Toy theatre

des Essarts Emmanuel

Oil painting of Alphonse Martainville (1777-1830) by Riesener

Martainville Alphonse

Lesage Alain-René

La Grille (Dominique de Normandin, aka Sieur de La Grille)

Skirted hobby horse

While various forms of collaboration between puppeteers and writers have developed in France (especially since the 1980s-1990s), the phenomenon hasn't been as widespread in Italy, where many puppeteers still write the texts for their shows. From the 1970s to the present day, with artists of different generations and from different regions of Italy (Guido Ceronetti, Franco Scaldati, Gigio Brunello, Gyula Molnár, Maurizio Bercini and Marina Allegri, Patrizio Dall'Argine, Irene Vecchia, Fabiana Iacozzilli, Marta Cuscunà...), the figure of the polyvalent puppeteer, who handles different aspects of the show, is still well established. This situation is probably due both to historical and cultural reasons (the inheritance of a family structure, training in the workshops of other puppeteers given the absence of dedicated training schools, the permanence of different puppetry traditions at regional level...), and to economic reasons (lack of financial resources...), which do not favour collaborations between puppeteers and writers. However regrettable, the Italian situation is characterized by two enriching phenomena: the preservation and enhancement of a collective memory and craft know-how; and a creative impetus that is the source of new inventions which, while drawing inspiration from tradition, revisit it, question it and use it freely. And it's probably thanks to this innovative spirit born of tradition that some of the pieces by the above-mentioned artists have subsequently found their way into print. How do these phenomena manifest themselves in the texts? What are their dramaturgical implications? In several plays by Italian puppeteers, "post-traditional" forms are at work, not in the sense of a more or less imminent disappearance of the traditions themselves, but rather a work on and from them.

21 - Session 5: 'Post-traditional' forms: a hypothesis on contemporary productions by Italian puppeteers

Thanks to a new type of telescope that brought the Moon at one metre, the astronomer Télescopos and his servant Babylas, the watchman of the Observatory of Monaco, made a breakthrough; they end up on the Moon and are unable to leave. They meet strange and fantastic people, either allegorical or taken from recent events. As the Moon is waning, the residents have less and less space and want to go back to Earth. Télescopos, Babylas’s master, builds a new telescope to accomplish that. The play ends with a cellist reciting verses as payment for the journey back to Earth.

Lemercier de Neuville Louis

Principality of Monaco

Monte Carlo

Revue fantaisiste en 3 actes

As-tu vu la lune, mon gas ?

Giraud Giovanni

April Fools' Day

Childhood

Couch

Electricity

Enchanted forest

Fashion victim

Florence

Island

Pickle

Pigtail

Poetry

Religion

Savage

Scientific experimentation

Sexuality

Sida

Street criers

Woman battered and kidnapped

Biblioteca comunale dell'archiginnasio

Huma-Num

IdRef

Isidore

Jagiellonian Library

Münchner Stadtmuseum

Musée de la Vie Wallonne

Musée des Arts de la Marionnette - Gadagne

Nakala

Pôle International de la Marionnette – Jacques Félix

Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

Université Haute Alsace

The play takes place on a island of dreams. Mère-Grand learns that Myrrhine has distanced herself from her five sisters to dream on her own by the sea. She worries about it, as this daydreaming can only carry the young woman off towards reality. Myrrhine confirms that the “bandeau d’illusion” (the blindfold of illusion) has indeed been lifted from her eyes, and that she no longer believes in fairytales, only in love: she loves the Chevalier Tavonin (Knight Tavonin) and believes that she is loved by him too. The Knight appears on a small boat with Aurore, his new lover, and rejects Myrrhine. In her despair, she calls on the Génie des Arbres (the Genie of the Trees) and the Fée des Mousses (the Moss Fairy), but they are powerless—they cannot console her now that she has lost her illusions. Myrrhine kills herself by jumping into the sea. Mère-Grand blames her death on the Knight, but he replies saying that he is Love incarnated and that all of Myrrhine’s sisters will suffer the same fate, as their eyes will eventually be opened too.

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