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Reconsidering Western European Drama in the Light of Puppet and Marionette Plays Didier Plassard and Carole Guidicelli of the PuppetPlays project are painstakingly piecing together the fragmented evidence, manuscripts and source material for puppet and marionette plays from across Western Europe, from 1600 to today, to create an open-access online platform. Puppet shows are widespread in Europe and have been for centuries. Despite this, very little research has been carried out on this unique art form, meaning that puppet stories have become the most mysterious, misunderstood and ignored of play formats. Didier Plassard explained: “Puppet and marionette plays have been invisible because many of the text materials are unpublished or, when they were published, very few copies were made. Puppetry itself was for a long time despised as an art form, considered as entertainment for low classes or for children. Even if there is now more academic research in this field, it is mainly focused on the visual dimension of puppet theatre and neglects its dramaturgy.” To complicate the challenge of piecing together a collection, many of the creators of puppet plays are not authors in the traditional sense and plays can develop in different ways, through practice and passing on the story as an oral tradition. Furthermore, the manuscripts that do exist for many classic puppet shows have been scattered throughout Europe. “Many manuscripts are available in museums, libraries and private collections, but with great differences between the European countries. For instance, you can easily find thousands of manuscripts from the 19th and 20th centuries in big and small Italian cities. That is because the famiglie d’arte (families of artists) collected them and passed them down from one generation of puppeteers to the next. A great deal of resources can also be found in France and Germany, where some public institutions keep large collections of printed and unpublished texts. “But there is a gap between the quantity of resources available in these countries compared to Great Britain, Spain, or Portugal where most of the ancient puppet plays have been destroyed or forgotten,” elaborated Plassard. Often, original plays are written on poor materials that easily degrade and are too delicate to access repeatedly, such as those kept in the Museo Internazionale delle Marionette Antonio Pasqualino in Palermo. 56

editions or archiving location, the context in which it was written and performed (as far as can be ascertained), genre, plot summary, characters, puppet manipulation techniques, dramatic devices and stage techniques, thematic keywords. Queries in the PuppetPlays database can be made with filters, a timeline, or an interactive map of Europe. With perseverance and persistence, the collection now consists of around 500 pieces, with an aim to collect and describe 1,000. From studying these art forms there are many insights that reveal themselves about the nature, value and craft of this unique method of storytelling.

More Than Words Puppet plays encompass a spectrum of techniques and styles. There are many types of puppets: glove puppets, string marionettes, rod marionettes, shadow puppets, combined puppet-and-actor, and more. The nature of puppet plays as a highly visual expression means that some plays rely on very little scripting or none. As the project collects the plays in all their formats and guises, some have to be represented in other ways than script.

The PuppetPlays project emphasises dramaturgy (pointing out dramatic devices, stage effects, running gags…) and the story cues that have evolved and changed through different interpretations and productions. Collecting the stories can mean, sometimes, gathering audio-visual elements, storyboards and elements of the production – not just manuscripts – to understand and document the play. “Some plays are very difficult to describe and we have to invent a methodology and a new terminology to convey this visual connection,” said Guidicelli.

instruments which increase the power of theatrical performances,” enthused Plassard.

The Value of Performances A benefit of cultivating a central hub of plays, as an online searchable portal, is giving the puppet plays prominence, and it makes them accessible both to experts and curious. It highlights to society the value they have as an art. Puppet plays can have significance for expressing cultural identity, historical sentiments, rebellious societal tendencies, or religious narratives. Far from being childish

A number of highly comic traditional figures give free rein to their violent instincts: the Neapolitan Pulcinella beats his opponents with a stick and tricks the executioner into hanging himself instead. The use of puppets to tell stories can steer the narrative and the characters in very different ways from traditional theatre productions with actors, which makes them a unique and intriguing medium. “Puppets can be used with very different repertoires and social views but, in whichever form they come in, they are magical

performances, puppet plays are engrained with historical context and are highly visual expressions of the feelings of a time. Opera dei pupi, a Sicilian and South-Italian tradition of puppet shows using rod marionettes, drew its inspiration from the adventures of Charlemagne and his paladins. These stories were told over several months, in hundreds

Arlecchino cavaliere errante e Facanapa suo scudiero (cover). Trieste e Fiume: G. Chiopris, ca. 1890.

These manuscripts dating from the early 20th Century were written on school notebooks with poor quality paper and had become incredibly fragile to the touch. It has not been a simple undertaking. Plassard and his research team discovered that countries had varying degrees of information available on puppet plays and finding these plays around Western Europe and in history could prove challenging.

PuppetPlays’ first mission has been to locate manuscripts, storyboards, scripts, and rare books and pull them together as digital assets. Then, together with his team, Plassard has described them in an accessible online database, searchable with keywords or key references. Each puppet play has a detailed description: the title of the play and the name of the author, as well as date,

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By Alessandroga80 - Photo taken in Torino, Italy on Christmas Day 2012, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23329127