{"id":959,"date":"2019-06-15T07:30:21","date_gmt":"2019-06-15T07:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/?p=959"},"modified":"2022-02-06T20:09:42","modified_gmt":"2022-02-06T20:09:42","slug":"a-fin-de-siecle-life-in-puppet-theatre-roman-paska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/a-fin-de-siecle-life-in-puppet-theatre-roman-paska\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fin de Si\u00e8cle<\/em> Life in Puppet Theatre: Roman Paska"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

James P. MacGuire<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract:<\/strong> This paper briefly sketches the career of New York based Roman Paska, which began at the school of mime master Jacques Lecoq in Paris and gradually developed into a distinct personal art summed up in his manifesto Theatre for the Birds<\/em>. Paska\u2019s productions have been seen in many UNIMA festivals. Between 1999 and 2003, he was the director of the Institut International de la Marionette in Charleville-M\u00e9zi\u00e8res, in France. While his own work is decidedly “avant-garde” or “experimental,” with a technique notably influenced by the puppetry of China, Japan and, especially, Indonesia, Roman has always felt an equal affinity for European puppet traditions, especially those in Italy, the cradle of puppet theatre in Europe, as he says, and the country in which he first regularly toured. Roman Paska has also focused from the outset of his career on puppet theory and remains especially interested in the relationship between performer and audience psychology.<\/p>

Keywords:<\/strong> Lecoq, UNIMA, Dead Puppet, Turturro, Theatre for the Birds<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Encouraged by the\nsuccessful presentation of a play with masks that he wrote for his own graduation,\nRoman Paska’s early interest in theatre\u2014in a kind of theatre he still describes\nas a synthesis of poetry, performing and visual arts\u2014drew him from a boarding\nschool in New England to Columbia University in New York, and his life has been\ntied to that city ever since. But after a general strike curtailed his freshman\nyear, he spent a period of time in France and Switzerland, first studying mime\nat the \u00c9cole Jacques Lecoq in Paris and then on tour with the Bread &\nPuppet Theatre, a company whose work he had first encountered as a boy at the\nNewport Folk Festival. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After returning to New York,\nhe was haunted by the idea of revisiting France with a traveling show of his\nown, and the following spring devised what he calls a “mock-ritual\nmedieval street performance,” Works\n& Days<\/em>, based on the sculptural program of the central west portal of\nNotre-Dame de Paris. He enlisted two student dancers and a trio of ex-boarding\nschool friends; they rehearsed the show on the steps of Columbia’s St. Paul’s\nChapel, then decamped to Paris and set off for the south of France in a\ndecommissioned French postal minibus purchased at auction. Busking their way\nfrom village to village, they concluded their intrepid tour in Provence at the\nSanctuaire de la Sainte-Baume, once sacred to the goddess of fertility, and\nwhere, according to local tradition, Mary Magdalene spent her final days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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