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Author Topic: Walter Benjamin Puppet Show
lagatta
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posted 18 February 2003 12:04 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A Vermont puppet theatre has developed a show on Walter Benjamin, his ideas and travails...

http://www.aislesay.com/MA2-ONEWAY.html
AISLE SAY Vermont
http://www.sandglasstheater.org/news2001fall3.html

ONE WAY STREET
Conceived by Eric Bass
Directed by Roberto Salomon
Sandglass Theater
Putney, VT. / (603) 256-4445.
November 1-9, 2002


Reviewed by Chris Rohmann

Time was, puppet shows were for kids, or for the child in all of us -- at least that's been the conventional view, instilled by Punch and Judy and reinforced by the Muppets. In truth, for centuries, in all cultures, puppets have expressed very grownup ideas in very sophisticated ways. They are powerful reflections of a culture's deepest hopes and fears and dreams. Part of this power comes from the response a puppet arouses in us, a kind of wonder at looking at ourselves in miniature. Puppets are objects, but in the right hands, they become almost human.

Sandglass Theater of Putney, Vermont, an internationally respected company, is increasingly narrowing the divide between what we think of as "puppet shows" and human-scale theater. In their latest piece, "One-Way Street", they take that journey several impressive steps further. It's billed as an "evocation" of the German philosopher and social critic Walter Benjamin. Not a biographical narrative, rather it's a dreamlike sequence of images and vignettes reflecting themes from his writings and his life of exile and flight.

Benjamin was part of the so-called Frankfurt School of critical theorists in pre-war Germany, which included Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm. These unorthodox thinkers, most of whom were Jewish, applied a kind of humanist Marxism to a critique of social systems and modes of thought, envisioning a world of more authentic economic and personal relationships. Most of Benjamin's colleagues escaped the Nazis and came to America, but Benjamin was trapped at the French border and is thought to have committed suicide rather than fall into the hands of the Gestapo.

Although "One-Way Street" is about a writer, very few words are actually spoken. (Much of the silent action is accompanied by an evocative original score by Paul Dedell.) Occasionally Eric Bass, who portrays Benjamin -- both in himself and in the puppet he manipulates -- speaks a brief passage from Benjamin's work. Some of these passages reflect back on the relationship between puppet and human that Sandglass is constantly exploring. Like this one: "For a collector, ownership is the most intimate relationship one can have with objects. It's not that the objects are alive, but that they give life to the collector."

In "One-Way Street", the objects that give Benjamin life are books. Dave Regan's setting is piled with books -- gigantic, dusty volumes that a human being can barely lift. In this landscape of skewed perspectives, humans and puppets interact as equals, sometimes as equivalents. Bass, in a dark double-breasted suit, with a mustache and wire-rim spectacles, takes a shovel to the cover of one of these huge books, and unearths a two-foot puppet representing Benjamin -- in a double-breasted suit, mustached and bespectacled. The puppet, in turn, digs into the book and pulls out a miniature lighthouse -- symbolizing the beacon of knowledge and the illumination of the spirit.

Two other humans share the stage. Merrill Garbus is a workman in overalls, a nod to Benjamin's proletarian sympathies, and Ines Zeller Bass's sequined gown suggests a cabaret performer from Weimar Germany, in recognition of Benjamin's fascination with popular culture. There's also a flying Angel of History, represented by a quizzical mask trailing yards of ghostlike fabric -- and an ugly little hunchback, a figure from German folklore representing the unremitting bad luck that shadowed Benjamin's life. A giant pocket watch with a smashed-in face hangs over the set. The piece is deftly directed by Roberto Salomon and choreographed, in places, by Babs Case.

Benjamin's intellectual and physical travels are expressed in a whimsical series of scenes set in various European cities. One of the mammoth volumes onstage is a pop-up book whose pages fold out to become sidewalk cafés in Paris, Naples, Moscow, Berlin. His journey begins as a humorous, lighthearted jaunt, including some girly ogling at the Folies Bergères. But it becomes an increasingly agitated flight from a pair of ravenous dogs that attack the lighthouse and whose fanged visages are emblazoned on Nazi banners.

In the end, we see the puppet Benjamin struggling up a mountainside of books tilted at a steep angle, fleeing the Nazis and his demons of rotten luck, till he's backed against the precipice with no escape. This image bleeds into a film clip of mounds of wire-rimmed spectacles piled up at a concentration camp.

"One-Way Street" is the title of Benjamin's 1928 collection of fragmentary writings. In Sandglass Theater's dextrous hands, it's also a signpost to the man's life: a single-minded quest for knowledge and truth which defied the barbaric forces that ultimately destroyed him. As Walter Benjamin strove to expand the bounds of human understanding, "One-Way Street" inventively and insistently pushes back the borders of what we expect from puppet theater.


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
Performance Anxiety
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posted 18 February 2003 08:36 PM      Profile for Performance Anxiety        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Nice! Great to see powerful theatre in the making! Benjamin is a great topic too!


From: Outside of the box | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
BLAKE 3:16
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posted 18 February 2003 08:47 PM      Profile for BLAKE 3:16     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Truly weird -- hmmm... Is puppetry in the air? I did a puppet show today at school. The news featured Cypriot political puppet comedy on the weekend, which is making a revival.

Will they make a movie? I'd love to see Wallie on Sesame Street, maybe hanging out with Oscar or Snupalupugus.


From: Babylon, Ontario | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
Performance Anxiety
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posted 18 February 2003 08:51 PM      Profile for Performance Anxiety        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Puppetry is maikng a huge comeback. We have a famous pupeteer here in Cowtown and his name is Ronnie Burkett.

The cool thing about his shows is that he is as visible as his puppets!


From: Outside of the box | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
Dr. Mr. Ben
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posted 18 February 2003 09:00 PM      Profile for Dr. Mr. Ben   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I may be associating the name with the wrong writer, but wouldn't Benjamin be concerned about what this is doing to his aura?
From: Mechaslovakia | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
BLAKE 3:16
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posted 20 February 2003 12:03 AM      Profile for BLAKE 3:16     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Benjamin had a very mixed attitude towards "aura". He had once celebrated a certain Romantic authenticity of self - I think he was somwthing of an existentialist - but also celebrated relatively democratic forms of communication - radio, prints, heatre, magazines, and other mass media.
From: Babylon, Ontario | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
Dr. Mr. Ben
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posted 20 February 2003 01:28 AM      Profile for Dr. Mr. Ben   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Okay. I'd read a piece about the mass reproduction of artwork destroying aura in a social theory class. But, unfortunately, we didn't have time to study a lot of the larger context. Thanks, Blake.
From: Mechaslovakia | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 20 February 2003 08:27 AM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I wrote to the troupe wondering whether they would be bringing the show to Montreal - Vermont isn't far from here - and they responded asking me if I knew someone who could book it. I may very well, we'll see.

But Blake, who should play Wallie B in the film version?


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
BLAKE 3:16
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posted 21 February 2003 03:56 PM      Profile for BLAKE 3:16     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
But Blake, who should play Wallie B in the film version?


Well it depends on the national context I suppose, but I'd say anyone except Gerard Depardieu -- man is that guy tiresome. Maybe Robin Williams since he's gotten all creepy and horrific lately. Who else? Ice Cube? Kate Winslet? Maybe Nick Cave.

Apologies for bashing the only non-Anglophone actor above. What about the odd hitman guy with the dogs in Amores Perrones?

Hey wait a minute, it should be a puppet! With my dear friend I'm about to visit who is the director of Canada Spermbank of Satan I've talked for sometime about making a movie called The Body of Herbert Marcuse, in whihc Marcuse would be some kind of mummified person-thing appearing at various locales. So maybe a mummy for Wally?!

[ 21 February 2003: Message edited by: BLAKE 3:16 ]


From: Babylon, Ontario | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 21 February 2003 06:24 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Poor Wally hasn't got a mummy - believe he was buried in a common grave.

However there is a lovely, poignant monument at the cemetery at Port-Bou, to Walter B and all desperate refugees from fascism.

On this upbeat topic, you do know that the Nazis also posthumously "disappeared" Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibknecht?


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged

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