Low DownThis Polish company creates a whole world of experience within a cuboid frame of metal, set out with hard wooden-topped metal tables and soft rag puppets. Three actor-puppeteers emerge from the audience, invade the performance space, create a four-dimensional performance, then exit, to return to their starting positions.
In this performance, different scenes are enacted, with the puppets being manipulated by up to three actor-puppeteers, sometimes using additional props, the most effective being a rope strung across the front of the performance area, immediately opening up a symbolic play on the string as the connecting link between puppet and puppeteer, while giving it a new twist (literally) at the end of the scene. Most of the puppets are free-standing, around 1/3 life size. One smaller-scale puppet and one strung puppet (again innovatively handled) add an important element of variety to the show. ReviewSo what’s so special about this performance, in which three actor-puppeteers spend an hour moving bits of stuffed cloth shaped into humanoid forms about? It is not so much what happens on stage, within the frame, as the effect it has on the world outside, or rather the individual worlds of the people watching as a result of how they do what they do. This is something which can only be experienced first hand. Is the space they’ve created a classroom, a nursery, a gymnasium, or a torture chamber? It is never clear. And this is part of what makes this show work so well. It could be all or none of the above. The solidity of the space acquires fluidity and starts to create its own independent existence as a story in the audience’s minds. The effect is most marked when the performance area and what’s going on within it is taken in as a whole, where equal attention is given to the puppets, the back wall, the floor, the tables and the shadows cast upon them by the lights and most importantly the actor-puppeteers, I use the term actor-puppeteers intentionally for this company challenges the traditional role of the puppeteer as a secondary presence in relation to the puppet. Here, the actor-puppeteers appear more or less equal to the puppets in terms of stage presence. It is the qualities of the different relationships they portray and the resultant actions which make this show so compelling. One example of a device which makes this piece of theatre work so well in terms of creative expression is that the actor-puppeteers are silent, but the puppets have no mouths. They are totally dependent on the actor-puppeteers for their self-expression. and this makes the actions of the actor-puppeteers towards the puppets all the more poignant and says a lot about humanity, inhumanity, dependence, responsibility and trust in relationships. Another is the pounding yet linear soundtrack used, which frames the action and scenes so clearly. I had two reservations about the show – one that the choreography was inconsistent in places – in the context of the rest of the show. This could have been slicker as some of the movements departed enough from lifelike movements to weaken the illusion slightly, although it was not long before the precision of movement was reinstated. The other was that because the puppets were almost identical, the tables similar, and the frame, lighting and black box so minimal, the show lacked sufficient variety at times to effect an easy trans-dimensional shift for the audience. This is not a show for the faint hearted. It is intense and demands a certain amount of openness from its audience. It is certainly not light entertainment, but for those seeking compelling, moving theatre, it is a show to include on the list, for its sheer innovative and high quality action and its ability to reach deep within the fourth dimension of the psyche to penetrating effect.
Reviewed by Leon Conrad 11 August 2008 Website : |
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