Puppets - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 43

a dif erent performance at the same time. Complicating the convention even further, the
puppet turns round to face the operator, and they acknowledge each other, adding layer upon
layer. Another character, the bird, gets excessively chatty and is danger of saying too much. The
operator simply reaches up and clamps a hand round his beak. Rather than break the world of
puppet and puppeteer, this reinforces the link between the two, much as Mary Poppins silenced
her parrot. Working in stop motion I envy the spontaneous relationship there. It must be hard for
those performers casually to put their puppets to one side when they are so physically a part of
them.
Another artist who totally blurs the line between performer and animation is Venetian mime,
Ennio Marchetto. He is literally a living cartoon, wearing outrageously observed paper cutouts
of cultural icons ripe for caricature. He dances around the stage with astonishing dexterity,
miming to appropriate songs, animating and transforming these cutouts into image after
image, the juxtaposition of which are telling and hysterical. Living origami is too inadequate
a description. The instant and inventive segues are as much a part of the fun as the methods
in which he surprises the audience with the lively animation. However dazzling the cartoon
drawings, his body, most especially his arms and face, are integrated into the design and
movement. He is both puppet and puppeteer. His hour long one man show, with many dozen
characters, is my NEXT take to manic colourful extremes, and it's glorious.