Mendus, Clive. The art of manipulation.
In: Puppetry into performance - a user's guide.
The article is written by Clive Mendus, who works with the Theatre de Complicite, and has as a main influence his teacher Jacques Lecoq. In the article, the author talks about his experience in learning and making theatre, always referring to his influences and Lecoq’s methods.
I find this article useful for puppeteers because it brings a perspective of a theater actor about puppetry – and not a specific puppeteer about his job – and how it is important for an actor to have the skill of manipulate a puppet. Puppetry and theatre are strongly connected, after all puppeteering is a way of making theatre.
The author says that, as actors and performers, they seek to reconnect with qualities of the child behavior like “openness, responsiveness, playfulness, imagination etc”. He says that a child plays with the facing reality to better understand their own place in life, and that is something to be used in puppetry. He also brings the relationship between masks and puppets. He says that when an actor uses a mask he has to act with much more intensity than when he doesn’t uses. What happens is an extension of the quality of the action combined with an economy of the movement.
So, I believe that the article is useful because it brings up references, experiences and comments about the acting with puppets by actors, how this way of acting pushes the actor to a higher quality of performance, and how the ability of giving life to an object is a high skill for a performer.
The article is written by Clive Mendus, who works with the Theatre de Complicite, and has as a main influence his teacher Jacques Lecoq. In the article, the author talks about his experience in learning and making theatre, always referring to his influences and Lecoq’s methods.
I find this article useful for puppeteers because it brings a perspective of a theater actor about puppetry – and not a specific puppeteer about his job – and how it is important for an actor to have the skill of manipulate a puppet. Puppetry and theatre are strongly connected, after all puppeteering is a way of making theatre.
The author says that, as actors and performers, they seek to reconnect with qualities of the child behavior like “openness, responsiveness, playfulness, imagination etc”. He says that a child plays with the facing reality to better understand their own place in life, and that is something to be used in puppetry. He also brings the relationship between masks and puppets. He says that when an actor uses a mask he has to act with much more intensity than when he doesn’t uses. What happens is an extension of the quality of the action combined with an economy of the movement.
So, I believe that the article is useful because it brings up references, experiences and comments about the acting with puppets by actors, how this way of acting pushes the actor to a higher quality of performance, and how the ability of giving life to an object is a high skill for a performer.
The image for this post is from Complicite's recent production of "A Disappearing Number" (it is currently touring in Sydney).
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