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Puppetry
Dorothy Max Prior on how puppetry fared at the Fringe Festival
2005
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Shows featuring puppetry and object animation at the London
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PUPPETS,
PUPPETS, EVERYWHERE
Penny
Francis takes a look at the UK puppetry festival scene in
2005. Additional reporting by Cath Connolly, Clive Chandler
Peter Charlton, Andrew Smaje and Simon Hart.
Photos:
Mikropodium from the Dynamics festival; Harlequin from the
Norwich Puppet Theatre; Peter Ketturkat at Skipton Festival
|
 This
has been a bumper year for British puppet festivals,
in spite of the seriously bad news of the rumoured end of visions
festival in Brighton, at least in the form we knew it. Our perennials,
in Bath and all over Scotland (Puppet Animation), took place
around Easter, both seemingly in good health; the Buxton event
seems set to become a regular, this being its fourth edition,
and at least four Punch and Judy celebrations have occurred
in the regions and in London, not to mention at least one Toy
Theatre event. New to the festival programme have been no less
than three major festivals, one in Birmingham, Dynamics; one
in Skipton, Yorkshire; and one in Norwich, celebrating
twenty-five splendid years of the Norwich Puppet Theatre.
Each festival is remembered for its unique flavour, some distinct
ingredient of the event brought to it by its progenitor, its
chief organiser and the back-up team she or he has chosen. Bath,
with a mainly adult programme, has Andrew Smaje; the Scottish
one, for children’s work, has Simon Hart who has won good
subsidy and has just shifted his base to Aberdeen; Buxton’s
engine is driven by Peter Charlton and mixes children’s
and adult shows; the new Dynamics in Birmingham had Clive Chandler
as chief chef (a satisfying tautology) backed by the Puppeteers
UK organisation and the Midlands Arts Centre; Skipton was a
small friendly festival set in a charming market town, the only
one with a woman (Liz Lempen) at its head; the Punch festivals
were organised by a band of ‘professors’ from the
Punch and Judy associations and are always characterised by
jollity and camaraderie, attracting family audiences wherever
they are staged.
All
of them have a greater or lesser international component, and
most depend heavily on the financial support of the local municipality
and Arts Council. Sometimes private sponsorship is found too,
but that furrow is still a hard one to plough: puppetry may
have risen tremendously in standing in the arts world and even
the arts funding world, but the suits behind the desks still
flinch at the idea of associating their corporate logo with
– what was that you mentioned – puppets? Business
people can be a cautious bunch. However, in Skipton they seem
not to be, since an impressive number of businesses and shops
provided sponsorship to the festival.Naturally
the idea behind each festival is to present the art form in
the best possible light, or the best possible light in the opinion
and to the taste of the organiser(s). Linda Lewis, who recently
retired as artistic director of visions, wanted only modern,
mixed media shows; Simon Hart has a very outgoing festival –
he is outgoing himself and the festival goes out all over Scotland,
bringing shows of uneven quality to families in remote areas,
with the accent on Scottish companies. Peter Charlton is eclectic
in his tastes, and chooses accordingly, as long as, in any given
show, undiluted puppetry is recognisably to the fore. Bath’s
Andrew Smaje, low-profile and serious, reflects these attributes
in his festival, and produces modern shows of high quality,
with the largest proportion of foreign groups.
The first edition of the almost spontaneous festival
in Skipton, in the Yorkshire Dales, was an unexpected delight.
Unexpected because they seemed to find funding and venue so
quickly, against all the odds, also because Skipton is a market
town far from big cities, and might have attracted only a few
visitors from round the country. In the event, the publicity
and the word on the street were so positive and widespread that
very many people came from different areas of Britain, even
finding accommodation hard to find - because of the festival!
Skipton is a perfect place for this kind of festival: all the
shows were in more or less the same location – the Town
Hall –in the centre of the town of narrow cobbled streets,
its market and congenial shops and pubs. I’ve only been
to one festival town I’ve enjoyed as much, and that was
Sibenik in Croatia.
In Skipton the shows were usually full, the townspeople taking
the event to its heart, and in fact creating a demand for several
extra performances. If puppeteers are thin on the ground at
some festivals, there were plenty here, and the social side
of things (meaning the meetings in cafes and pubs) was lively.
The spirit and soul of the festival were the Lempen Puppet couple,
Liz and Daniel, looking slightly overwhelmed by the hordes of
spectators, and spreading warmth and welcome to everyone. Diana
Bayliss was an important collaborator: she performs as Black
Cat Theatre, and gave the premiere of her ambitious shadow/dance/video
production of Shakti.  For
me, the discovery of the festival was the gentle quirky humour
and superb wood craftsmanship of the German one-man Laku Paka
with Hare and Hedgehog and Alfred. These and two shows
by Indefinite Articles, Pinocchio, and Banyan’s Cinderella
Ashputtel, gave me most pleasure – of the ones I saw,
that is.
Performer, teacher and Puppet Centre Trust board member Cath
Connolly also enjoyed both of these and writes: ‘It was
a joy to watch these two amazing performers captivate a sell-out
crowd with their excellent puppetry’. Both were modest,
one-person, original, witty, using objects as much as figures,
with live sound and fine artistry in the performing.
Cath was also ‘inspired by some interesting cabaret pieces.
A special mention must go to Rough Daddy by the Wright Stuff.
This had everything I could ask for in a cabaret piece, being
simultaneously politically astute and non-PC and was wonderfully
performed by Steve Wright – with a little assistance from
Di Bayliss.’
Astoundingly,
there were over 2,500 attendees over three days. 400 questionnaires
were handed out with 124 respondents. The responses were extremely
favourable with very few negatives to be derived from them and
they presented some interesting findings.
Dynamics in Birmingham was,
reports Clive Chandler, by far the biggest of the year’s
celebrations. Well-supported by Arts Council England, Urban
Fusion and, yes, a good sponsorship deal too, the festival had
a £100,000 budget, and aimed to provide a national focus
for the art form, also to be on-going - the next one planned
for 2007. It was spread all over the region and boasted audiences
totalling 15,000 in 100 venues over three weeks, although houses
were disappointingly thin for some of the mac (Midland Arts
Centre) performances. Chandler writes: ‘Performing companies
came from Hungary, Portugal, Czech Republic, Canada, Hong Kong,
Switzerland, and Slovakia. The programme also included 15 UK
companies. A major new work King of The Castle (based on Macbeth)
was specially commissioned, with Steve Tiplady as director.
Other work ranged in scale from the  tiny
figures of Toy Theatre and Mikropodium to the giant
processional figures of Walking Tall; from the small-scale of
Hand to Mouth Theatre’s Here Be Dragons to the full-scale
marionette production of Mozart’s The Emperor’s
Feast by Karromato (from the Czech Republic) which was stunningly
beautiful and also very funny.’
The sixth
Bath festival, in the Easter holidays, presented shows that
sold out for almost every performance, which might surprise
some since it’s a showcase of puppetry for adults –
but ‘audiences respond with an ever greater thirst and
understanding of the artform, every year’ says director
Andrew Smaje. Three international companies were programmed:
from Holland, Schicklgruber by Neville Tranter who also taught
a Puppet Centre masterclass on the subject of voice and lip-sycning
for the puppet; from Germany, Two Old Ladies by Quaide &
Paiva, a German-Brazilian combination; and from Portugal, Paz
Tatay with a whacky glove show, The Murder of Don Cristobal,
featured in a whole Sun-Day of Punch, curated by Rod Burnett.
The festival is taking a ‘sabbatical’ and will be
back in 2007. Its absence will leave a significant hole in next
year’s celebrations.
Buxton
is a historic and elegant town in Derbyshire, and the puppet
festival there was pronounced by its chief producer Peter Charlton,
Chair of the British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild, now 80
years old (the Guild, not Peter), to be the best of the lot
so far. It is staged with the collaboration and much support
in kind and kindness from the Buxton Opera House, which offers
two of the three venues for the shows, most performed by members
of the Guild. Charlton brings a Christian ethic to the Buxton
event, evidenced in the Church service at the opening –
as indeed a church service with Punch in the pulpit always opens
the Punch and Judy May Fayre in Covent Garden. A mix of genres
included an exhibition, workshops and classes, street theatre,
toy theatre, Punch, Japanese shows from Nori Sawa and the young
Yamabiko-za group which proved to be a hit. The other hit, writes
Peter, was a British company called Babbling Vagabonds with
their Lonely Giant which filled the Opera House: a welcome production
for a big stage, ‘full of wit, charm and good puppetry’.
I can write
at first-hand about the flavour of the Norwich birthday event,
presided over by the ineffable Luis Zornoza Boy. Every performance
was in the converted church that is the Puppet Theatre, so it
was a compact occasion, with a well-filled programme. On arrival
it was clear that the theatre was in festive mode: the foyer
was full of puppets from its history and a fair number of people
from its history too, notably the theatre’s founder, Ray
DaSilva, warmly welcomed.The
present artistic director (the said Luis
Boy) was present throughout, taking care of the punters, the
performers and the VIPs (the Arts Council officer came to most
performances), while the other lynchpin, general manager Ian
Woods, flew about to attend to pressing practical concerns.
The range of shows on offer was wide and carefully chosen, from
ancient traditional forms (from Spain and Portugal) to the most
avant-garde (Conica Laconica and Tabola Rassa – both from
Spain). For me, and for most, the highlight was the Tabola Rassa
version of Moliere’s The Miser (L’Avaro); I’ve
written about it before – it’s a simple tabletop
setting with puppets made of bath-taps, showerheads, pipes and
so on attached to pieces of cloth, manipulated by two consummate
actor-puppeteers. It was very fast, very rude and extremely
funny. The audience was entranced and gave it an ovation. Funny
how the simplest means coupled with a brilliant idea can usually
result in triumph.
The
other triumph was part of the cabaret – and also from
Spain. If you ever want to include a cabaret act in your festival
or your corporate entertainment and you have plenty of warm
water to hand (the Norwich Puppet Theatre didn’t on this
particular occasion, and the efforts involved to fill a large
barrel with water from electric kettles and saucepans to make
it warm enough not to give the performer hypothermia were manic),
then Diego Stirman is your man. He did an act purporting to
be a demo of the ‘traditional underwater Vietnamese puppet
show’: for this, he needed ritualistic arm movements,
some distressing sock puppets, the removal of his clothes and
the donning of flippers and snorkel, so as to immerse himself
in a not-quite-large-enough tank to do the puppet show. He couldn’t
stay underwater, however many times he tried (and once he tried
a little too hard and seemed to be gone forever). The stage
got pretty wet. We were in pain with laughter. However
amidst the laughter there came Joao Paolo Cardoso’s production,
Miseria, (Suffering). It was a philosophical piece with a tiny
detailed set on a tabletop about an old man who trades with
Death for his immortality. The poetry of it was evident, and
it’s a show I should be happy to see again – but
with a summary.
All-in-all, the festival was another feather in the cap for
UK puppetry.
The statistics furnished by Simon Hart for the 21st Scottish
Puppet and Animation Festival are impressive: three workshops
for adults, many shadow workshops for kids; four foreign groups
(two from Germany, one each from Bulgaria and Ireland); 256
events in 131 venues and a 100% rise over 2004 in audience attendances,
now 18,700. The Scottish festival’s list of partners and
sponsors also make impressive reading. The Festival, known as
PAF, is now undergoing an organisational review for the Scottish
Arts Council that will inform its future growth and development.
The SAC’s recently completed Review of Puppetry will also
play an important part in this process as a contribution to
the whole Scottish landscape which is urgently in need of investment
to realise its potential. The review can be read on the Scottish
Arts Council website – www.scottisharts.org.uk
An especially rich year, 2005, containing some jewels from at
home and abroad, in decent proportion to the number on view.
My only wish is that next year will see more mid-scale shows
for larger venues. Miniaturism, dearly as I love it, is only
one aspect of puppetry. It is a sign of the times that few larger-scale
puppet-led productions are a successful part of the present
British touring scene. There ARE mid-scale shows like Babbling
Vagabonds’ Lonely Giant and Jade’s Cake wherein
puppetry is an important component - but too few. The artform
is of course everywhere to be seen in all kinds of theatre productions,
and most of them are medium scale, like theatre-rites’
The Thought that Counts and the new Oily Cart If All the World
were Paper, but they are more ‘theatre with puppets’
than ‘puppet theatre’.
The feedback from organisers and attendees to the many UK puppet-theatre
festivals testifies to the ever-improving health of our artform.
But there’s no room for complacency, though I suppose
there never is in art.
Contact details for the festivals mentioned
in this feature: Bath Puppet Festival 2007: andrew.smaje@theatreroyal.org.uk
Buxton Puppet Festival: Peter Charlton: peter@peterpuppet.co.uk
See www.peterpuppet.co.uk/news.htm
Dynamics: Clive Chandler: clive.chandler@blueyonder.co.uk
See also www.puppeteersuk.com/
Scottish Puppet Animation Festival: Simon Hart - simon@puppetanimation.org
see www.puppetanimation.org/festival
Skipton Puppet Festival: Liz Lempen -lempen@lempen.co.uk
See www.skiptonpuppetfestival.co.uk/
Visions: Colin Matthews www.brighton.ac.uk/gallery-theatre/visionsnewsite
Norwich Puppet Theatre: Ian Woods email ianwoods@puppettheatre.co.uk
See www.puppettheatre.co.uk
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