Reading towards Political Puppetry

No art form is intrinsically political in any particular direction. Ballet was nominated by Soviet Russia to impress the rest of the world, despite its roots in the aristocratic French courts. There is something to be said for the rise of theatre during the early outbreak of democracy in classical Athens, but the French stage kept operating under the Nazi occupation. Freedom of speech generally helps, but given that it existed only in censored form in the UK until 1968 (when the Lord Chamberlain stopped being allowed to edit or ban scripts), it isn't essential to art.

The appearance by some large scale puppets at the Seattle protests in 1999 led to optimistic studies of "radical puppetry" breaking out across the net. Making the point that puppets had become slave of consumerism - the Muppets and Sooty being emasculated versions of Mr Punch, made polite for public consumption - these studies tended to concentrate on the presence of puppetry from medieval times in various protests. Various periods where puppetry was suppressed are held up as evidence that object manipulation is subversive and the ambiguous relationship of certain left-wing states to puppetry was rightly mentioned with caution. 

However, phrases like "the history of puppetry in service to the people, the tradition of puppetry as the voice of the everyman, the expression of dissent, protest, the real and human concerns of daily life" suggest that a close look at puppetry will reveal a new narrative, an alternative reality where Muffin the Mule is tearing up paving stones on the streets of Paris and Sweep is throwing a Black Power salute.

K Ruby Blume does relate a version of this history with more verve and nuance than most. Starting with the emergence of puppets in the church's passion plays in the 700s, she stops off at various moments in history to note the use of counter-cultural puppetry. Enthusiastic for the DIY quality of the mannequin, she captures the uncanny inhumanity of the puppet, identifying it as a satirical counter-blast to human folly. 

Meanwhile, Kerry Mogg follows a similar line, albeit with a more direct action emphasis. Quoting Peter Schumann from Bread and Puppet Theatre - one of the companies to emerge from the 1960s with a clear political agenda - Mogg reiterates the problems of tracing alternative histories through the dominant powers' records, claiming that "the real history... has been devalued and discarded."

Although they both ignore the long traditions of puppetry outside of Europe and the USA, both articles assert an optimism for the political impact of the puppet. Mogg sees them as occupying public space in a revolutionary manner: Blume concludes that the invisible puppeteer can give voice to the people. Sharing a view of theatre that primarily classifies it by its social worth, they praise the "carnivalesque" - the spirit of disorder named by named by Bakhtin that appears at festivals and poses a threat to the certainties of the hegemony.

The Christian Science Monitor, oddly enough, homes in on a specific example of the puppeteer as activist. Sara Peattie, of the Puppet Free Lending Library, has made puppets for political demonstrations, from mutated butterflies to demons. Peattie's advocacy of the puppet gets closer to the core of its potential.

"It's easier for people to look at a puppet that expresses discontent rather than a human face, which is so freighted with meaning. Puppets let people stand back from the idea and look at it from a distance where they aren't so implicated that they can't cope with it."

In this description, Peattie sees the aesthetics of the puppet as being crucial to their political role - finding a possible intrinsic quality that makes the puppet 'radical.' Far more immediate than the historical readings, Peattie's vision - and she has had her puppets banned on demonstrations for being weapons - is less concerned with legitimacy through heritage than the actual emotional impact of the object under manipulation. 

Paper Cinema' Odyssey

When Paper Cinema presented an early iteration of The Odyssey at Summerhall during the Edinburgh Fringe, it was already obvious that here was a work that could address all ages without sacrificing the mythical depth at the heart of Homer's epic. Being one of the earliest examples of literature, The Odyssey defined the Hero's Journey, the narrative identified by Joseph Campbell and used as a template for far too much contemporary Hollywood drama but also presents a moving romance between the exotic tales of adventure. 

As Troy so comprehensively demonstrated, the ancient myths don't always translate into modern idiom: and, as Daisy Bowie-Sell points out in her review, the multiple locations of Odysseus' wanderings don't make for easy staging. Unlike the committee who wrecked The Iliad for Troy, part of Paper Cinema's genius is to use the structure of the original epic poem, updating details but remaining true to the different episodes. Beginning with the anxiety of Odysseus' son - missing his father and angered by the attentions his mother is receiving from competing, greedy suitors, he sets off on a mission to find out what has happened - it neither flinches from the uncompromising brutality of the finale nor forgets that there is a love story driving the action.

Paper Cinema's approach is to project a series of static illustrations, onto a screen above the artists, overlaying each scene with new images. The live music adds to the atmosphere and illustrates the illustrations, but also adds the tension of a live performance: cinema is converted into a process that is worked out in front of the audience, and the sterility of film is elevated into a visceral immediacy.

For The Odyssey, Nicholas Rawling and his team concentrate on simple, black and white images, familiar in style from children's books and using signifiers - the beard for an older man, an energetic enthusiasm for the younger - to ensure that the plot is clearly presented. More metaphorical images - the suitors as wolves - echo Homer's own signature use of simile and draw out the themes of predatory danger, dignity and the different sorts of love.

Far from simply projecting images, Paper Cinema use effects on the screen, sometimes narrowing the focus, moving characters around or just obscuring them with a hand. Deconstructing the mechanics of projection - the team are visible throughout, and watching Rawlings or Irena Stratieva make the images can be as fascinating as the on-screen action - they replace the veneer of film with a rougher edge. Even in this, they are welcoming, cunningly disguising their skill beneath the sort of friendly relaxation often found in work for young people. 

Both of Homer's epic poems have something of the quality of a compilation: in The Iliad, there is the inclusion of a catalogue of ships, which doesn't add much to the drama and sits uneasily within the overall arc of Achilles' rage and redemption; The Odyssey can read like a collection of sailors' lies about distant land. Perhaps this is due to the oral tradition that preceded the actual writing of the myths, but Homer's sophisticated use of point of view (many of Odysseus' tales are told by him, casting such doubt on their veracity that Latin poet Ovid would answer that they were excuses for an extended spot of sex tourism), and changes in emphasis - going at one point from the harsh murder of slaves to an erotic reunion - are suitable for Paper Cinema's manipulation of their simple materials.

The real genius of Paper Cinema is to create a genuine all-ages show. Unlike pantomime, which lurches between the childish and the crude, there are no asides to adults but the same scene - say the trip to the underworld, or the beautiful last scene set on the palace roof against the stars - can be read differently by adults and children in different ways. For children, it's a lovely and exciting story: for adults, it grapples with the eternal themes that Homer so elegantly stated - the battle between the need for adventure and home.

• Traverse Wednesday 6 February
• Lochgelly Centre Friday 8 February

Articulating Adolf

This article is an apology to Neville Tranter. Just before Christmas, he sent me answers to an interview about his Schicklgruber alias Adolf Hitler. I have spent the last fortnight sitting on them, unable to work out how to approach an article on a puppet version of Hitler's last days. I have found the limits of my philosophy.

The easy starting point would appear to be a comparison with Downfall, a film that starred Bruno Ganz in a stunningly virtuoso performance as the dictator: unfortunately, my concerns about its representation of Hitler led me down a pathway so entangled by questions of good and evil that I could not pass. Any attempt to critique the film slipped into difficult questions of morality. That article is sitting on my computer, waiting to be  posted at a time when few people are likely to read my meditations on the difference between Christ and Antichrist.

The scale of Nazi atrocity seems inevitably to encourage my theological tendencies. 

Tranter acknowledges that taking on a subject like Hitler is "delicate." His research, which included collecting 300 hours of songs and auditioning five writers before finding Jan Veldman, took three years to complete. While the YouTube video shows a performance that echoes the irreverent satire of Weimar cabaret, complete with comedy number about joining the Luftwaffe, the juxtaposition of larger than life puppets and the icon of twentieth century evil is a struggle to discuss. Like Giselle Vienne's Jerk (manipulate 2011), the mixture of object manipulation and difficult content combine to create an impact that is made more potent by the apparent mismatch.