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

object are enough to give life to it. Motionless manipulation consists of eliminating theillusion of the manipulation in order to give room to the narration because it is notpossible to forget the nature of the object. For Mattéoli, the transition through thealterity of the object authorises the emotion. Motionless manipulation seems to be atrend in contemporary puppet theatre that is attracting some attention from youngpuppeteers. In 2008 the students of L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts de laMarionnette in Charleville-Mézières staged C’est l’Anniversaire de Michèle mais Elle aDisparu by Philippe Minyana. The only form of puppetry used was motionlessmanipulation. Each character had a small puppet that represented his social self. Aperformer would enter on stage with his small doppelganger. He would put it down infront of him and then he would perform a character. What emerges from the practice ofmotionless manipulation is the fact that performers must become actors and storytellersin order to make it work. It is the emotions and reactions of their characters on stage inrelation to the puppets that convey the life of the still objects to the audience.2.2.2. PossessionThe ultimate degree of relationship between the puppet and the puppeteer ismaterialised by the possession of the human body by the puppet. This possession doesnot mean a total annihilation of the human. It is still possible to identify two characterson stage formed by the puppeteer and the puppet. Ilka Schönbein, a former student ofAlbrecht Roser, is probably the artist who has pushed this type of relationship with herpuppets to the furthest extreme. She has created shows such as Métamorphoses desMétamorphoses or Chair de ma Chair by using deformed castings of her body inpapier-mâché that absorb parts of her own body to form monstrous creatures. Schönbeinexplains how she came to develop this particular form:50