Language Barriers - Beyond words

Glyn Edwards looks at how international puppetry can work to build audiences in the UK.

Fancy seeing Don Juan in Slovak, at a village hall in Shropshire? How about a fairy tale performed in Russian, at the Midlands Arts Centre (mac) in Birmingham? Or an ecologically themed puppet show in Turkish, performed at Newhampton Arts Centre in Wolverhampton? The Dynamics 07 International Puppetry Festival certainly lived up to its name by hosting a number of sell-out shows performed by puppet companies from around the world, telling stories in their native language. There is a world-wide network of puppetry festivals in which British companies regularly perform, but in the past there have rarely been opportunities to bring this type of work to Britain. Dynamics 07 was the largest event of its kind ever held in England with over 100 performances in 30 places over 30 days, reflecting a growing interest in puppetry at home.

Historical perspective

Puppetry has a rich performance history and is an artform that can cross language barriers remarkably easily. It is essentially a visual artform whereby language presents few problems. Many globe-travelling puppet companies have a wealth of experience in making their art comprehensible wherever they perform. English touring marionette companies were world leaders in the Victorian era so much so that overseas companies might give themselves English sounding names, just as English ballet dancers would give themselves Russian sounding ones but this was all brought to an end by the outbreak of World War One. And whilst British puppet theatre has never gone away, its fortunes varied for the remainder of the 20th Century. For instance, did you know that one of George Bernard Shaws final works was a play for puppets at the Malvern Festival, and cult TV show Spitting Image was in fact continuing a long tradition of using knockabout puppetry to make savage political comment? Clearly puppetry is not only about day-glo dolly-waggling at kids discos. The dawn of the 21st Century finds puppet theatre in fine fettle with a wide range of work pushing the artform forward and occasionally sideways into parallel territory, with puppetry in the UK once more renewing and refreshing itself as a result of international collaboration and the exchanging of ideas.

Universal themes

As well as supplying a form of entertainment that can still hold a crowd in a busy 21st Century High Street, puppetry has a long pedigree in many cultures around the world and can deal with the universal themes common to all drama. At Dynamics 07 Ciroka, one of Hungarys most influential puppet theatre companies, incorporated puppetry, digital animation, mime dance and live music in their production of The girl in a blue dress, a playful exploration of Picassos celebrated painting, Child with a dove. From Moscow Tut-I-Tam (Here & There) brought their award-winning version of the classic Russian tale of The little hunchback horse using beautiful ceramic figures which were also musical instruments. The Cengiz Ozek Shadow Theatre showed Mr. Punchs Turkish relative, Karagoz, in a play with a green message using shadow puppet techniques three hundred years old, whilst Anton Anderle from a dynasty of Slovak puppeteers brought marionette skills perfected by his family through the generations. All were enjoyed enormously by their audiences, which comprised both the general public and the UK puppeteers who came to network and socialise with their overseas peers.

A consortium approach

Dynamics 07 followed a pilot event held in 2005 as a partnership between PuppetLink, mac, and Puppeteers UK. This three-way partnership between a venue, a consortium of regional puppet companies and national puppetry organisations, demonstrated the potential for engaging with a wide-ranging audience and increasing the number of partner venues across the Midlands, ranging from Warwick Arts Centre to the Museum of Cannock Chase not to mention Snailbeach Village Hall in Shropshire and the myriad local settings of the rural touring networks.

PuppetLink itself is a consortium of regional small-scale puppet companies who banded together a decade ago to make joint funding applications, to promote and to lobby for their artform regionally and (in the words of one director) to punch significantly above their weight. Being practitioners themselves they brought a passion and a commitment to their engagement both with the funding system, and to the arts providers on what they saw as their patch. A modest amount of year-on-year project funding was available from a West Midlands Arts funding scheme called Promoters and Presenters, complemented by some serious encouragement, advice and enthusiasm from a succession of Arts Council England artform officers. This led to numerous links and partnerships being made with district and county council arts services, museums, libraries and schools, and a variety of other venues, and provided the foundation upon which a region-wide festival could subsequently be built. Some significant new partners were added to the existing little black book of contacts who could commit support to the project. The National Rural Touring Forum (with assistance from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation) created a puppet link with all four of the regions rural touring circuits in order to bring over Anton Anderles company (complete with that curtain raiser of Don Juan in their native Slovak). This was soon followed by requests from local promoters for more programming from the Festival portfolio. Following this the Festival of Muslim Cultures became a partner, allowing Dynamics 07 to widen its horizons and to look beyond the ranks of artists from the European Union or the former Soviet bloc with its rich puppet theatre legacy.

Dynamics 07 showed that the language of puppetry whether in its colourful street theatre form or its more subtle theatrical tones is still able to transcend national languages and speak directly to audiences, just as it has done across the globe for centuries. Looking ahead, PuppetLink is already starting to line up new partners from around the world who want to be a part of the next festival, and perhaps many more after that.