In the introduction to his program for spouses, “Fear of Puppetry,” at The Americans December meeting in New York, master puppeteer Roman Paska asserted that the historic association between puppetry and magic accounts for the fear of puppetry that has so long enveloped this theatrical form.
Educated in film and theater at Columbia University, Paska began his career in puppetry at the precocious age of five. When he was 10, Paska's parents, believing him peculiar because of his devotion to puppets, sent him to a psychiatrist for an evaluation. Fortunately, this mental health professional did not cure Paska of his love of puppetry nor of his wish to pursue the unusual.
His theatrical accomplishments include an adaptation of Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata for actors and puppets, a staging of Yeats's The Shadowy, and a wordless adaptation of Lorca's Yerma. For these works and many others he has earned international acclaim and numerous honors including the Alan Schneider Directing Award from the Theater Communications group and four citations of excellence in the art of puppetry from UNIMA (Union International de la Marionette)–USA. Paska is currently directing Three Tales, a new opera by Steve Reich, and continues to present and develop a series of solo works collectively called Theater for the Birds.
Puppeteers throughout history have had to cope with a fearful and pejorative view of their art. Early in the history of western civilization, it was believed that the prerogative of manipulating man belonged only to God. Puppeteers with their mannequins were viewed as usurping God's authority. In ancient Greece, meals were often concluded with performances by Sicilian puppeteers, but public performances were soon prohibited. Marginalized by those laws, puppetry became a subversive, borderline activity performed by a fringe group.
Although the history of puppetry remains patchy, some fragments survive. In late sixteenth-century Geneva, puppeteers were arrested, tried for witchcraft, and burned at the stake. Their puppets were viewed as akin to the golem, the dead infused with profane life. One puppeteer tried to exonerate himself by demonstrating how the puppet worked. Instead of saving him, his performance proved to his accusers that he possessed demonic abilities, and he too was carried off to the stake.
Although the 20th century has been kinder to puppetry, the public is still somewhat wary and dismissive of the craft. Paska speculates that there is an ominous association in people's minds between puppets and clones and robots. This idea is mirrored in a recent book by Gerald Alber, The Puppeteers: Studies of Obsessive Control, in which he identifies “puppeteer syndrome” as an individual's imperative need to manipulate others.
In the current resurgence of puppetry, Paska identifies a number of shaping forces. The last 40 years have witnessed puppetry's expanding presence in American theater, film, and television. (Paska was quick to point out that it is not correct to describe this as a renaissance because there never has been a golden age.)
There are several identifiable reasons for this resurgence. First is puppetry's new theatrical conception. Surrealism, Dadaism, and futurism are among the artistic influences that currently infuse puppetry's dark and comic vision. Second, the introduction of directors in puppet theater has transformed puppetry. During the nineteenth century, the puppeteer both conceived and executed the show. The new puppet directors, like theater directors, have come to use the proscenium stage as their venue as they attempt to redefine the drama and essence of puppetry. The puppet directors have been greatly influenced by Peter Brooks, the eminent stage director. He declared a new manifesto for the theater: The essence of theater is the naked actor on the naked stage. For puppetry, the essence is the naked hand of the puppeteer with his object on the naked stage.
Paska further outlined the progression of puppetry to its more modern form. The traditional view held that the puppeteer and puppet were very like the musician and his instrument. Neither could perform alone. The performance ultimately depended on the virtuosity of the
musician/puppeteer. What was considered unique and different about puppet theater was that the puppet also functioned as the mask for the puppeteer.
During the 1950s, a shift took place. No longer thought of as a mask, the puppet now became a surrogate for the puppeteer. Today, any object can and does function as the surrogate, and a new name has been given to this type of puppet theater: The theater of objects.
Thus the string marionette has begun to lose its primacy. Contemporary puppetry makes new expressive demands. Puppetry can explore a world beyond the representational. A modernist sensibility demands that puppetry dig beneath the surface to find and portray human nature and psychology at its depth.
Paska asked, “Why, in this-post modern — perhaps post-humanistic — world, is there still a loathing and fear of puppetry? Because,” he answered, “puppeteers challenge notions of humanistic order and supremacy. They are also grave competitive challenges. Puppeteers can outperform actors in so many different arenas. Their objects can fly; can live underwater, and can envelop and portray the entire spectrum of human experience with economy and grace.”
In his discussion of Paska's presentation, Eric Nuetzel, a training and supervising analyst at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute and adjunct professor of drama at Washington University in St. Louis, confessed to an instance of his fear of puppetry. He once directed a play that contained a long puppetry sequence. Believing the sequence to be distracting, he cut it completely. He now has second thoughts
Morris L. Peltz is a training and supervising analyst for the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. He manages the Program Committee's Program for Spouses. Josie Peltz is an associate producer for CBS News' “Eye on People” and an independent documentary film producer.
about that decision. Parenthetically, Nuetzel acknowledged every director's wish to turn his actors into his puppets.
In Nuetzel's view, puppets can express a vast range of experience, from the most forbidden to the ideal. For example, typical in the Punch and Judy theater is the sequence where, to the delight of the audience, a puppet throws a baby out the window without fear of reprisal or consequences. Nuetzel emphasized that audience response is as integral to puppet theater as it is to every theatrical experience. Aristotle defined the dialectical poles of audience response: Theater as morality, education, aesthetics, and cathartic reality.
Nuetzel agreed with Paska that puppet theater is very likely to dig beneath the surface of human experience. The puppet in its detachment from reality strives for a theatrical reality that can meditate on the human paradox. Puppeteers, perhaps more than writers, directors, and actors in conventional theater, are able to create endless versions of themselves that come to life in interaction with the audience. Paska, as puppeteer, comes to exist in each act or performance, in Nuetzel's view.
Replying to Nuetzel's commentary, Paska said that for him the art of puppetry exists in the tension between puppet and puppeteer in the performance before an audience. “I could be in one room manipulating an object in another room. Is that puppetry?” Paska asked. “Perhaps puppetry at a remove, but it is not puppetry in its most intense form of imagery: the puppeteer, the object, and the audience.” Paska cited a recent very moving instance.
The puppet drama was a story of the love between a match (nicotine) and a coffee bean (caffeine). Preposterous as it may sound, the performance managed to achieve an intense poignancy when the coffee bean was ground with other beans and was lost to the match. In a futile search, the match desperately sifts through the grounds for his beloved lost coffee bean. The audience was reduced to tears. It was a moment of peak emotional involvement between the three: the puppeteer, the objects, and the audience.