Suomen Unima ry:n lehti - Unima.nu

Nukketeatteri 2/2010
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with her sister Märtha, also a kindergarten
teacher in Helsinki. They both got acquainted
with puppet theatre very early in their
childhood at home, where their mother used
puppetry as means of children´s education.
Bärbi Luther continued her career as a puppeteer
for more than 60 years, until 1975 with
her performance Per och Brita. It told about a
brother and her sister, who wonder in a forest
trying to find their way back home.
Bärbi Luther´s shadow theatre was pedagogical
and poetic, scenes were slow and beautiful.
The scenery was made of colored silk paper
according to the color schemes of Goethe
used in the Steiner pedagogics. Bärbi Luther
played puppet theatre also in children´s hospitals,
where she worked as an occupational
therapist, the very first one in Finland.
In her repertory there was also a Christmas
Legend ”Det Glada Budskapet” (The Message
of Joy), which was made in the 1920ies.
The two sisters performed the show until mid
1970ies, when they were retired and donated
the whole performance to their goddaughter
Frida Packalén (born in 1928). She continued
performing the Christmas Legend together
with her husband in the Eastern Nyland
Province until the late 1990ies. She has been
a school teacher using the means of puppetry
at her work with children and taught also
shadow theatre technics to adults in various
courses.
The first art historian
depicting puppetry
The Finland-Swedish art historian Yrjö Hirn
(1870 – 1952) wrote a book Barnlek: några kapitler
om visor, danser och små teatrar (On
children´s games, songs, dances and small
theatres). It was published in 1916.Hirn dealt
with children’s games from an aesthetic
and cultural-historical perspective. He studied
the artistic expression of high culture
but also popular art expressions and the art
forms of primitive peoples. Hirn demonstrates
the great breadth of puppet theatre as
a phenomenon. Following the historical survey,
Hirn depicts the various techniques of
puppet manipulation using them to analyse
puppet theatre’s aesthetic effects. These are
to do with the magical/poetical, the comic,
the visual/stylized and the equilibristic. Yrjö
Hirn’s eye-witness descriptions of contemporary
puppet theatre performances in the end
of 19th century have a value all of its own as
historic sources for an art form with few such
references. Hirns interest in puppet theatre
was perfectly genuine and his broad theoretical
knowledge as a professor of aesthetics,
combined with his personal enthusiasm
for the subject, makes Barnlek an altogether
unusual work where the aesthetic of puppet
theatre is concerned.
Early amateur
puppeteers
In the 1920s and 30s quite many kindergarten
Frida Packalén and the shadow theater of Bärbi Luther
teachers used puppetry in their work as pedagogical
means, for instance Ms. Olly Donner
at Kirkniemi orphanage and school in Lohja.
She and her colleagues made own glove
puppets: kasper and harlequin, animals, angels
and other Christmas story figures. 13 of
these puppets are now at Helsinki City Museum.
In Vyborg, next to the Russian border, Harriet
(1891 - 1965) and Nikolai (1871 - 1956)
Schmakoff started making amateur puppetry
and performed shows in family circles, charity
events and other occasions. They had been
inspired by the German puppetry, especially
Harro Siegels performances and his unique
style. The Schmakoff´s moved to Espoo, next
to Helsinki after the War, when Soviet Union
took Vyborg, and continued playing marionette
shows, which contained of humoresques,
musical etydes and scenes of e.g. The Barber
of Sevilla
The arias and songs were sung by the famous
Ms. Korniloff accompanied by pianist Berg. In
1950, when the Schmakoff couple had seen
the famous French puppeteer Jacques Chesnais
visiting Helsinki, they gave a few public
performances in Koitto Cultural House. After
that they continued as occasional amateurs
until 1958, when they donated five of their
puppets to The Helsinki City Museum.
Break-through
in the 1950s
After World War II puppet theatres all over
Europe sought and found a new language and
style. The Finnish puppetry however was for
a long time in a lull with a few amateur performers.
Two noteworthy companies from abroad visited
Finland: in 1949 French puppeteer
Jacques Chesnais and in 1950 Russian Sergei
Obraztsov. They inspired enthusiasm for
puppetry in Finland and Finnish puppeteers
began presenting public performances as professional
companies
The final artistic and international break of
Finnish puppetry came in the 1950s with Mona
Leo´s lyrical performances in her Helsingin
Nukketeatteri - Helsingfors Dockteater (Helsinki
Puppet Theatre), which also visited foreign
festivals.
Mme Mona Leo (1903-1986), the Grand Lady
of Finnish puppet theatre, started her own
puppetry activities in 1951. Her modern and
poetic approach within Helsinfors Dockteater
- Helsingin Nukketeatteri (Helsinki Puppet
Theatre) was remarkable and had a strong
influence on all other puppeteers from the
1950s until the 70s. She brought the Finnish
puppet theatre also to an international audience
when touring around Europe.
Mona Leo concentrated on creating her own
puppet theatre, which was small in scale and
lyrical, beautiful and mysterious. Her bilingual
puppet theatre performed fairy tales
and stories for children in kindergartens, hospitals
and charity events. She was the first
puppeteer (with her assistant Vivi-Ann Sjögren,
a professional drama actress) in 1955,
who also performed at the very new Finnish
Television, where she continued doing
puppetry shows until 1964.
Mona Leo was mainly a solo performer, but
several assistants worked with her as assistant
puppeteers, seemstresses, props and set
designers. One of the assistants was Marianne
Kinberg, who later on worked with several
Finnish puppeteers and made puppet theatre
also in Sweden.
Mona Leo was highly appreciated as an artist
throughout the world and became the
Honorary Member of International Unima in
1976. She was also a board member of The
Nordic Puppetry Association since 1966. Mona
Leo was the first Finnish professional
puppeteer totally dedicated to the art and
its promoting. She continued her career officially
until 1968, but after that she gave
private performances in Siuntio and Tammisaari
(Western Nyland), where she lived her
last years.