The puppet is not only a formal creation, a theatre language, or an art object: it is also a figure which, in almost all cultures, has embodied questions on the origin of life and death, on the relation between the visible and the invisible, and the relation between the spirit and the matter.
Rainer Maria Rilke considers the puppet not as an imitation of mankind, but as a model for it: he argues that the human being must learn to become a puppet, giving up any pretension to be the centre of the world, and becoming “thing”.
Replacement of humans with artificial puppets:
The idea of replacing the live actor with an artificial one was at the core of the deep changes in theatre theories…
In his essay “The Actor and the Übermarionnette” (1907), Craig asserts that actors must disappear and puppets must take their place, not as mere dolls, but as signs of a spiritual dimension which would be expressed in the theatre. Antonin Artaud follows a similar idea when he suggests, in The Theatre and its Double (1938), that a giant could provoke absolute fear for the audience.
The body of the marionette has a freedom of movement which sublimates the human dream of flying and celebrates a victory over the laws of gravity which limit the human body.
The glove puppet, on the other hand, has often been seen as the embodiment of the rough matter, deprived of intelligence or volition, and, consequently, as an object which can be manipulated at will by an invisible demiurge
Mary Shelley envisioned a creature made of heterogeneous elements and linking the living and the dead. With contemporary organ transplants or the commonplace use of cosmetic and medical prostheses, this situation has, just like signs of ageing, been integrated into our ideas of biological changes or body modifications.
Digital Puppet, Tamagotchi
This tends to be confirmed today by the impressive abilities of the latest generation of robots. Among the virtual pets, the Tamagotchi is an example of this idea: the hand-held digital “pet” introduced in 1996 by Bandai in Japan (76 million sold by 2010). This creature leads a “normal” life provided its manipulator takes care of it, feeds it, and keeps it entertained. Those surprising creatures are programmed to have behaviour as realistic as possible, and show that from the myth to reality, there is only one small step which could soon be taken.
Puppet therapy
It appears that the building of a puppet is especially useful to help a patient come out of his/her sense of isolation – no matter if this isolation is intended, is unconscious or repressed. The therapist must refrain from giving aesthetic guidelines in the making of a puppet and instead let the patients do as she/he wishes. This approach can help toward patients recovering their identities. In this instance, the fashioning of a head is an important step in the therapeutic process, and so is the naming of the puppet, which is given an identity.
Dance
Still for the Ballets Russes, Picasso created the costumes for their 1917 production of Parade, dressing the actors portraying the characters of the Managers in Cubist figures that inhibited their movement, the actors only able to move their lower joints Mummification on the Dance Floor
Dada:
The avant-garde dance variation of Dada is singular. At the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich (birthplace and meeting space of the 1916 Dada movement), if you believe Hugo Ball, “superhuman” masks by Marcel Janco led to the creation of strange figures, using unlikely objects put into motion in a “tragic-absurd dance”. The techniques of deformation of the actor’s body were not only related to the Dadaist attitude of denouncing an alienating world, but also – in the depersonalization of the actor and the dissolution of the “self” – to the influence of abstraction and expressionism. Hugo Ball’s costume enclosed the legs in a blue cardboard cylinder similar to an obelisk, while the upper body was wrapped in a huge papier-mâché collar attached to the neck so that the arm movements produced the effect of wings. The head was crowned by a blue-striped “shaman” top hat.
The dancer works on the idea of fictitious organism, “imaginary real body,” that opens up new possibilities creating a dimension more real than reality, by means of costumes that bind movement, suspended bodies and the utilization of vertical space.