 The Gathering
Matthew Isaac Cohen reports on the 20th UNIMA Congress and World Puppetry Festival, which took place in Perth 2–12 April 2008
Perth is sometimes described as the world’s most isolated city – closer in terms of miles to Indonesia than to Sydney, Melbourne or other Australian cities. It is a boomtown, benefiting from a gentle climate and proximity to Western Australia’s mining industry. Perth’s population has doubled in the last 25 years, to over 1.5 million. Skyscrapers are going up. Miners earning over £60,000 a year (plus benefits) fly in for weekends of drinking and carousing. Asians come to study and buy holiday houses near golf courses. Public transportation in the city centre is free. And, as I discovered in an outing with American puppeteer friends, the local Japanese restaurant serves overpriced mash-potato-and-sweet-corn sushi.
Perth’s hosting of the UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionnette) Congress and World Puppetry Festival seems unlikely, for with the significant exception of Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, based in the suburb of Fremantle, puppetry does not have much of a profile in Australia’s ‘wild west’. This perhaps contributed to some of the event’s excitement and the sustained fascination local audiences showed for puppetry and object theatre imported from Europe and Asia, and the programme exhibits, talks and workshops from all over the world. This was only the third time a UNIMA congress has been hosted outside Europe, and the first time in the southern hemisphere.
The Congress
The Congress and Festival components are distinct in organisation and ethos. The former took the shape of a kind of five-day-long AGM held at the Perth Town Hall attended by delegates representing UNIMA centres from Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and Africa. Reports on commissions and national centres were presented, the revision of bylaws discussed at length, officers voted in. The congress was dominated by procedure over matters of substance. Delegates were grouped informally by country, voting cards were raised and counted. The preamble to UNIMA’s statutes states that the organization’s purpose is to use puppetry ‘in the pursuit of human values such as peace and mutual understanding between peoples’ but few matters of genuine global significance were raised at this year’s congress. No resolutions were made regarding how best to use puppetry for world peace and global environmental issues. To the consternation of some puppeteer-activists, the matter of Tibet did not get discussed in the Congress when China put forward their bid to host the 21st UNIMA Congress and World Festival in Chendu in 2012. And perhaps as a result, the Chinese bid won out over its competitor (Russia) by a narrow margin. Actual puppets were mostly out of sight at the Congress, except during a rather pretentious sequence presented by Russia to accompany its unsuccessful bid to host the next congress and festival in the central Russian city of Ekaterinburg.
The Festival
The Festival itself was a showcase of Australian puppet theatre combined with a sampling of puppetry from Europe, Asia and Canada. There was also a programme of workshops, lectures, discussions and exhibits. Tickets were pricey by international standards, and to the chagrin of international visitors there were no festival packages on offer. The quality of puppetry on offer was generally very high, however, with many surprises along the way. All the venues except for Spare Parts’ own theatre were in downtown Perth and the mild weather made it a pleasure to walk from one theatre to the next.
The full programme of events (28 ticketed productions plus a Sunday carnival with dozens of free shows at the Perth Concert Hall) made it impossible for me to see everything, though I did manage to squeeze in a lot. There were a number of standouts. One was Handspring Puppet Company’s visionary Woyzeck on the Highveld. This was a revival of the company’s 1992 production directed and designed by William Kentridge, which set Georg Buchner’s fragmentary play in 1956 Johannesburg. Astoundingly beautiful puppets combined with superb vocal work from a mixed-race cast. Kentridge’s signature, animated charcoal drawings, provided glimpses into the inner worlds of the blank-faced puppets. Rarely have puppets provided such an insight into alienation and interiority.
A delightful surprise was Danish puppeteer Sofie Krog’s hand puppet show Diva. Krog’s work is set in a rotating puppet booth and tells the story of a mad scientist who sends his rodent lab assistant to seek out ‘materials’ to reconstruct his body. This was puppetry of the highest order – with humour, grace, invention and imagination – and an astounding tour-de-force for the solo puppeteer-maker. Krog has toured the UK before but her work cries out for more attention and support.
Another highlight for me was Angel by Duda Paiva Puppetry and Dance, recommended to me by my students who saw this show at the Manipulate Festival in Dundee. While I found some of the physical theatre elements were ostentatious, the tormented relation between the homeless tramp and the funerary statue was a haunting meditation on memory, trauma and the simultaneous need for and impossibility of undoing the past.
Carnival day featured performances by the Chiryu Karakuri Puppet Preservation Association, a group of dedicated amateur puppeteers who enact complex martial epics with traditional puppets animated by threads and pulleys. Karakuri puppetry is a rare art, and it was a delight to see the intense devotion the group showed in their performances of the 800 year-old story of The Battle of Ichinotani.
There were also solo shows by two of the doyens of world puppetry -- Richard Bradshaw and Joan Baixas. Bradshaw’s show was his standard Bradshaw’s Shadows — a collection of comic items that has toured the world for the last four decades. Baixas performed live painting (with mud) in a ritualistic environment to an invited audience.
Performances at the Transit Lounge (a nightly social/performance space at Perth’s Town Hall) were largely amateurish but there were also some jewels, including Philip Miller’s foul-mouthed Ken Koala.
Some of the exhibitions did not match the hype. The much vaunted Million Puppet Project (a Guinness Book record attempt) brought together only 18,585 puppets in the end. Some of the contributors were dismayed or amused to see the puppets they contributed or made with children sold at the festival’s conclusion. Everyone I spoke to, however, was delighted by the Cabaret Mechanical exhibition at the Western Australian Museum, and I was charmed to make the acquaintance of Australian television puppeteer Norman Hetherington and his Mr Squiggles puppet displayed at the State Library of Western Australia.
Masterclasses, keynote addresses and panel discussions allowed more intimate contact with puppet practitioners from around the world. I enrolled in two shadow puppet workshops offered by Richard Bradshaw and the Balinese dalang I Made Sidia. Bradshaw patiently explained the principles behind his unique cabaret show, worked with us in constructing simple puppets and even provided samples of the materials he uses to construct his three-layered shadow screen. Sidia offered personal insights into Balinese puppet culture and showed us how modern technology (powerpoint, projected video, mirror puppets) is being combined with traditional puppets today. In lectures and discussions, puppet proponents spoke about recent developments in national puppet scenes, puppet theory, training, applied puppetry, tradition and innovation, uses of technology and personal narratives of careers.
Quo Vadis UNIMA?
International meetings of puppeteers and puppet experts were rare events when UNIMA was founded in 1929, and the ten festivals held between 1958 and 1988 were unique opportunities for cultural exchange across the iron curtain. Each festival of these three decades stands as a pivotal event in the internationalisation of modern puppetry. Today puppeteers and puppet technologies and techniques travel much more freely year-round. There are many international festivals on offer, puppeteers communicate daily via Puptcrit and other listservs, puppets can be purchased on e-bay and instructional and performance videos can be watched online.
The UNIMA festival has become only one location among many where exchange happens. The festival remains an important way for a national puppet scene to define itself before the rest of the world of puppetry. We have had the opportunity to see some first-rate Australian puppetry imported to Britain over the last years, including Black Hole Theatre, Uncle Semolina (& Friends), Men of Steel and Theft of Sita. Only a visit to Australia allows us to see the work in context, and to see how a closely-knit web of practitioners have created a vibrant puppet scene over the last three decades. It was a delight for me to have the chance to meet and greet practitioners and aficionados from North America, Europe, South America, Asia, Australia, Africa and the Pacific. But I also encounter them in London on a fairly regular basis.
What I am suggesting is that the festival is no longer UNIMA’s raison d’être. A major issue that arose in the Congress was the lack of major projects mounted by UNIMA. The most significant project cited at the Congress was The World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts. This has been stalled for many years for organisational and political reasons. The long delay was cited explicitly at the Congress for the organisation’s failure to receive EU project funding. The election of a non-European general secretary and president (Jacques Trudeau from Canada and Dadi Pudumjee from India) gives UNIMA the possibility of redefining itself as a global organisation that more actively pursues human values around the world. There are many such issues. UNIMA needs to be more active in attending to endangered puppet traditions in countries like Brazil, Iran, Cambodia and Malaysia. The organisation could play a stronger role in sharing practice in the use of puppets for social justice, and facilitating research and travel.
The Union Internationale de la Marionnette (UNIMA) was founded in 1929, and is affiliated to UNESCO. UNIMA brings together people interested in the art of puppetry and in using this art to promote peace and mutual understanding between peoples, regardless of race, political or religious convictions and differences in culture. It organises conferences, festivals and publications and encourages professional training and research. See www.unima.org
British UNIMA offers opportunities to members to attend international festivals and workshops, organises an annual lecture and other events, publishes Puppet Notebook magazine and a Newsletter three times a year, and reports news, events and opportunities on this website. See www.unima.org.uk
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