© Christophe Loiseau et Matt Jackson pour PuppetPlays.
PuppetPlays is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement 835193.
VERSION FRANÇAISE
Literary writing for puppets and marionettes in Western Europe (17th – 21st centuries)
1st international PuppetPlays conference, Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, Montpellier, 14-16 octobre 2021.
PROGRAMME / PROGRAMME
JEUDI 14 OCTOBRE 2021 / Thursday, 14 October 2021
Ouverture officielle / Official opening (09:00 – 09:45)
09:00 – Accueil / Welcome coffee.
09:15 – Sarah Hatchuel, Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (Vices-présidentes du Conseil scientifique / Vice-Presidents of the Scientific Council, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) : Discours de bienvenue / Welcome speech
09:45 - KEYNOTE 1 :
Didier Plassard (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) : La marionnette et l’auteur : pour une lecture des « pièces échappées du feu »
10:15 – 10:30 : Pause / Coffee break
SESSION 1 (10:30 – 13:00)
Présidence / Chair : Corinne Saminadayar-Perrin (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3)
10:30 - Jöel Huthwohl (Bibliothèque nationale de France) : Lemercier de Neuville, de la bohème littéraire aux pièces pour marionnettes
10:50 - Marc Martinez (Université de Rouen) : Satire et théâtralité dans les spectacles de marionnette de Henry Fielding et Samuel Foote
11:10 - Carole Guidicelli (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) : Le répertoire pour marionettes à gaine de Louis Edmond Duranty, entre virtuosité instrumentale et sophistication dramaturgique
11:30 – 11:45 Discussion / Question time
11:45 – 12:00 Pause / Comfort Break
12:00 Marine Wisniewski (Université Lyon 2) : Les marionnettes de Maurice Sand à Nohant : un répertoire sous influences ? [ZOOM]
12:20 Francesca Cecconi (Università di Verona) : Scherzi Comici by Giovanni Battista Zannoni. Three puppet comedies from the early 19th century
12:40 – 13:00: Discussion / Question time
13:00-14:00 . Pause-déjeuner / Lunch break
SESSION 2 (14:00 – 17:00)
Présidence / Chair : Joël Huthwohl (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
14:00 Cristina Grazioli (Università di Padova) : États de présence : acteurs, marionnettes à fil, marionnettes à gaine sur les scènes de Siepe a nordovest de Massimo Bontempelli
14:20 Hana Ribi (Zurich) : Themes and Authors from the 1920s and 1930s at the Marionettentheater (1918–1936) in Zurich
14:40 Catarina Firmo (Universidade de Lisboa) : Métamorphose et utopie. Le corps marionnettique chez Almada Negreiros
15:00 – 15:15 Discussion / Question time
15:15 – 15:30 Pause / Coffee Break
15:30-16:00 Rencontre avec Luis Vieira et Rute Ribeiro (Compagnie A Tarumba, Lisbonne) / Meeting with Luis Vieira et Rute Ribeiro (A Tarumba, Lisbonne).
16:00 – 18:00 Le point de vue des auteurs / Writers’ point of view : Hervé Blutsch, Jean Cagnard, Catherine Zambon. Modératrices / Moderators : Carole Guidicelli, Julie Sermon.
20:00 – Spectacle / Show : Alors carcasse – Texte/ Text by Mariette Navarro. Mise en scène / Stage direction : Bérangère Vantusso (Théâtre La Vignette)
VENDREDI 15 OCTOBRE 2021 / Friday, 15 October 2021
09:00 Accueil / Welcome coffee
09:30 - KEYNOTE 2 :
Joseph Danan (Université Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle) : Comment (et pourquoi) je n’ai pas (encore) écrit pour la marionnette
10:00 – 10:15 Pause / Coffee break
SESSION 3 (10:15 – 13:00)
Présidence / Chair : Julie Sermon (Université Lyon 2)
10:15 Mascha Erbelding (Puppentheatersammlung, Münchner Stadtmuseum) : From "Kleines Spiel" (Small play) to big stage : the influence of puppet theater on Tankred Dorst’s plays
10:35 Francesca di Fazio (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) : La mémoire de la marionnette : des incursions de personnages traditionnels dans des écritures contemporaines
10:55 Christine Zurbach (Universidade de Évora) : Les pièces pour marionnettes de l’écrivaine et poétesse Regina Guimarães
11:15 – 11:30 Discussion / Question time
11:30 -11:45 Pause / Comfort break
11:45 Pénélope Dechaufour (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) : Kossi Efoui : écrire « dans » le théâtre des marionnettes et avec les marionnettistes, une dramaturgie affranchie
12:05 Adolfo Ayuso Roy (Universidade de Zaragoza) : La marionnettisation chez les dramaturges espagnols du XXe siècle. Le cas de Francisco Nieva (1927-2016)
12:25 Jaume Lloret (Universidad de Alicante) : La création littéraire pour marionnettes des écrivains valenciens contemporains
12:45 – 13:00 Discussion / Question time
13:00 – 14:00 Pause-déjeuner / Lunch break
SESSION 4 (14:00 – 17:00)
Présidence / Chair : Florence March (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3)
14:00-14:30 Paul Robert (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) : Présentation de la base de données PuppetPlays / Presentation of the PuppetPlays database
14:30 Daniel Yabut (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) : ‘j dragon in Fostus’. Puppets in English early modern plays beyond Bartholomew Fair
14:50 Carlos Gontijo Rosa (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo) : Qualities of a dramaturgy that dialogues with its audience. António José da Silva and the theatre of his time [ZOOM]
15:10 Françoise Rubellin (Université de Nantes) : Pratiques et singularités des trois auteurs majeurs de pièces pour marionnettes à Paris (1700-1750)
15:30 – 15:45 Discussion / Question time
15:45 – 16:00 Pause / Comfort break
16:00 Hélène Beauchamp (Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès) : Quand « écrire pour » les marionnettes, c’est « écrire contre ». Réflexions à partir de l’exemple du répertoire révolutionnaire en Espagne dans les années 1930
16:20 Cécile Bassuel Lobera (Montpellier) : Federico García Lorca et la marionnette. Aux sources d’une nouvelle poétique théâtrale
16:40 – 17:00 Discussion / Question time
18:00 Labo expérimental avec la compagnie A Tarumba (Portugal) / A Tarumba Experimental Lab (Studio, Théâtre La Vignette, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3)
19:15 Spectacle / Show : Alors carcasse – Texte/ Text by Mariette Navarro. Mise en scène / Stage direction : Bérangère Vantusso (Théâtre La Vignette)
20:30 Dîner / Dinner
SAMEDI 16 OCTOBRE / Saturday, 16 October 2021
09:00 Accueil / Welcome coffee
09:30 - KEYNOTE 3 :
Bérangère Vantusso (Cie Trois-Six-Trente / Studio-Théâtre, Ivry-sur-Seine) : L’Œuf et la Poule - les textes au cœur des créations de la compagnie Trois-6ix-trente
10:00 – 10:15 Pause / Coffee break
SESSION 5 (10:15 – 12:35)
Présidence / Chair : Cristina Grazioli (Università di Padova)
10:15 Lars Rebehn (Puppentheatersammlung Dresden) : Poets of the puppet booth. Johann Georg Geisselbrecht and the beginnings of literary puppetry in the German-speaking area
10:35 Sara Maddalena (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) : La marionnette, protagoniste des textes d’auteurs dramatiques italiens de la fin du 19e siècle : raisons et spécificités
10:55 Jean Boutan (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) : La barbarie et l’enfance : les deux sources de l’écriture pour marionnettes chez Franz von Pocci
11:15 – 11:30 Discussion / Question time
11:30 Sandrine Le Pors (Université d’Artois) : La cohabitation des figures animées et inanimées dans les écritures . une réponse du drame contemporain à la vocation muette du langage ?
11:50 Manuela Mohr (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) : Poupées, automates, figures de cire : l’écriture pour et par les marionnettes à travers l’œuvre hoffmannienne chez M. Sand, J. Barbier et G. Ribemont-Dessaignes
12:10 Émilie Combes (Université Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle) : La marionnettisation dramaturgique chez Ghelderode et Valle-Inclán, mode de représentation de l’humain
12:30 – 12:45 Discussion / Question time
12:45 – 13:45 Pause déjeuner / Lunch pause
SESSION 6 (13:45 – 17:00)
Présidence / Chair : Didier Plassard (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3)
13:45 Matthew Isaac Cohen (University of Glasgow / University of Connecticut ) : The First Toy Theatre Revival. Literary Plays for Paper Figures (1884-1962) [ZOOM]
14:05 Tina Bicat (St Mary’s University, London) : On the differing ways scripts are created for puppet performance (practise as research presentation
14:25 Yanna Kor (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) : Les revues d’actualité avec marionnettes : une pratique littéraire et théâtrale à part entière ?
14:45 – 15:00 Discussion / Question time
15:00 – 15:15 Pause /Coffee break
15:15 Gerd Taube (Goethe Universität – Frankfurt am Main) : Writing puppet plays for ensembles. Puppetry drama in the GDR
15:35 Markus Nölp (ENSICAEN) : Mises en scène d’un imaginaire sous-marin. Du jeu pour marionnettes Mini-drame sous l’eau de Harro Siegel (Dramolett unter Wasser, production télévisée de 1961) à la pièce radiophonique Sous l’eau de Günter Eich (Unter Wasser, 1978)
15:55 – 16:15 Discussion / Question time
16:15-17:00 Le point de vue des critiques / The critics' perspective: Mathieu Dochtermann (France), Mascha Erbelding (Allemagne / Germany), Oliviero Ponte di Pino (Italie / Italy), Toni Rumbau (Espagne / Spain).
17:00 Clôture du colloque / Conference closure.
INFORMATIONS PRATIQUES / Practical informations:
Pour suivre le colloque sur place / To follow the conference on site :
Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier 3
Site Saint-Charles 1 – Salle des colloques 1
70, rue du Professeur Henri Serre
34090 Montpellier
Tramway: ligne/ line 1, arrêt / station: Place Albert 1er Saint-Charles
Entrée gratuite ; présentation obligatoire d’un passe sanitaire. / Free admission but presentation of the health pass is mandatory.
Pour suivre le colloque à distance / To follow the conference remotely :
Liens d'inscription pour suivre le colloque à distance sur Zoom / Registration links to follow the conference remotely on Zoom:
Jeudi matin / Thursday morning:
https://univ-montp3-fr.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kaIjSoPOReiV8ng8dpbYHQ
Jeudi après-midi / Thursday afternoon:
https://univ-montp3-fr.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_I2BK99wdQh2_77tPMEGzLg
Vendredi matin / Friday morning:
https://univ-montp3-fr.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_nVRZn7MRSYOeFG9WJFFU4A
Vendredi après-midi / Friday afternoon:
https://univ-montp3-fr.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_78Q19Nn8T4OeUewDPu16Ow
Samedi matin / Saturday morning:
https://univ-montp3-fr.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rSjhUXXYTISf0rDYgqje2g
Samedi après-midi / Saturday afternoon:
https://univ-montp3-fr.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_P0ANnFK0TZ6KI7N8TGUzVA
En cas de problème, contacter Paul Robert / For any technical issue, please contact :
paul.robert@univ-montp3.fr
Overview of the conference
From Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Ramón del Valle-Inclán, from Charlotte Charke to Liliana Ugolini, from Alain-René Lesage to Ernst Toller, from Alfred Jarry to Italo Calvino, from Gerhart Hauptmann to Howard Barker, from Lewis Carroll to Marion Aubert, from Salvador Espriu to Tankred Dorst, from Federico García Lorca to Thomas Bernhard, from António José da Silva to Liliane Atlan, from Paul Claudel to Nelly Sachs...
Hundreds of European writers, some well-known, others less so, have written or write for puppets or marionettes. Some, like Ben Jonson, Henry Fielding, Restif de la Bretonne, Massimo Bontempelli, Arthur Schnitzler, Luigi Pirandello, Heiner Müller, have inserted scenes for puppets or marionettes into their plays. And for half a century, following in the footsteps of Dario Fo, Armand Gatti or François Billetdoux, plenty of playwrights have contrived to have living and animated figures interacting on stage.
But what does “writing for puppets or marionettes” mean in real terms? Which material images does this theatrical tool summon up, and to what end? Which work processes are being employed here? What kind of specific constraints – or, on the contrary, what kind of new freedoms – can be found on this occasion?
Today, theatrical writing for puppets or marionettes is set in motion when a puppeteer, a company or an institution commissions it. This is how encounters and sometimes collaborations come about between artists previously unknown to each other, who discover each other and learn to work together: sometimes keeping to their respective territories, sometimes keeping up a close dialogue over the whole span of the creative process.
But when poets, novelists, playwrights take the initiative in writing “plays for puppets/marionettes”, what kind of project motivates their writing? Is it designed for a specific animation technique (glove puppets, marionettes, shadow puppets, objects, etc)? Is it, as was the case for Louis-Edmond Duranty, Rafael Alberti or Guido Ceronetti, accompanied by a desire to get fully involved in the staging of their artwork? Or is it merely a means of distancing themselves from the actors’ theatre of their time?
It follows that there are several modes of writing for puppets or marionettes; one of the very first tasks for researchers in this field must be to identify them and also, of course, to question them. For writers, the puppet is never a neutral choice, because they risk straying from the beaten track of literary consecration and success, to the point where their work often never sees the light of day. Under such circumstances, why would anyone write for puppets or marionettes? What status is conferred on the author in this branch of the performing arts where he/she has no customary place?
The choice to write for puppets could, for example, originate in a fascination for the traditions, characters, gestures, and language of the puppet. It might result from the limitations of theatrical life: for example, the prohibitions, monopolies, and censorship to which the 17th and 18th-century actors’ theatre was subjected. They could also be motivated by the desire to address an audience considered the most spontaneously receptive to this type of performance – children. Or it might be born of a desire to experiment with a more liberal dramaturgy, freed from the overly strict rules of verisimilitude, more open to poetry or experimentation.
Whatever the reasons or contexts which impel writers to summon puppets/marionettes, shadow puppets or animated objects to the stage of their mental theatre, it is crucial to examine the consequences for dramatic writing. What are the shifts that operate in the ways writers create characters, configure drama, organise dramatic action, choose the expressive register, the relationship with speech, and, the whole imaginary realm? To decide to work with puppets is to commit to a certain way of representing the human being, and sometimes also to let non-human beings enter the stage. It is to engage another level of convention within theatrical conventions, another relationship with reality and illusion. Ultimately, it is to take root in inorganic matter, and to produce tension between the living and the dead, the animate and the inanimate.
Like musical instruments, puppets as theatrical instruments have their own limitations and their own expressive powers. The ERC PuppetPlays research programme wishes to invite you to explore these unique writings born of an encounter with these instruments, focusing for its first international symposium on the contribution of writers, poets, novelists or dramatic authors to the forging of a dramaturgy specific to puppets.
Questions
Particular attention will be paid to the following questions:
To what extent do authors who write for puppet theatre produce work that is different from that destined for the actors’ theatre? Is this work subject to the same production and performance conditions? Does it address the same audience? Does it deal with the same subjects? Does it employ the same registers, or registers specific to marionette theatre?
Does theatrical writing for puppets belong in the same literary periodization as the actors’ theatre? Is it possible to discern in its phases of development, the signs of a baroque, classical, romantic, symbolist, modernist, post-dramatic, documentary (etc) poetics?
In the eyes of the authors, what are the models for writing for puppets? Do they rework the traditional forms of the puppet? Of the actors’ theatre? Or other forms of live performance (pantomime, circus, ballet, etc)?
At the end of the 19th century, particularly in the French-speaking world, theatre writing for puppets was often the domain of poets rather than playwrights. Does this tendency pertain at the European level? Is it still discernible today? What are the implications?
When responding to a commission, how does a writer approach the art of the puppet? How does he/she rid himself of his/her prejudices, how does he/she enter into the artistic project of the puppeteer with whom he/she must collaborate? Does the encounter with the puppeteers and their instruments impinge on the writing process? In what way? Are the effects limited to the current experience, or do they produce lasting changes?
Does theatrical writing for puppets lead to a specific representation of the human being and his or her place in the world?
All these questions are, of course, contingent on the nature of each unique work and its production context. An indicative (and non-exhaustive) list of texts for puppets or marionettes (as well as for actors and puppets or marionettes) which are expected to generate research proposals is appended to this call for papers.
To avoid the simple juxtaposition of case studies, preference will be given to comparative approaches which shed light on the way works written for puppets are included in the theatre system of their time.
A second conference, in 2023, will be dedicated to plays written by puppeteers.
Scientific committee
Adolfo Ayuso Roy (writer, University of Zaragosa), Jean Boutan (post-doctoral researcher PuppetPlays, Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier 3), Matthew Cohen (professor, University of Connecticut), Pénélope Dechaufour (senior lecturer, Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier 3), Francesca Di Fazio (doctoral student PuppetPlays, Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier 3), Cristina Grazioli (professor, University of Padua), Carole Guidicelli (research engineer PuppetPlays, Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier 3), Sandrine Le Pors (associate professor, Université d’Artois), Marc Martinez (professor, Université de Rouen), Didier Plassard (principal researcher PuppetPlays, Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier 3), Rute Ribeiro (director and puppeteer, Lisbon), Julie Sermon (professor, Université de Lyon 2), Gerd Taube (professor, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt), Bérangère Vantusso (puppeteer, stage director and director of the Studio-Théâtre, Vitry-sur-Seine)
Organising committee
Jean Boutan, Francesca di Fazio, Carole Guidicelli, Didier Plassard, Paul Robert.
About PuppetPlays
PuppetPlays (2019-2024) is a European research project funded by the European Union via the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Research Council (G.A. 835193) and hosted by Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 (France). Under the direction of Prof. Dr. Didier Plassard (Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier 3), its first aim is to offer public access to the repertoire of works written for puppets in Western Europe from the 17th to the 21st centuries on a dedicated digital platform. The launch of this platform is scheduled for 2022.
In the meantime, a presentation of the project and PuppetPlays’ activities can be consulted at this address.