On the End of a String

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 219, 3 September 1943, Page 16

On the End of a String

UPPETS! And you probably think of little people, quaint, perhaps grotesque; of a tiny stage, miniature properties, férky movements; Punch and Judy, and the Clown. ... But not Shakespeare, The Tempest, played on successive Sunday afternoons to overflowing houses, people without tickets standing in queues for an hour in the hope that some of the ticketholders will stay at home. . Shakespeare played by puppets to adult audiences; not in Moscow; not at Malvern at a festival graced by the presence and favour of G. B. Shaw; The Tempest played by puppets in Auckland, New Zealand, with three puppet--eers and a props girl to work the gramophone and lighting; with a stage set up by the puppeteers in the Public Library hall by the courtesy of the City Council and the Library committee. First an introduction by -the chief puppeteer, Arnold Goodwin, instructor in drawing and design at the Elam School of Art: "Puppetry is as old as civilisation itself-terra-cotta dolls with articulated limbs have been found in tombs of the

ancient Greeks — but how are we to account for the amazingly vigorous renaissance of the art in this century, side-by-side with the rapid development of the movie? For there has been a very lively growth of the art throughout Europe as well as in the East during the last 20 years. Why? I can’t tell you. But perhaps people find an _ enchantment in the simplicity of this form of the play- it is the play, a very live and complete form of the drama — in which they take some part themselves, or feel themselves some part of the performance. "And why choose Shakespeare, why choose The Tempest, you may ask. Simply that we like it, we think it a good play, and we enjoy playing itI don’t know of a better reason for presenting any play." The "we" referred to the operators, Freda Crosher and Raeburn Griffiths; the props girl, Eileen Elplick; and Barbara Thompson, who designed and made all the costumes. Music, then, in darkness-the

Sibelius Second Symphonyand crash of tin sheeting drowning the cries of men on the sinking, splitting ‘ship. Then peace. A calm light, and enter Miranda and Prospero, Miranda so golden-haired, so maidenly, so soft of voice. "If by your art, my dearest father. you have Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them." And Prospero, red-gowned, dignified, bearded, magic wand in hand-‘tell your piteous heart There’s no harm done" — tells her in gentle tones her story and the reason he has brought this wreck upon the island shores. And now Miranda sleeps-a wandinduced sleep; how gently, how gracefully she sinks down upon that green bank. A lesson here for many an eyelashed Hollywood star, for many an ambitious repertory player: who but this Miranda ever sank down to sleep and thankfully, wearily, slept? Head turned a little, drooped a little, hands loose. Oh, yes, she’s quite asleep. Not an eyelid flutters, not a hand moves, So, "Approach, my Ariel, come," and whiff! there comes a creature light as air, here, there, above, over there . silver, smoke, mist, thistledown, or lightly laughing voice. The slim, silvered body, the pointed face, the butterfly pauseless flight, and the laugh-every-where the laughter that promises tangled hair and devious routes and sudden stings and scratches to ‘his victims. The victims: Ferdinand, a thing divine to Miranda’s maiden eyes ("O brave new world That has such people in’t!’’); Caliban (horror! no man-sized actor ever assumed such hideous proportions); Stephano (with his bottle in his hand. hig gait very drunken); and. Trinculo (jester’s black and yellow, bells on, a share of the bottle). me % * HIS was The Tempest considerably cut, three actual voices in place of the 20 or so in the script, and-on that little

stage only seven characters. Yet this was one of the most refreshing and ‘stimulating performances I have seen of The Tempest. The music: Sibelius; Ravel (Daphnis and, Chloe); Debussy (L’zpres Midi d’un Faun); Stravinsky (Firebird); and Walton (Facade Suite). (Yes, Mr. Goodwin said, they. were rather proud of their choice of music). The voices: three of them sounding like seven; good voices, well-trained. (A bad actor will never make a good puppeteer, Mr. Goodwin said; the puppet performance must have all the best qualities of a good stage performance and a few other qualities as well, technical, ones). And the little people themselves: Well, there it was-enchanting, % * % M®. Goodwin was a little nervous, he said, about what he called "this publicity angle" (that was The Listener with photographer); he already receives weekly and sometimes daily letters saying "Please tell us how it is done, We want to put on a show for this or that." ("Might as well write to a portrait painter asking him to write you a letter telling you how it’s done," Mr. Goodwin complained). It wouldn’t, he thought, be the best of ideas to encourage all sorts of amateur attempts to spring up all over the country; it would probably put people off what, well done, could be a very delightful form of entertainment. I didn’t altogether agree with him; he himself said that all the books on puppetry were fascinating to read, full of interest-but as for information, every puppeteer would agree _ that nothing was to be had from books, all was to be found out by trial and retrial, and a great deal of patience. And I knew that before the war in England schools had their own puppet theatres, ( Contitused on next page) «

(Continued from previous page) and quite apart from the professional touring companies, there were dozens cf village troupes playing in the open-air in summer and in the patish halls in winter, And in Czechoslovakia alone there. were in 1938 3000 marionette theatres, many of them run by amateurs. In Russia the favourite form is the ' glove puppet; in the East, especially Java, the rod puppet; in-Italy, the traditional home of the string puppet, the art has flourished just as it has in France, Germany and Central Europe in the last 20 years. And the puppetry in these countries is not confined to fairy tales or grotesque humour more or less on the Punch and Judy pattern: drama and operas are played by the little people at the end of the strings; in Germany before the war it seems that Faust was played as often as Snow White; in the United States they have been advertising clothes and foods and fads with puppetry, and also playing The Birds of Aristophanes as well as cowboy heroics (with fantastic and. often beautiful puppets made from curled paper); and in England they play

as varied a repertoire as Miracle Plays, circus pieces, or Winnie-the-Pooh, performing with success for television. Stand on the bridge of a string puppet theatre and look down at the stage and you'll see the whole of the world of the theatre in little. Behind you are rows and rows of hooks, each hook with its hand-piece and collection of string with the traditional clown, princess, duck, witch, sailor, soldier, farmer, peasant, or king hanging swinging below: they stop swinging, feet on stage-level, and if you don’t notice the strings you think they are the players in the wings waiting for their call... . A compact stage, easily set up, "We can set the whole thing up, give a performance and be packed up and away, all in three hours," says Mr. Goodwin. "Also we're a working team. We can play in a barn, in a school, in the open, or in a properly constructed theatre. That’s one of the beauties of puppetry." But the best thing about it gems to be that there is always something new to learn, something harder to attempt.

J.