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Fringe Puppetry
Fringe Puppetry
Gareth K Vile
Although it is not exceptionally well-represented, the presence of puppetry in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival roughly responds to the overall hierarchies of August’s ‘art market-place’, with productions in one of three categories: the largest section being small-scale events either by young companies or individual performers, then a selection of companies who have established themselves as ‘Fringe favourites’ or veterans, and a number of international companies who are well-recognised in the theatre community and arrive at the Fringe with a successful record of productions that tour throughout the year. While there is an overlap between the categories – Manual Cinema, for example, are both fringe favourites and well-established beyond the Fringe, while the UK’s Blind Summit simultaneously champions small-scale work and tour throughout the year to critical and commercial acclaim. regardless of the specific challenges of the Fringe – the sheer scale of the event – or its blessings – a huge potential audience – the puppetry that arrives in Scotland can be said to be shaped by the contours of the festival.
For Merrill Means Well, the puppets themselves have to be small enough to accompany the artist in a suitcase on a transatlantic flight: even Conrad Koch’s marionette Chester can collapse down for an ease of carriage. Portability is all and, given that their shows are predominantly comedy (Merrill offers a variation on autobiographical stand-up, Conrad and Chester provide political satire), the puppet is an additional weapon in the arsenal of the artist. Yet while the focus differs between the shows – Chester is the centre of attention, Merrill’s medications are brief guests – they share the characteristics of a Fringe show: an emphasis on immediacy and humour, the hour-long length and the importance of a connection between the human performer and the audience. The puppets are partners in crime, interacting with the puppeteer rather than obscuring them.
The Fringe provides a structural framework for these shows: they have to be short with minimal scenography, because there will be another short show following in the venue. The kind of complexity that Manual Cinema demand in constructing (and deconstructing) a set isn’t suitable for these shows. The act is stripped back, minimal and intimate and, unlike the more expansively scaled productions, leans into the uncanny likeness of the puppet to the person. There is little space for spectacle – even Blind Summit’s ambitious play with the nature of the puppet is taut and exact – and charm is a useful short-cut to a relationship with the audience. For all of Conrad Koch’s skill at ventriloquism, he largely avoids ostentatiously tricks, aiming for a kind of ‘puppet realism’ that asks the audience to experience the puppet as an actor.
Far from being qualitative assessments of the performance, these attributes express an approach and aesthetic that can either work or fail. It is almost as if ‘small scale Fringe’ puppetry can exist as a sub-genre, its characteristics a function of the event, the venue, the need to find an audience. And it feeds into another use of puppetry at the Fringe, the inclusion of the puppet as an adjunct to the action, a charming interlude to capture a mood (often pastoral or supernatural) without exposing the limited training of the performers. Again, this is not necessarily a critique – the use can be disarming or abrasively effective – but an observation about how puppetry is used: not as an end in itself, but another element in a rudimentary form of ‘total theatre’ that dismisses boundaries and evolves from what has worked in the making process as opposed to a foundation in a particular discipline. And while there are exceptions – Koch being a good example – the aesthetic is defined less by the art than it is by the environment.
