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Puppets: Theatre, Film, Politics Lalki_13-03-19 PL wyklejki_JDB FIN.indd 2-3 2019-03-13 15:53:31 Lalki_13-03-19 PL wyklejki_JDB FIN.indd 2-3 2019-03-13 15:53:31 7 101 ‘A Collage of Things, Stories, Jan Dorman. Play and the Avant-garde Objects, and People’ Justyna Lipko-Konieczna Joanna Kordjak 23 115 Puppets Can Do More, Leokadia Serafinowicz and Her Theatre Puppets Live Longer of Trans-generational Community Kamil Kopania Dominik Kuryłek 43 127 Puppet Theatre for Adult Potentially Dangerous. Polish Post-war Audiences in Post-war Poland Stop-Motion Puppet Animation Karol Suszczyński Adriana Prodeus 59 147 The Politicality of the Puppet Quasi-sonic Worlds. On Contemporary Dariusz Kosiński Music in Polish Puppet Film and Theatre Jan Topolski 73 157 Presence. The Puppeteer’s Body Authors Marcin Bartnikowski 87 161 Puppet Theatre in Rabka Photographs of Puppets: Karol Hordziej Łukasz Rusznica and Krystian Lipiec Lalki_13-03-19 EN wyklejki_JDB FIN.indd 3-4 2019-03-13 15:53:50 Puppets: Theatre, Film, Politics Puppets: Theatre, Film, Politics edited by Joanna Kordjak and Kamil Kopania Zachęta — National Gallery of Art Warsaw 2019 1. Tina Modotti, Hands of the Puppeteer, 1929, silver gelatin print, digital image, Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence 1. 2. Zofia Gutkowska-Nowosielska, Girls, 1948, oil on canvas, Starmach Gallery, Kraków, photo: Marek Krzyżanek 2. ‘A Collage of Things, Stories, Objects, and People’ Joanna Kordjak I like to make puppets. It’s like creating worlds ... I like puppets because you make them with anything, like a collage. Or rather they are a collage of things, stories, objects, and people.1 The art puppet’s immense potential as a vehicle of artistic expression, noted by Enrico Baj (a painter and graphic artist who collaborated with Massimo Schuster2 and made memorable 7 contributions to puppet theatre), got fully Artists’ keen interest in puppet theatre was appreciated only in the early twentieth century. also fuelled by the fascination and anxiety aroused by the puppet, related to the rapid Exploring the fringes of mainstream advances in technology and mechanics and culture in its search for ways to revive the art a growing sense of the dehumanisation language, modernism created a fertile ground of the modern world, and reflected for the ‘discovery’ of puppet theatre by artists in literature and art in the figures of all kinds and its recognition as a visual art in its own of humanoids, mannequins, or automatons. right. This newfound appreciation was underpinned by emerging theatrical theories. For centuries, puppet theatre was considered Maurice Maeterlinck, convinced of the need an inferior genre, akin to street theatre, a form of finding a new actor, penned at the turn of tawdry, sometimes obscene, low-brow of the centuries a ‘trilogy for marionettes’, entertainment, and yet, despite (or because believing they would cope with the challenges of) that, one that was hugely attractive. A turn posed by a symbolic and psychological drama. towards previously disparaged genres in early- Particularly influential was Edward Gordon twentieth-century high art was a token Craig’s theory of the über-marionette, which of revolt against the hypocrisy and spiritual spawned a trend in dramatic theatre to puppetise bankruptcy of bourgeois culture. By looking the actor gesture. Some went as far as to suggest elsewhere, avant-garde artists were hoping that Craig was proposing to replace the live to release themselves from its academic actor with an inanimate figure. Importantly, constraints. Moreover, drawing on pop culture this flow of inspiration was a bidirectional (which puppet theatre belonged to) was also one: acknowledged by the avant-garde, a way of ‘undermining’ its high-brow or elite puppet theatre was not only being influenced counterpart and overturning existing hierarchies, by contemporary artistic trends (cubism, a crucial strategy of the avant-garde.3 surrealism, or Dadaism), but also itself exerting an influence on its various fields. No longer The great subversive potential of puppet concealed (a breakthrough Craig and others theatre was also noticed: with its wit, irony, had helped usher in), the artificiality and mockery, it was a potentially perfect (and of the puppet and its mechanical movements relatively safe) medium of socio-political inspired new concepts in choreography and critique, a function that was actually a raison costume design. One of the most spectacular d’être of travelling puppet theatres in the past.4 examples of this were the experiments conducted at the Bauhaus by Oskar Schlemmer, The story of one of the most famous involving, for example, the transfiguration puppet characters ever, written by Carlo of the human form by means of cubist Collodi in the late nineteenth century, turns costumes and masks (as described in his 1928 out to be a multi-level metaphor charged theoretical essay, Man and Art Figure). with ideological and political subtext. Telling Collage of Things,‘A Stories, Objects, and People’ 8 3. The Great Ivan by Sergey Preobrazhensky and Sergey Obraztsov, dir. Jan Wilkowski, stage design: Adam Kilian, puppet design: Zofia Stanisławska-Howurkowa, ‘Lalka’ Theatre in Warsaw, 1963, photo: archive of ‘Lalka’ Theatre 3. Joanna Kordjak Joanna 9 of the adventures of Pinocchio, a wooden deprived of agency and identity, reduced puppet that wants to become a real boy, to the role of easily manipulable marionettes. it became a timeless metaphor of growing up.5 At the same time, it could be interpreted In the context of the socio-political upheavals as a critique of bourgeois society, where grown- witnessed by the twentieth century, puppet ups are passive marionettes, manipulated theatre, perceived as a metaphor of human by various external forces, money, and power. existence in the world and man’s dependence on superior forces (for centuries identified This political and social potential of with a God-Creator), acquired new, secular puppet theatre is highlighted in a series meanings. It corresponded with avant- of extraordinary photographs taken garde principles: firstly, as an instrument by Tina Modotti in Mexico in the late of socio-political commitment, and secondly, 1920s. They occupy a special place among by opening up a new, incredibly attractive the rich photographic documentation space for avant-garde formal experiments. of twentieth-century puppet theatre, and Among those embracing puppet theatre in their not only as an outstanding achievement quest for new possibilities and new means in the field of avant-garde photography. of expression for art language were the futurists, Hands of the Puppeteer, the best-known picture the expressionists, the Dadaists. They made in the series, explores the relationship between puppets for their own needs (as Paul Klee, who the actor’s body and the puppet (which over the course of over a decade built several is not to be seen here except for the control dozen for his son, Felix), or as part of regular strings). Being aware of the photograph’s or occasional collaboration with cabarets (Oskar background allows us to go beyond issues Kokoschka, George Grosz) or professional of the anthropology of the body and interpret puppet ensembles (Enrico Prampolini for it first and foremost as a political statement Vittorio Podrecca’s Teatro dei Piccoli in Rome, coming from a ‘revolutionary’ artist.6 Staged Sophie Taeuber-Arp for Alterna in Zurich). by Louis ‘Lou’ Bunin as a puppet show in his Puppet theatre made it possible to transgress theatre in Mexico City in 1928 and documented the boundaries of various creative disciplines by Modotti, Eugene O’Neill’s famous play (painting, sculpture, stage design), but also Hairy Ape was a scathing political satire, to undo the oppositions between pop culture Marxist in its ideology and dealing with class and elite culture, between children’s theatre divisions, class struggle, and the emergence (viewed as marginal and inferior) and ‘real’ art. of working-class consciousness. In this Thanks to puppet theatre, ‘childishness’ was context, Hands of the Puppeteer can also be gaining wide access to the grown-up world. considered an emotionally charged image However obscene or grotesque its forms might of social relationships at the time: the political be, the theatre puppet nonetheless retains domination of the well-to-do classes and something ‘childish’. As a miniature of the adult, the subordinate position of the working class, it is like a child, but also like a doll, a toy. Collage of Things,‘A Stories, Objects, and People’ 10 4. Jerzy Nowosielski, illustration for A. Fiedotov’s article ‘Anatomy of the Puppet-as-Actor in Teatr Lalek’, 1951, pencil on paper, Starmach Gallery, Kraków The child and childhood are key cultural tropes which he manipulated, consoled, punished.8 of the twentieth century, even if both need yet Anton used his miniature theatre as a means to be properly mapped. Puppet theatre allowed of exploring his own identity, the various (also artists to explore those areas: tap into new, darker) aspects of his own personality, one that seemingly inexhaustible sources of inspiration, allowed him to rekindle his childish sensitivity, but also to make art, informed by recent to evoke old fascinations and fears. For no discoveries in psychology and psychoanalysis, matter how much we deny a primitive belief for a new kind of viewer: the autonomous child. that objects have a life and a power of their own, we still — despite common sense — To embrace various aspects of experience a sense of anxiety when confronted ‘childhood’ — children’s sensitivity and with a puppet. Puppet theatre thus makes imagination, but also the ‘childhood’ of art, us aware that the concept of human superiority that is, all kinds of primitive practices — was one of the central tendencies of modernism. They were viewed as sources of ‘regenerative’ 4. energy, and it was precisely because of its rootedness in children’s world and its special sensitivity (compared to the sensitivity of mentally ill persons, which was being ‘discovered’ at the time) that puppet theatre fascinated artists.

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