Manipulate! 2014!

Being a former classicist, I am a traditionalist at heart. I may not have turkey at Christmas, and I saw the New Year with a copy of Simon Murray's book on Jacque Lecoq, but some things are sacred. So, when manipulate  starts gearing up, I feel it is time for the annual 'Puppets are not just for children' article.

There isn't much left for kids these days. Comic books, which taught me to read and have an idiosyncratic view of good and evil, have been occupied by adults. Not that they have had to be aimed at children - William Burroughs noted that the visual image, combined with words, was far more likely to engage and inform than any other mix of media (which is why they were used for propaganda in World War II. But sitting behind me in the office, half of big-hearted Black Hearted Press are prepping for their workshops at the CCA, and there's a 16 plus age warning on the session with writer John Farnam (author of Daily Mail favourite Royal Descent).

Manipulate has been making the point that puppetry is capable of addressing adult themes without slipping into XXX predictability. Last year, Neville Tranter took on Hitler and provided a meditation on the Fuhrer's last days that was terrifying in its portrayal of the monster as a human being. This year, Planet Luvos explores the idea of humanity's eventual demise, Grit thinks about the impact of war on children and Stephen Mottram's Seas of Organillo may be beautiful, but owe more to Freud and scientific theories than The Water Babies. It only remains for Vile to state the obvious, that manipulate has become one of the most important festivals in Scotland, providing international, exciting, experimental performance.

In the next episode, Vile asks 'what is visual theatre?' 

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.