Nordic UNIMA Magazine

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Ibsen and thepuppet theatreBy: dr.art. AnneHelgesen26Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is by far the most famousplaywright of Norway. His dramas are still dominatingthe stages in Norwegian Theatres. As a child heenjoyed playing and watching puppet theatre, and asa grownup artist he still enjoyed being the audienceof puppetry. In the last decades the Ibsen repertoirehas become an important tool in developing the art ofpuppetry in the Nordic countries. UNIMA Norway haspublished a book titled Ibsen and Puppetry – Puppetryand Ibsen. This article will give you some main pointsfrom this book:Most biographies about Ibsen will include some linesabout how young Henrik staged puppet performancesat the farm Venstøp, were the Ibsen family was living.The information refers to a letter from Henrik Ibsen’ssister, Hedvig. In the letter she describes how the olderbrother kept away from his younger siblings. He hadhis own walk-in cupboard where he was by his own,and played with juvenile theatre figures that he haddrawn, coloured and cut out. Biographers interpretedthis as a sign that Ibsen already then, at the age of 7 or8, was a difficult and reclusive child, an outsider whowas deemed to be an artist. Henrik Ibsen and his closestfamily built further on this myth (Jæger 1988: 23f).But the sources about Ibsen and puppetry might quitewell be interpreted differently. The Ibsen researcherOskar Mosfjeld collected material from Ibsen’schildhood in Skien. He began collecting material at theend of the 1920s. Many of Mossfield’s sources are notclose relatives but friends, neighbours and less closeacquaintances of the Ibsen-family. In these narrativesHenrik Ibsen is not an isolated child, but a young ladwith a talent for theatre and the visual arts, and he usedhis abilities in art to demonstrate his membership inthe class of bourgeoisie. Even though his father wentbankrupt and they had to live in the countryside. TheIbsen family did not belong between the farmers(Mosfjeld 1949).Juvenile theatres were quite the things for thebourgeoisie’s young boys all over Europe. The youngIbsen’s activities can compare with the juvenile theatregames that Robert Louis Stevenson describes in hisessay “A Penny Plain and Twopence coloured” from1884. Set in such a context, the boy Henrik’s playingwas normal and even a sign of being upper class.Mosfjeld also refers to marionette performances thatHenrik Ibsen played in an outhouse on the farm ofVenstøp. An old woman who was of the same age asIbsen, claimed that she had seen these performances inher childhood. Her narration is not verified as there areno other sources that confirms it, therefore the credibilityis perhaps dubious. However in itself, this eyewitnessnarration seems credible both as a technical descriptionof a marionette performance, and because the threemarionettes - a knight, a moor and a Spanish lady - areprobably imported from a European country that has atradition with Sicilian marionettes or similar puppets.The mother of Henrik Ibsen played with puppets/dollseven as a grownup. The Sicilian marionettes might wellhave been a gift or a loan from the mother (Mosfjeld1949: 106f).No Ibsen researcher has taken a second look atthe playwright’s great interest in the market-placeentertainers. In his started, but never finished biographyhe writes about his fascination of the tricksters andtheir juggling. There are several stories about himperforming as a magician, a ventriloquist and a juggler.The audience was his own family and neighboursand they refer to his performances. Nobody mentionspuppets, but puppetry was an important part of thetrickster’s entertainment (Helgesen 2003: 110f). Weeven know that the grave grownup Henrik Ibsen, whohardly gave into a smile, enjoyed watching puppetperformances. When Ibsen was already a well-knownplaywright who hade written dramas like Peer Gyntand A dolls house, he lived in a small village in theoutskirts of Munich. Erik, son of the Norwegian writerJonas Lie, discovered that Ibsen hid away almost everyday. He was hiding in a park behind the local church.There the children gathered around an open-air puppettheatre; and there on a bench at a distance, but nearenough to follow the show, Henrik Ibsen was seated.Lie writes:Here he was enjoying himself – among dozens ofchildren – watching the performances at a “Kaspartheatre”.He smiled and dried his glasses often witha silk handkerchief, when the puppets knocked eachother about (Lie 1928: 68).The puppet theatre sometimes shows its faces in the
work of the theatre-artist Ibsen. When he, early in hiscareer, as a practical theatre worker at the nationalromantictheatres in Bergen and Christiania (Oslo), heeven kept a hand on costumes a set-design. His costumesketches for both his own plays and Scribe’s, are nearlycomical copies of the period’s romantic theatre fashionsand of juvenile theatre.But it is even more interesting to speculate about theinfluence the Italian Pulcinella-theatre might have hadto the work of Peer Gynt. Henrik Ibsen broke up fromthe Norwegian theatre-institution and the Norwegiansociety and moved to Italy in1864. There he first wrotethe drama Brand, afterwards Peer Gynt. The later playincludes many elements of Norwegian folklore, but thehero Peer and the drama’s episodic structure is not to befound in the aforementioned folklore. Ibsen was livingin Rome and Naples, the main districts of the Pulcinellaplayers.A comparison of Peer and Pulcinella displayssurprisingly many parallels.These parallels must have been intuitionally felt byNordic Puppeteers though the years, because Peer Gyntis their favourite play when Ibsen’s drama are adaptedto the puppet stage.The very first puppet theatre performance of PeerGynt was staged in 1915 at the literary cabaret ChatNoir in Christiania (the old name for Oslo). Theproduction was limited to the Peer Gynt monologue inthe mountains. This visual performance parodied thenational romantic frame that the Norwegian NationalTheatre had established around Peer Gynt. The cabaretversion revised Ibsen’s text and reawakened the ironyof Ibsen’s` text.The next time Peer Gynt turned into a puppet was in1978. It was an important period of Norwegian puppetry.But the amount and the qualities of performanceswere growing, and an educational programme wasestablished. The young puppet theatre ensemble at theRiksteatret (The national Touring Theatre of Norway)put on an effort to show that puppet-theatre was an artform and produced Peer Gynt with the artistic assistanceof the Rumanian Tandarica Teater. Margareta Niculescuwas directing. The performance got a mixed reception.This was not a respectful way of treating the holy Ibsen.But it arose interest in the rebel art of puppetry.In 1990 Peer Gynt was staged by the Swedish puppettheatreByteatern. It was called The story Peer Gynt .The production melted together acting, puppetry, maskplay,music and the art of narration. The performancewas a shining example of the visual and direct narratoraesthetics that had developed within the best freelancegroups since the 1980’s. This performance was a brakethroughof puppetry as a form of art in Scandinavia.In 1991 the playwright Gösta Kjellin was given the taskof creating a symbiosis between Ibsen’s Peer Gynt andMr.Punch, a double projection of past and present, abridge between folklore and the people’s theatre. Thefreelance theatre ensemble Teater Fusentast, wanted tostage Peer Gynt in a street theatre with the Punch andJudy show as an inspiration. The play was cut down to60 minutes. The idea was to find the essence of Ibsen’sstory and tell it in his spirit. When the production hadits first night in 1992 it really was like layer upon layerwas being peeled from Peer Gynt. It was not an onionbeing peeled. A core was revealed, and that turned outto be pure puppet theatre. A Mr. Punch or a Pulcinellais hidden in Peer.1993 was a jubilee of Edvard Grieg who composedthe music for Peer Gynt.. This gave a reason for topuppet performances that put emphasis at the musicalpart of the productions. One was a co-production bythe freelance ensemble Teatret Rundt-Omkring andHordaland Teater in Bergen. The other was producedNordland Dukketeaterverksted in Northern Norway.Then it was time to adept Peer Gynt into children’sand young people’s theatre, using puppetry as toolof this aim. It happened at Riksteatret in 1997 and atNørregaards og Reiches Teater (a Danish free-lanceTheatre) in 1998.Examples of other dramas of Ibsen produced at theNordic puppet stage are reduced to two. In 1997Teater Fusentast produced their very free version of ADollshouse, called Nora – The Moving Picture Show.It is a “Panaopticon” performance – a mixture of peepshowtheatre and a manual cartoon. A Panopticon is avery limited place of work. The stage was 60 cms wideand 30 cms deep. Nora was transformed into a cutoutfigure of Pamela Anderson and Helmer was portrayedby a photo of Rowan Atkinson (Mr.Bean). The dramawas reduced to a 7-minute soap opera.The last performance to be mentioned is Hedda Gabler atOslo Nye Dukketeater in 1994. Oslo Nye Dukketeatretis the eldest institutional puppet theatre in Norway.They mostly do children’s performances, but this wasreally a new way of exposing the well routine ensembleand their stage. They managed in translating was oneof Ibsen’s modern dramas of the realistic-psychologicaltradition into the magical world of puppets. The mostcreators of this production changed the limitationsof puppets into a great potential expansion. Puppetscannot express complicated psychological processes,but they do express the essence of a character. Thisangle of approach resulted in the puppets more or lessbecoming a visual translation of what Ibsen do whenhe characterize his roles in text. The performance wasa great success and received prizes in both Norway andRussia (Helgesen 2006: 373).Literature:Baldwin 1993, Peter: Toy Theatres of the world.LondonGade 1971, Georg: Theatergeschichte im Spiegelder KinderTheater. KøbenhavnHelgesen 2003, Anne: Animasjonen figurteatretsvelsignelse og forbannelse. Norsk figurteaterhistorie.OsloHelgesen 2006, Anne: Ibsen og figurteatret.Figurteatret og Ibsen.Jæger 1988, Henrik: Henrik Ibsen 1828-1888. Etliterært livsbillede. KristianiaLie 1928, Erik: Erindringer fra et dikterhjem. OsloMosfjeld 1949, Oskar: Henrik Ibsen og Skien. Enbiografisk og litteraturpsykologisk studie. OsloStevenson 1972 (1884): A Penny Plain and TwopenceCoulored. London27
Page 1 and 2: Nordic UNIMA MagazineDenmark - Finl
Page 3 and 4: Report fromUNIMADenmark 2008:The Ch
Page 5 and 6: small stages while hiding in the de
Page 7 and 8: play so the rest of the performance
Page 9 and 10: conventional phenomena and objects,
Page 11 and 12: 3The population of Finland is a jus
Page 13 and 14: images:“The Little Match Seller
Page 15 and 16: The new wave of FinnishpuppetryComp
Page 17: Ishmael: The Finnish audience still
Page 22 and 23: 22are two complete floors, plus lof
Page 24 and 25: Many young adults will be given the
Page 28 and 29: The aim is to get lost28Katrine Mar
Page 30 and 31: 30secondly Stamsund is a place of r
Page 32 and 33: The century of the toddler32A small
Page 34 and 35: 34It can be measured in/by EEG-wave
Page 36 and 37: Swedish Puppet Theatre:36For a long
Page 38 and 39: this conclusion through studies of
Page 40: B-postReturadresse:UNIMA Norge / Fo

Nordic UNIMA Magazine

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?