PI 47 Editorial

The Editor Dips His Quill
Puppetry International Spans the Globe*

*The Globe Theatre that is

Yes, the long-awaited “Puppets and Shakespeare” issue is here at last. We’d begun work on it about five years ago when the British UNIMA publication beat us to the punch. Having put it off until tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, our time has come at last to share news of midsummer nights and tragic loves, tempests and tyrants, poisons and potions, performed to great acclaim by figures small as a thumb or big as a house.

Shakespeare wrote thirty-seven plays, and it is remarkable that the overwhelming majority of productions done with puppets, or in a visual theater style, are Hamlet, Macbeth, The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We are not quoting a scientific study, and of course we are generalizing: We’ve seen a riotous hand puppet version of Romeo and Juliet from South America, and in this issue Davis Robinson recalls an Antony and Cleopatra that he directed using puppets. Also, Paul Vincent Davis remembers the years in which he and Carol Fijan worked on scenes from Shakespeare including comic scenes from The Taming of the Shrew and several bits from Richard III, but by and large it is the “big four” that continue to provide inspiration to puppet companies. We suppose that we’ll now be hearing from troupes around the globe about their celebrated puppet productions of Pericles or The Merry Wives of Windsor, and, frankly, I hope we do.

On offer here is Lawrence Switzky’s appreciation of Barry Purves’s Next. This is a remarkable short animated film in which Shakespeare himself acts out all 37 of his plays as a series of silent, 7-second actions.

Peter Schumann produces a Hamlet spectacle with a large cast and even larger puppets, while Ayhan Hülagü retools Hamlet in the style of the Turkish Karagöz shadow theater. Manuel Morán takes us through the process of Latinizing Shakespeare for his production of Sueño, based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. All of which goes to show that Shakespeare, whose too, too solid flesh resolved itself into a dew more than four centuries ago, remains the most adaptable and popular playwright the world has ever known.

Mind you, this is not the first time we’ve covered Shakespeare performed with puppets. In our very first issue we had an interview with Fred Curchack, well-known deviser of solo shows, including his takes on The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Now, 25 years later, he is back for a reprise, with an update on his work with the Bard.

In issue #4, we ran an article on famed Canadian Director Robert LePage. Among other things, he talked about his Hamlet, in which actors were suspended from cables and only able to express themselves through the musculature of their backs.

Issue #8 featured our review of Jon Ludwig’s Wrestling Macbeth, a brilliant re-imagining of the Scottish play as a night of pro wrestling. Issue #21 covered Tiny Ninja Shakespeare–a one-man operation that performs Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet with little ninja figures acquired from a gumball-type vending machine. Issue #26 featured two very different Tempests: one performed on a shadow screen in the Balinese wayang kulit tradition, the other a large cast, international collaboration performed at NYC’s La Mama. #33 brought a review of yet another Tempest: an intimate reworking called The Feast, a collaboration between Redmoon and the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.

In Issue #42, our review of Québec’s Festival International des arts de la marionette (FIAMS) featured two productions by Shakespeare: Macbeth Muet (Silent Macbeth) by La Fille du laitier, a bloody tale performed with many objects by two actors who end up splattered with both raw eggs and vast amounts of stage blood (at once hilarious and horrifying); and Pier Porcheron’s Hamletic variation Il y a quelque chose de pourri (There is Something Rotten)–a breathtaking display of fast-paced comedic acting and object puppetry.

Finally, in issue #43, Jieun Lee reviewed Hamlet Cantabile, written and directed by Yo-seop Bae. It renders the audience witnesses to, if not participants in, a Korean shamanistic ceremony, which bridges the world of stage and that of the audience.*

* “Oh dear,” thou cryest, “How ever shall we access all those back issues to which the editor doth refer?” But be thou of cheerful mind, dear reader, for all back issues are online, for free. Thy membership dollars at work.

– Andrew Periale