South African Puppetry: Redefining the undefined at the Out The Box Festival 2010
02 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment
in Transdisciplinary R-Evolutions in Puppetry and Performance
‘What is important to remember is that at least three generations of South African performing and performance artists have created significant bodies of work (often with their own bodies) which have redefined arts forms. These artists have not only blurred boundaries between life and art; politics and social conscience but have also often detonated these boundaries. Rising from the dust of these artistic explosions and cultural implosions are anarchic iconographies informed by festering identities… Seriously adventurous South Africans continue to put themselves out there as magicians of metaphor and aesthetic warriors’ (Adrienne Sichel, 2007:1).
Puppetry has come to the fore in the past twenty years in South Africa as a powerful tool of representation and expression in the arts. As well as its widespread occurrence in Africa, puppetry holds a strong presence in much European and Asian theatre, and has led to the establishment of major puppetry and visual theatre companies, festivals, theatres and centres all over the world.
Theorist Jane Taylor says:
Puppets can provide an extraordinary dimension to a theatrical project…because every gesture is, as it were, metaphorized. The puppet draws attention to its own artifice, and we as the audience willingly submit ourselves to the ambiguous processes that at once deny and assert the reality of what we watch (Taylor, 1998, p. vii).
The inanimate object transforms, through the visible or invisible actions of the puppeteer, from the literal into the abstract and conceptual to which the performers and audience respond on multiple levels. In the abstract transference of energy and rhythm to the object, there arises a complex interplay between meaning and representation. The interpretation of this inheritance of life through the act of performance with and of the object allows the viewer and manipulators to read their own human condition in the animated object. The puppet always exists through multiple levels of meaning and signification. These occur in the structure, form and symbolism of the object itself as well as in the performance. Through Puppetry, deliberate attention is brought to the constructs of the object/symbol/character/performer dynamic. The power of Puppetry production is that all elements, be they set, performance bodies, voice and sound, multimedia or prop, have the ability to transform through performance.
Today the term Puppetry is loosely incorporated into the broad genre of Visual Performance: often a multidisciplinary approach to performance, performance art, movement, theatre, multimedia, video, puppetry, stage design, visual art and others. Many puppetry companies classify their work in adult Puppetry as Visual Theatre. The potential of Puppetry in contemporary Visual Performance practice relates to its multifaceted, interdisciplinary approach to meaning and representation in both its semiotic and phenomenological potential and significance.
South African Puppetry has come to the fore in the global Visual Performance scene largely due to the ground breaking interdisciplinary work of The Handspring Puppet Company and William Kentridge. Their contribution to South African Puppetry, over the past thirty years, has been not only to develop an indigenous form of iconic South African Multimedia Performance but also to put adult puppetry on the local map. Their experimentations in crossover multidiscplinarity have set the standard for contemporary puppetry performance, and in the vaguely documented and defined puppetry traditions of South Africa, their work stands as the canon of South African puppetry. The question that follows however is, where is South African puppetry heading in the 21st century and who are the new innovators leading the way? Past and recent works of South African artists who fall within the large category of Visual Performance, attests to a growing body of multidisciplinary, visually orientated material, Puppetry and multimedia productions that look specifically at South African identity and experiences.
Recently the work of upcoming contemporary puppeteers is being acknowledged at Puppetry and Contemporary Performance festivals around the world. Visual Performance and Puppetry Company, The Paper Body Collective and their highly acclaimed production In Medea Res, which explored issues of Xenophobia and migrancy, performed to sold out performances on the main programme at the world famous Festival Mondial Des Theatres De Marionnette in France in 2009. They were the only representatives from the African continent at this enormous event in world puppetry that showcased the cream of international talent from Canadian Puppetry Company Turak, to the Netherland’s Magische Theatertje. In Medea Res subsequently went on to perform at various theatres in Europe and South Africa as well as at the prestigious Harare International Festival of the arts in 2010, attesting to the growing interest in South African women’s puppetry at international and intercontinental festivals. Puppeteer Janni Younge was also awarded the Standard Bank Young artist award for Drama for her exciting work as a puppeteer and her contributions to South African theatre.
The categories of the South African Theatre stronghold however do not as yet adequately support South African Visual Performance or South African Puppetry. How can Performance platforms (such as festivals, theatres, awards) support experimentation and grow not only upcoming artists but also receptive audiences in order to facilitate the ‘new and radical happenings’ of contemporary Puppetry Performance? Out of the gaps between production, presentation and reception, we see the emergence of a number of new arts festival and awards that seek particularly to defy and define the traditional Patriarchal Western Theatre approach to the selection and endorsement of new works and arts practices.
The Out the Box Festival of Puppetry and Visual Performance, developed by UNIMA South Africa, ran for its fifth year in March 2010 under the guidance of new artistic director Jaqueline Dommisse. Begun in 2005, under the directorship of contemporary female adult puppetry artists, Janni Younge and Aja Marneweck, the festival grew from a one day happening of workshops and performances, to a significant international event that provides a unique arts and culture platform in Cape Town. What makes the festival unique is that it is the only festival of primarily Puppetry and Visual Performance in Southern Africa. Its missions are underlined by its supportive approach to experimentation and artist and audience development and lead the way in the production and development of local puppetry work and artists. The ten-day festival, which showcases both adult and children’s performance, has grown exponentially to provide a concentrated programme of high quality, interdisciplinary performances, talks, workshops and happenings. This programme is intentionally designed to support and expand thinking on experimentation and artistic possibility. One of the main reasons for this growth is not just the commitment of the festival team, which is comprised completely of working artists, but from the great artistic demand for a platform of this kind that supports the fluidity of categorisation and interdisciplinarity.
Another aspect of the festival that lends it uniqueness, is its incorporation and use of space. The Little Theatre Complex at the University of Cape Town has provided a mini town atmosphere where artists have access to three different theatre spaces as well as multiple rooms, environments and outdoor spaces in which to create. This has also supported the growth of its audiences who can immerse themselves in these spaces and travel between multiple performances in an evening. In this environment audiences are more open to accept the possibility of risk in its ticket purchase and open to viewing something they would not normally go to watch. This spirit of possibility allows audiences to engage and to open themselves to creative potential and new artistic approaches.
In a bid to put Puppetry Performance even more firmly on the South African theatre map, this year saw the landmark introduction of the Handspring Puppetry Awards. Company Directors Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler, in the creation of these prestigious awards, are acknowledging not only artistic excellence in the craft but also the gaping silences and awkward categorisations of Puppetry in other awards around the country.
This year the festival showed a continuing commitment to the support of professional experimentation in cross-disciplinary performance.
Local highlights included the premier showcasing of a new collaborative work by Mandla Mbothwe and Mwenya Kabwe, 27 Windows, 4 doors & 2 Taps. The site-specific exploration, created with students from the University of Cape Town as well as various professional performers, used buildings on the Rosedale site as its point of aesthetic and cultural investigation. It also won the Best Visual Theatre Production Award at the end of the festival. Runner up Acty Tang moved audiences with his achingly personal piece Inscrutable, and the raucous Erf 81 performance art troupe lead audiences through a dire love story with their audaciously inane and award winning Flowers for my flesh.
This year saw a noticeable lack of local puppetry specific performance on the adult festival with only three Puppetry lead performances. The children’s festival boasted more than five high quality children’s puppetry performances with Ubom!’s Adventures of a Little Nobody winning the Best Overall Puppet Manipulation Award and Beren Belknap’s Lenny and the wasteland winning Best Puppetry Newcomer. The most invigorating performances of the week, in terms of local puppetry, were the active Puppets performance programme projects, which showcased the remarkable work of young up and coming community puppeteers working with a variety of puppetry mediums from Shadow and Procession to Glove Puppets.
The Moving Things Film Festival, introduced in 2008 to the festival programme, stood testament to the high quality of stop frame animation and puppetry video making in South Africa. Thierry Cassuto and Jonathon Zapiro won Best Puppetry Design for ZA News, the controversial South African version of the French Puppetry satire, La Vignolles.
The conference at Out the Box this year was the fourth in a series organised by UNIMA SA as part of the Out the Box Festival. This process of documenting, writing and dialoguing around significant aspects of Puppetry in South Africa has always stood as a vital part of the intention of the programme.
In a detailed empirical study on South African Puppetry since 1975, Zuanda Badenhorst provides a comprehensive list of practising professional and semi professional South African puppeteers in 2005. Out of this study she listed over 70 puppetry companies/puppeteers. In this list were thirty female puppeteers, with twenty puppetry companies run by women. Out of this only four recorded female artists were professional puppeteers working with puppetry for adults/contemporary performance. The rest worked primarily in children’s performance. The motivation for this years conference was to document and archive discussions on the role of women in the development of contemporary Puppetry and Visual Perormance.
With speakers including Avital Dvori (Israel), Nandipha Mntambo, Julia Raynham (Resonance Bazar), Mothertongue Project, Mamela Nyamza, Tamara Guhrs (Njala), Mitzi Sinnott (USA), Caroline Calburn (Theatre Arts Admin Collective) and Tanya Surtees (FTHK), the Out the Box Conference 2010 explored the transformative role women are playing in the development and creation of contemporary Visual Performance. The discussion looked both at the role women play in transforming the creative, social, cultural and political spaces of contemporary performance, the innovation of their craft as well as the development of platforms, programming and production leadership in Visual Performance.
The creation and success of festivals such as Out the Box is testament to the growing necessity of platforms and audience development spaces that support and nurture the burgeoning experimental and contemporary spaces of South African Visual Theatre in the 21st Century. The fact that it is an artist-run rather than administrator-run event also speaks to the possibilities of a different apporach to the processes that link thought, practice and producing to public presentation. The sensitive negotiation needed to create a successful festival that addresses more than just a commercial viability, relies on an intrinsic support for both artist and audience development. 2010 sees the launch of new platforms around the country that seek to bridge the gaps between fringe and mainstream programmes, such as The National Arts Festival Arena programme. At this point however, Out the Box remains the sole platform dedicated to the development of Visual Theatre Performance. ‘ May Out the Box flourish but never go mainstream and lose its intelligent edge’ declared Adrienne Sichel in a review of the festival 2007. Let’s hope that it manages to maintain its focus on the artistic development of unique and provocative experimentation, and continue to lead the way in contemporary performance.
