the puppet as a figure of the other final P PIRIS 2013 - Central ...

classification on such a basis seems to be not that productive. I suggest that it is morepertinent to look at the materialisation of the physical engagement between themanipulator and his puppet. I propose to turn to a ‘body against body’ analysis inspiredby the classification offered by Stephen Kaplin (1999) which looks at the levels ofengagement between the body of the performer and the ‘body’ of the puppet. Theselevels of engagement range from an absence of physical contact between the humanbeing and the object to the possession of the human body by the puppet. In betweenthese two extreme relationships, puppeteers and puppets coexist on stage in a sort of“close distance” that renders possible the fact that both the manipulator and the puppetcan exist in a relative autonomy. In the following section, I describe these levels ofengagement with examples of key artists in each case.2.2.1. Motionless animationOne level of involvement between the puppeteer and the puppet consists of theparadoxical absence of contact between the two of them. Yet, if the principle ofpuppetry entails the manipulation of an object in order to transform it in front of anaudience into an animated being, how is it still possible to talk about puppetry? Artistsengaged in this form of puppetry, such as Christian Carrignon of French companyThéâtre de Cuisine, believe that even if the object is not animated, it gains the status ofan animated being because of the involvement of the performer with the object. Frenchscholar Jean-Luc Mattéoli calls this form of puppetry ‘motionless manipulation’. At theconference on The Presences of the Puppeteer, he defined it in the following terms: ‘thepuppet becomes motionless and the performer circles around it’ (Mattéoli 2009). Thisform of performance uses salvaged objects (also called impoverished objects) that mayhave a story of their own and that had a primary function aside from being objects for48