File puptcrit/puptcrit.0701, message 244


From: =?Windows-1252?Q?Mathieu_Ren=E9?= <creaturiste-AT-magma.ca>
To: <puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org>
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 23:25:20 -0500
Subject: [Puptcrit] Show construction: Back to basics


Hi all.
I just saw a puppet show that really makes ya think. It ought to, it's about Descartes' "discours de la méthode".
The classic "I think therefore I am" , dissected, critiqued, storytold, explained, questionned, and eventually destroyed and reconstructed,  with puppets.

The show is called "Le Discours de la Méthode" the company (from Quebec city) is called "Le sous-marin Jaune" (and yes, the name is a wink wink to the Beatles).
Sorry, I can't find any website under their name.

It was well done, full of thought provoking ideas and ways of presenting them. It's not the best show I've ever seen ( a bit long), but well worth seeing, and not only for the wonderful talents involved, but also for the inventiveness they showed with very small ressources. The sets were very limited in space, yet unlimited (very Descartes). The only static element was a tall wall as a backdrop. The rest was entirely modifiable, made up of cardboard boxes, all identical, yet all personalised. Most of their surfaces were exploited, so many elements could be portrayed, from sets to secondary characters. 
Some boxes even contained charaters inside them. Some had painted-on characters with animated features.
To see such a wide array of possibilities with simple boxes (about 40 of them) is truly inspiring.
The show starts with a wall made up of these boxes. Then it gets torn down, and rebuilt into the various scenes needed for the show.

The puppets too were fun to see. From memory, there were 3 tabletop full-body "muppets" with human hand, many shadows, two marionettes, one humanette built like a flat shadow (quite fun!) , and two cardboard cutouts done in the same way as the one I just described, but stand alone, not humanettes.
One character even gets dissected, dismembered until all is left is a head, and he ends up borrowing the body of a famous TV character for kids (a plush toy).


This really appeals to me, a show that can be carried easily, played everywhere, that does not cost much to make yet does not look ridiculously neglected.

I guess my enthusiasm for it gets back to my dream of a suitcase show. A single suitcase containing everything to make the magic happen. 

Today's Art world seems to be all about showing off: huge, big, bright, shocking. Maybe this is why efficient simplicity is such a breath of fresh air.
When the decision for simplicity stops being only for economical reasons, magic can happen!
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