Or maybe it does. A Chicago Tribune article recently discussed the Handspring Puppet Company of Cape Town‘s production of Woyzeck that was in Chicago for simply a weekend. As one could guess, the company uses puppets to tell the story of Georg Buchner’s unfinished and timeless play that examines a man, Woyzeck, so beaten down by society that he snaps, killing his wife. This review discusses many aspects of the production, of which I’d like to primarily focus on the use of puppets in theatre.
Puppets are an extremely effective tool in the world of theatre, as they help the audience identify with the soul or essence of the character rather with the actor playing the character. In many ways, I think one could argue that it is far easier to relate to a puppet than a person, because you don’t have to get over the idea that you know the actor is doing his job on stage and being somebody else; the puppet lives in the world of the play at all times. This production of Woyzeck apparently used puppets quite powerfully, Chris Jones (who reviewed the production) saying that “Woyzeck makes a slight turn of the head and, all at once, it feels like you see into his very soul, through eyes that seem as deep as a coal pit and a skin that seems to pulse with angst” (Jones). Amazing how simple motions can evoke deep and complex emotions from the audience, especially when these simple motions are purely physical, without any added emotion from the movement of the face. Yes, I guess you could say I love puppet theatre. But I find some major flaws in it as well.
Handspring Puppet Company of Cape Town also created Joey for the hit Broadway show “War Horse“. Joey is the beautiful, puppeteer horse on stage who you see grow from a foal to a full grown horse, and whom I fell in love with over the course of the play.
However, I really, truly dislike that play. For me, the story itself was boring, trite, and commonplace, it’s only redeeming quality being the puppets of horses onstage. I was fortunate enough to see the original show in London back in 2010, and it may have been the fact that I saw it the night after Jez Butterworth’s “Jerusalem”, but the show itself had no meat too it, something I was then confused by when it came to the United States, won the Tony, and was turned into a Stephen Spielberg movie. With no puppets. I’m sorry, the sole redeeming factor of me seeing that play was the fucking puppets. It was the creation of real horse in space using tree limbs and actors, making the experience of a horse totally vivid to me, when I would have been deprived of it in a normal theatre. I may be coming off as a crazy puppet woman, but when I feel as if the puppet is more critical to the story then the actual story is, then we may have a problem.
To take this back to the production of “Woyzeck”, Jones argues that the play itself is a 90 minute is “bleak” enterprise. This can, of course, be credited to the not-too uplifting nature that the show in itself provides, but this interesting connection to my own experience with “War Horse” has left me wondering about puppet theatre in general. Jones is saying that the way the puppet moves is telling its own intricate story, in fact he references the fragmented nature of “Woyzeck”, informing the viewer that they will be moving in and out of the play, and I am saying the same of “War Horse”. The puppets are central here, not the story. Do the puppets serve the story? I know from personal experience, the puppets in “War Horse” made the story something I was actually invested in, when, upon reading just the text, that was not my feeling at all. So I guess I am wondering, to what extent are we using the design to aid the story (which it seems like this production of “Woyzeck” does, bringing it to a new understanding, which is the nature of this play) and to what extent are we adding cool effects to make a bland story less boring. This is what I feel like “War Horse” does, not to say that the puppets are not amazing and beautiful. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever been so moved by a design aspect on the stage before. But, I wonder how to bring this type of artistry to different scripts, ones with more meat in them, and continue playing with the connection of puppet theatre as a tool to fuel other theatre.
Drama Lit Blog 2.0: BU School of Theatre 