these miniature reproductions of family scenes, I played, I contemplated: I observed the world from above!

Mischa Twitchin: Re-enchantment

Children’s Emperor & The Pianist 
(FIMFA Lx11, CAMa – Centro de Artes da Marioneta, 2011)

What sorts of awareness come to us through puppets? What kinds of experience, of understanding and feeling? In a world in which the know-how associated with making things is mostly given over to machines – in which the proletarianisation of experience includes that of the imagination – is our enjoyment of puppets due partly to our sense of the skill of the puppeteer? In a world in which the autonomy of things exceeds that of persons, the work of both becomes reduced to criteria of “performance” in which they may be simply replaced (or “upgraded”) once deemed redundant.

Jean-Pierre Larroche: Visual Arts and Puppetry

Tête de Mort (FIMFA Lx12, Maria Matos Teatro Municipal, 2012)

In your theatre there are very different visual devices: mechanic structures, huts, words written in papers, finger puppets and drawings, robots, molds of different body parts, and some found objects…Why do you choose such a diversity of forms?
I would almost say that they’ve chosen themselves. In each one of my creations, I use figures, like for instance, a table, some binoculars, a chameleon, a snail or several patterns, which are a kind of collapse, discharge and self-portrait. The forms that these figures and patterns assume don’t precede them, they follow them in their combinations and confrontations and originate and absurd appearance.

Isabel Barros: Spectator Player

Wonderland (FIMFA Lx10, Maria Matos Teatro Municipal, 2010)

My first big contact with puppets happened in 1994, through an unforgettable 3ª Estação co-creation experiment with João Paulo Seara Cardoso.

This experience was a huge challenge to me as interpreter and choreographer of a show that crossed dance and puppetry, having contributed to a different way of approaching the work of movement with puppets.

Neville Tranter: An Art of Precision

Vampyr (FIMFA Lx9, Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, 2009)

That first moment a hand puppet is placed on my hand is for me a magical moment. It is the moment when you give the puppet life. The basic technique is quite simple. Stillness, movement and then stillness again. It sounds simple but when you start considering how long the stillness should be, what kind of movement and which direction it takes, it becomes a choreography. And with a choreography there is always rhythm with endless variations. You need to learn how to master rhythm to be able to reveal the character of the puppet and his motivations. The first skill though, is learning to look through the eyes of the puppet. The puppet comes to life when the audience sees the puppet thinking. Because when the puppet thinks, he is aware of his situation or his surroundings and this makes him human. Our eyes  always  follow movement and that is why we will follow the puppet as he discovers or reacts to his surroundings. And a puppet always reacts constantly to his surroundings combining movements and stillnesses.

Nicola Unger: Here Lies One Whose Name was writ in Water. Oh Dear!

John Keats’ epitaph: Here Lies One Whose Name was writ in Water

Dear Nicola,

This year, it’s the 15th anniversary of the Festival so we are planning to have a special edition of the programme, with the information of the plays we’re presenting this year but also with some texts from artists that Tarumba has a special affection for.

We would like to invite you to write for this programme/edition a text about the relation between visual arts and puppetry. We don’t want to limit your thoughts about it concerning the thematic of the text, but I’ll have to limit the maximum of characters… let's say 2.500 maximum…

Nicole Mossoux: Incarnation | A Gift

Kefar Nahum (FIMFA Lx13, Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, 2013)

Incarnation

It was because of the amendment of a cloth doll, an activity which seemed of high importance to me and that required my most attentive care that I’ve started wanting to work in a show, in which non-living characters would gain life and would become my full partners. The performance Twin Houses (1994) was born this way.

Luís Hipólito: Sparkling

Oh! Please (FIMFA Lx11, CAMA – Centro de Artes da Marioneta, 2011)

My relationship with objects is old and visceral. Since I remember, I’ve been attributing them a body and a soul, inherent to the experiences they attached to their skin, to the memories they transmit us by contagion and to an immense communicative potential. I’ve always talked with them and they’ve always talked to me! Together we’ve shared amazing stories. We are “old buddies”. Maybe because they show me there is no impossible. Maybe because they are generous! The affection for objects, and for the pleasure of animating them, has always cohabited in me an unusual interest towards kitsch imaginary. A certain tendency for an aesthetic related to sentimental objects, “bits and bobs” and to the wonderful world of paraphernalia and pinchbecks.

Moritz Sostmann: Theatre, Puppetry and Empathy

Buddenbrooks (FIMFA Lx14, Maria Matos Teatro Municipal, 2014)

Short time after I’ve started studying puppetry in East Germany, at the well-known Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts, in East Berlin, the fall of the Berlin Wall happened, and for me the world changed completely. Therefore, the reasons which lead me to puppetry had also changed: the search for a subversive place, for more freedom, in the middle of a stagnated and closed society. At that time, I swore I would never touch a puppet again and that I would concentrate in expressing myself as an actor.

Stephen Mottram: Why Marionettes?

The Seed Carriers (FIMFA Lx10, Museu da Marioneta, 2010)

Marionettes are so risky for the performer. Their heads wobble inanely; their strings tangle; their limbs glitch and catch and then suddenly release, with consequent shockwaves of unwanted dangling. The range of movement built into their rigid little bodies is often inadequate for their eventual roles. And to make things worse, they look terrible when filmed. So why would any performer want to present these dreadful things in front of an audience?

Chris Pirie: Puppetry of the Absurd

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

Dorothée Saysombat: Humour and Object Theatre

Ma Foi (FIMFA Lx13, São Luiz Teatro Municipal, 2013)

If I like so much the so called “object” theatre, it’s because it allows me to fully approach every possible theme with a security distance.

This distance, materialized by the play between objects, creates a poetic lag, sometimes even burlesque, that fades the didactic aspect of these objects and their realism, without ever denying it or omitting the reality in question.  Like a game of shadows and lights, it detaches the theme, giving it a bigger density.

Rute Ribeiro: Puppets. Tradition and contemporaneity. The Art of bringing images to life…

Cabaret de Insectos: Dracularium Freak (FIMFA Lx15, São Luiz Teatro Municipal, 2015)

“To speak of a puppet with most men and women is to cause them to giggle. They think at once of the wires; they think of the stiff hands and the jerky movements; they tell me it is ‘a funny little doll.’ But let me tell them a few things about these puppets. Let me again repeat that they are the descendants of a great and noble family of Images, Images which were made in the likeness of God; and that many centuries ago these figures had a rhythmical movement and not a jerky one; had no need for wires to support them, nor did they speak through the nose of the hidden manipulator. (…) Did you think, ladies and gentlemen, that these puppets were always little things of but a foot high? Indeed, no!

Luís Vieira: Puppetry, a Theatre of the Future

Mironescópio: A Máquina do Amor (FIMFA Lx14, Teatro Taborda, 2014)

"Each artist possesses an offensive weapon that allows him to intimidate tradition." 
- Fernand Léger

To be fair, I have always been fascinated by puppets, first in school where I curiously made my first puppets with my mother’s help, and later the fascination by the work of several artists who had puppets as the centre of their creativity.