DakshinaChitra hosted two sessions of shadow puppetry in collaboration with Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan recently. To an audience of a hundred schoolchildren, Annette Wurbs and Peter Müller of German theatre Handgemenge performed a 45-minute narrative titled A King’s Journey .
The talented duo began the show with a foot-stomping scintillating piece of traditional German music with Annette on the trombone and Peter playing the drums simultaneously blowing on a kazoo gripped in his mouth. “Our story has 60 people in it and we do not have a big enough box to fit them all in, so we decided we will make flat figures,” announced Annette in her introduction, hinting at the origin of shadow puppets. “The king’s journey takes place in a very special place, the people walking around with watering cans and umbrellas.” The opening scene had the spotlight on the king sitting on the turret of his castle with his little telescope gazing at the moon, worrying about the speech he has to write. When sudden tremors break the king’s castle in two, he is thrown with Miss Care, his assistant, into the abyss of the Other World. The story dialogues spin about the quainter philosophies that adults embark on with children: “Maybe I am not you and you are not me. Everything is upside down” and “Can’t get on a bus with people you do not know”. Cues to place came from familiar sights and sounds: the silhouette of Statue of Liberty and jazz playing in the background is New York. Over his travels, the king earlier yelling impatiently to Miss Care to fetch his bathwater learns how to treat her nicely and say, “Ladies first!” His long and strange journey takes him through Australia, the desert and New York, finally returning home to use his newly acquired wisdom to rule his land. “A king without a crown, is he a king?” asked Annette. “No,” cried the children, with loud applause at the end of the show.
Behind the stage After the show, I move behind the stage, and find myself in a complex technical jumble of instruments, lights and tag notes: a balloon with an effigy of Miss Care on a skewer, a metal puppet with many joints and 10 lights in various positions. Puppeteers probably wish all the time they had more hands to do the multiple actions behind the screen. Dramatic illusions are manifested with innovative techniques using lighting and sound. The sea is a sheet of fabric and the ship tossed about it, a cut-out shape on a stick. Cars and ambulances move on a track circulating on a belt behind the screen. “The entire soundtrack is pre-recorded in my computer so I can start and stop it when I want,” says Peter. “I have some 200 lighting cues.” Peter shows me a tiny spotlight he uses to make the moon appear, “My moon light!”
Both Peter and Annette come from the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in North Germany. Peter studied art and puppetry at the Actor High School from 1986 to 1990 and was trained for voice, performance and singing. Their small town inspired the story for the puppet show. “You can see people with their watering cans in the gardens and holding umbrellas as it rains quite often!” says Annette. These oddities became central to their narrative, a place where people venture out rarely, happy in their small world. “It is the king who goes out, learns things and comes back and shows the people in his land that you can fly with umbrellas and make music with watering cans!” says Annette.
Abstract lines Is it easy for the children to relate to the more abstract lines of their story? Peter says, “We performed in Spanish to a group of children in Central America once and they loved the story.” Ideally, their shows are for children aged six and more. Peter adds, “We have an adult version that is more political as well and there’s a King Island where all the ex-dictators are confined in exile!”
The duo has also presented large-scale puppet shows on a 50-mt high screen where the figures used are one-ft high. These are done by front projection. The two puppeteers will be performing at India Habitat Centre in Delhi later this month in conjunction with Goethe Institut.
