Toy theatre

Portrait of the Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni

Ottoboni Pietro

Acciaiuoli Filippo (aka Gran Burattinajo)

Feliciano-Giret Frédéric

Aubert Marion

Drexler Franz

Body shadows

Arlecchino, a shopkeeper from Bergamo, travels to Venice to marry Angiola, Pantalone’s daughter. During the journey, as he is sleeping in a shed, he is robbed and caught in a fire. He loses both the money and the paperwork needed for the wedding. Pantalone discusses with Tartaglia who asks him if his son Florindo could marry Angiola, but Pantalone says that she is already betrothed to Arlecchino. Tartaglia repeats this to Florindo, who is still determined to marry Angiola. He asks Faccanapa for help. Faccanapa intercepts Arlecchino and, using various ploys, diverts him from Pantalone’s and Angiola’s house. He is first awarded the token of recognition that was meant for Pantalone, then, he shows Arlecchino the asylum and says that he has to go there; he then makes him believe that his betrothed is an ill beggar; he then seizes Arlecchino’s ring so as to sell it and tells him that, in order to get the money, he has to go to the prison. Finally, he has him arrested for possessing a weapon, which was hidden in his bag by Faccanapa, and he makes him bribe the guards to be freed. To pull it all off, Faccapana introduces himself under a new name every time, and tells Arlecchino that, even though he looks like the wrongdoer who has just tricked him, he is just someone who wants to help him. Arlecchino believes him every time. As all of this happens, Florindo convinces Pantalone that he is Arlecchino, and marries Angiola. In the end, Faccanapa puts Arlecchino in a bag to get rid of him once and for all. However, Pantalone realises that something is wrong, and a free Arlecchino tells his version of the story. Florindo and Faccanapa explain that they did all of this to defend the love between Angiola and Florindo. Pantalone decides to solve the problem, and make Arlecchino marry his daughter’s servant, Colombina, with whom Faccanapa is in love; Florindo will find him another wife.

Italy

Le disgrazie de Arlechin, ed. Chiopris.

Le disgrazie de Arlechin

The cohabitation of animated and inanimate figures, which more or less belongs to a parabolical form, refers to multiple poetics and forms, to different heritages. It also moves into various spaces: diurnal, mostly nocturnal, or even mental. If the contemporary drama, rooted in the silent vocation of language, approaches the inanimate figure, the playwrights being familiar with puppetry or not, it is because something in this figure both maintains and deflects the voice and the look. But, here, the silent eye is dramatized. The inanimate figure, just as the figure of the child or the animal, reminds us that writing is where an essential experience takes place, that of staring speechless at the image.

The cohabitation of animated and inanimate figures in playwriting : a reply to the silent vocation of language?

Bad news

Champagne

Citation

Coat of arms

Crusades

Drinking

Fever

French Revolution

Hairdresser

Homeless

Ignorance

Indignation

Perlike

Procrastination

Ransom

Recruit

Sailor

Stick

Sword

Time

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

Kasperl meets a communist with a red flag. The latter tries to win him over to his cause, but Kasperl, who at first thinks the communist is a bullfighter with a muleta, answers him on every point with a good-natured naivety: he thus manages to unmask the egoism of the other man, who, having run out of arguments, leaves, threatening Kasperl that he will be the first to be lynched at the next attempted putsch.

Puppet and marionette theatre repertoires

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