{"id":504,"date":"2019-06-15T09:06:58","date_gmt":"2019-06-15T09:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/?p=504"},"modified":"2023-03-19T09:50:29","modified_gmt":"2023-03-19T09:50:29","slug":"postcolonialism-and-hybridity-in-british-puppetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/postcolonialism-and-hybridity-in-british-puppetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Postcolonialism and Hybridity in British Puppetry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cariad Astles<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Abstract:<\/strong> Puppetry is, in its essence, a hybrid of the visual and performing arts; hybrid in its construction and conception: alive and not-alive; anthropomorphic but not human; straddling worlds, cultures and identities. This article, dedicated to the late Margareta Niculescu, former director of the Romanian company \u021a\u0103nd\u0103ric\u0103 and the first director of the \u00c9cole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure de la Marionnette in Charleville-M\u00e9zi\u00e8res, in France, explores some of the ways in which postcolonial questions emerge in contemporary British puppetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keywords:<\/strong> postcolonialism, hybridity, power relations, politics, Punch and Judy, British puppetry<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Puppetry forms arise and\nare born from cultural narratives and politics. Popular puppet forms have been\npresent within most of the emergent and assertive nationalisms; puppetry has so\noften been a mouthpiece for politics and identity that it is not surprising it\nhas something to say about postcolonialism. Homi Bhabha\u2019s discussion of\nhybridity as a disturbing and unsettling force, which enables the position of\nhybridity to challenge hierarchy, is a seductive idea, as is his idea of\nhybridity within postcolonialism as a position of strength: \u201cWe are confronted with the nation split within\nitself, articulating the heterogeneity of its population\u201d (Bhabha 98).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Margareta Niculescu (1926-2018), first director of the \u00c9cole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure de la Marionnette in Charleville-M\u00e9zi\u00e8res, in France. Photo: Wikipedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This article is dedicated to the late Margareta Niculescu, former director of the Romanian company \u021a\u0103nd\u0103ric\u0103 and the first director of the \u00c9cole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure de la Marionnette in Charleville-M\u00e9zi\u00e8res, in France. Niculescu\u2019s vision was of the collaboration between forms: between puppetry forms, between traditional and contemporary practices, and between puppetry and other performance forms. She wished to establish performer-puppeteers as innovative, creative practitioners, who transformed tradition and collaborated across disciplines to enable a hybrid and flourishing puppetry practice to be considered alongside other contemporary performance forms:  \u201c(puppetry) has come down to us through the ages and across continents, mixing with the forms of other cultures and centuries, becoming a multifaceted art form with uncertain and shifting limits\u201d (Niculescu 40). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In these days of fragile and contested national boundaries and identities, it is important for puppetry scholars and practitioners to consider how traditional puppetry forms can be supported in their transmission; how these forms translate, transgress, cross borders and forms, meet and merge with other forms; and what these new forms mean in practice as well as in scholarship; how they intersect with cultural identities, economies, rural and urban contexts; and how new articulations of traditional and contemporary forms in collaboration can and do articulate politics, cultural positions and new identities. Puppetry has sometimes been considered a traditional or old-fashioned form which does or should not address politics, identity formation and intersectional positioning. And yet, puppetry has always been a migratory, itinerant and evolving form, commenting upon and responding to its surrounding culture(s). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article will explore some of the ways in which postcolonial questions emerge in contemporary British puppetry. Once considered opposing poles, it has been shown that tradition and innovation can now be considered as sisters in dialogue (Balme 69). Tradition (which has often been considered within performance as primarily, if not exclusively, deriving from Asian cultures) and innovation (often considered to be a Western concept) are now terms which have become blurred. The multiple performance traditions within puppet theatre that have emerged from colonised territories have, in their turn, given rise in the ex-colonising countries to hybrid identities, performance practices and political narratives. These hybrid identities in puppetry are able to mediate diverse cultural positions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postcolonial\ndiscourse notes that colonised and colonisers exist within networks of\nrelationships predicated upon the experience of colonisation for all parties,\nand it embraces the idea that to exist in the postcolonial space may mean to\nexist, simultaneously, within different environments. These environments may be\nseparated by geography but are linked by common cultural experiences and\nrelationships (Amkpa 12). Postcolonial narrative, in Alan Lawson\u2019s words, \u201cis a\ncritical discourse which seeks to dismantle the effects of colonialism in the\nmaterial, historical, cultural-political, pedagogical, discursive and textual\ndomain\u201d (156).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postcolonialism,\ntherefore, seeks to acknowledge and challenge unequal systems of power in\ncultural and economic products, but also seeks to dismantle concepts of\nbinariness as can be found in \u201cWest and East\u201d; \u201ctradition and innovation\u201d and\nindeed, perhaps, high and low art. It works at the margins of cultural\nhegemonies and celebrates what Bhabha refers to as active hybridity: a hybrid\nidentity proud of its multiple cultural heritage as a source of strength; it\nopens up dialogue and questions at the interstices of its being; it is a\nshifting and unsettled state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What, then, of\nBritish puppetry as hybrid, postcolonial theatre? Puppetry has sometimes been a\nrelative latecomer to the table of political debate, perhaps due to its low\nstatus; and yet, perhaps because of this low and ridiculous status, being aptly\npositioned to question hegemonies of power. Puppetry, no less than other art\nforms, operates within systems of power and cultural capital: possibly some British\npuppetry practitioners, keen for the art to be respected more, have adopted the\ntropes of high art. War Horse<\/em>, with\nits multi-operated puppets, character-based and cathartic story, could be seen\nas \u201chigh art\u201d despite its own hybrid heritage\u2014South African animal puppetry\nmixed with British physical performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Video 1<\/h6>\n\n\n\n