By Claire Heggen
*This conference raises the question of the notion of articulation, between the living body of the actor puppeteer animating the inert body of his puppet. Claire Heggen will share the questions that have arisen for her in the development of a corporal practice, in the direction of puppeteers among others. She will dismantle and show, using excerpts from the show and technical demonstrations, what could constitute a grammar of the relationship, induced by the stage presence of the puppeteer actor alongside her puppet.
Art, arteil, articulation
The articulation is central in the relationship of the puppeteer to his puppet, from the body of his puppet, to his own body.
Working with the object is basically a connection with otherness. It requires for the stage, a learning and a search of the modalities of relationship and articulation of «the one with the other».
The puppet and the actor’s body
What practice paying particular attention to this articulation of the body and the object should be developed?
What are the expressive potentials? How can one renew oneself in an unusual way as a subject, facing another subject by identifying them and inventing others?
How can the body of the puppeteer be viewed in its multiple dimensions and arouse in him an attentive, sensitive and reasoned listening?
How to awaken the consciousness to the metaphors generated by this play that produces meaning, and therefore dramatization and theatricality?
The question is no longer: what do I make the object do? But rather: what does the object make me do? How, where, does it guide me?
What does the object teach me about itself? About myself?
Questioning each other from the most intimate to the most committed.
Small illustrated grammar :
How does the subject/and object of art actor put himself at the service of an object in the process of becoming an art subject?
How do I bring the viewer’s view of myself? Or of the relationship of the two, me (subject/object) and him (subject/subject)?
On what to direct the viewer’s gaze? At what moment? How? For what?
How do I choose to disappear, or appear, in relation to the object?
Finally, in what way, the virtue of the detour, of the «passing by» the object/puppet, allows the actor to constantly invent solutions of continuity between the two, but also to invent himself, at any time?
The art of the puppeteer then resides in his ability to articulate the two, adjust them, tune them.
Duration : 1h30
Audience : All audience
Language : French and English
Photo credit : David Schaffer