By Playdoh Kolo

I step out of the train station in Baden, Switzerland, and the first thing I see is three tall yellow banners displaying the bolded name of the festival in the central square: FIGURA. Walking through the cobblestoned streets of Baden, along the rushing river and walking paths, I see countless signs pointing in various directions to the 15 venues used for the biennial festival. The town is completely taken over by puppets!

As I took in the new environment – the crisp and quiet air, the sidewalks swept, the polite and straightforward people – New Orleans, with its humid, chaotic, unkempt streets began to fade from my mind. I was now in the serenity of a Swiss village; a town known for its spa and hot springs, no less. After meeting with the festival staff, I settled into my bed and breakfast to enjoy some jet-lag induced sleep. For the next five days in this calm, respectable Swiss town I would run around, or rather bike, like a chicken with my head cut off to 27 different puppet shows. And I would thoroughly enjoy it.

After a dip in the public pool portion of the hot spring, and many days to decompress and absorb the content, I came away with a great deal of new appreciation for the possibilities of puppetry.

The shows at Figura were diverse in content, tone, technique, and aesthetic. I was impressed with the masterful physical technique and precision of many performances. There were shows like Santa Pulcinella by Theatre Gudule that showcased incredible physicality and iteration of the rich tradition of slapstick hand puppet comedy. Terror by Company Les Yeux Creux explored extreme physicality in a broader, abstract way – through the experience of terror through a single puppet and performer. Du Bout des Doigts by Madebyhands pushed the possibilities of the bare human hand to portray human characters.

Others showcased a range of comedic devices and techniques. One particular through-line between many pieces that intrigued me was the use of simple objects for surprisingly comedic effect. The Love of Risk by Company Bakelite created moments of hilarity with robot vacuums by taking advantage of the machines’ intrinsic character and likelihood of failure. Are we friends? By Theater Thalia’s Compagnons used small objects from nature such as seed pods to illustrate a story of friendship and exclusion. The performer’s comedically animated dialogue and reactions to these simple objects is both absurd and charming. The Story of Larry also utilizes simple objects such as a tea bag in exceedingly clever ways. Performer Moritz Praxmarer delights us with the transformation of a small piece of paper into a character on a journey of epic proportions. Home of My Spirit by Old Masters (part of the “Swiss Window”) creates entertaining situations with the surprising ways they use simple objects such as marbles.

On the edges of this great variety of shows were performances that pushed the boundaries of what is considered puppetry. In Untitled Document by Ari Teperberg, a Google Doc becomes a puppet to be manipulated; language becomes a living breathing thing as it changes on the screen before us. The act of deletion, copy and paste, highlighting, typing, hitting the spacebar, all become part of the physical ‘body language’ of the document, not just speaking with words, but with the attitude of its movements. In L’Homme Orchestra, one-man band Santiago Moreno invites us into a mesmerizing relationship between man and machine. Is he playing the many  drums and guitar strung together to his limbs, or are they playing him? Opus II by Le Petit Theatre du Bout du Monde lives at the boundary of many forms: sculpture, archeology, puppetry, installation. The figures are placed on a table and manipulated primarily through extension rods; the separation between the performers and the world of the objects allows for deep meditation on the small, deliberate movements of this slow yet stimulating and immersive performance.

I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to attend Figura and absorb so much wonderful artistry and inspiration. The festival was orchestrated with a friendly, responsive and methodical team of staff. Everything about the programming was beautifully organized to make for an easy to follow guide even as I was running from one venue to another.

While I wrote brief statements on many of the shows, I will dedicate the rest of this report to recounting to you in greater detail a few of the most memorable shows I saw. Hopefully without getting too carried away:

The first afternoon in Baden, I saw L’Homme Orchestra, a performance by Santiago Moreno of Company La Mue/tte (FR). His act is an incredible performance of control and physical coordination; playing syncopated rhythms on multiple drums, cymbals and calve, mounted from a backpack harness, all triggered with the use of tensioned lines of rope leading to his feet, wrists, and guitar neck, while he simultaneously plays Spanish style on the strings.The effect is a mind-boggling display of sonic orchestration, incomprehensible to fully understand how all of this sound could be coming from one individual. Each percussive element was meticulously wired with tiny microphones for perfect auditory balance.

There is something immediately exciting about the “one man band,” to passersby on the street. It has to do with the intrinsic ridiculousness of it: a strange contraption, a novel relic of early automation, a steampunk dream of the integration of man and machine. But at the same time it has a quiet dignity. This, apart from incredible technical ability, is the genius of Santiago’s performance; mixing absurdity with a suave, mysterious persona. He is smartly dressed and groomed with slicked back hair and a well trimmed, devilish mustache and chin patch, giving the impression of a circus impresario or classical showman. He accents high notes on the guitar with raised eyebrows and rapidfire strumming with piercing concentration, while his soft spoken manner of speech suggests a humble yet sly magician confident and cool in his abilities.

The music captivated the audience with its cinematic, high drama flares: long suspenseful pauses and smooth, quick-witted transitions in tone and rhythm. The style evoked a spy drama, film-noir, and forbidden love affairs. Each instrument added or subtracted signaled the introduction or exit of a new character to the scene. In this way, the instruments took on a life of their own, mysteriously animated by the slight subtle movements of Santiago’s feet and hands. This animation, this strange dance of the tiny orchestra worked to reverse the roles between Santiago and his machine. He became, in a sense, a puppet to his instruments, burdened by their weight, their need to express, that forced him to stomp, sway, bend, contort, and tap out a trancelike dance to allow the instruments to speak through his movements.

Speaking with Santiago after his performance, I was unsurprised to learn that he was also a puppeteer; the “One Man Band” its own form of puppetry with all its string pulling magic and personified charm of the contraptions. This is one of the little worlds that puppetry creates – the orchestra – the musical world sitting on the back of a man.

The second performance I attended, the first of the conventional, seated shows of the festival, was Du Bout des Doigts by the Belgian troupe Madebyhands, presenting their love story between a man and woman as played by two bare hands within elaborate sets spanning historic moments in 20th Century America.

The show opens in very dim, hazy light with an obscured spinning figure with wing-like fabrics of sandy hue creating undulating movements inside a soft circle of light at center stage. Her movements are hypnotic and ritualistic. She appears out of time or place, an angelic form signaling the infinite and immortal.

This scene, a foreword of sorts to the drama, segues into a split media prologue. As the backdrop lifts, we see the small set of a cave wall bearing burnt orange markings of man and beast. OVerhead the image is projected in high resolution. A camera on a dolly is capturing the image live while the scene is lit by a flaming torch. As the camera pans it passes over a handprint and then a hand drenches in claylike paint.

The scene shifts as the cave is removed to reveal an abandoned factory building with artifacts of lives lived, each labeled with markers such as “Dance Marathon ‘29” and “Woodstock ‘69.”

This serves as an overview, or “table of contents,” for the rest of the play.

Next, we are introduced to our protagonists: two bare hands (in period appropriate boy and girl attire) who fall in love and travel through major historic events together.

After an initial abstract explanation of their connection, the tone shifts dramatically as the protagonists begin to inhabit more concrete lives and historic settings. I must admit that this shift discouraged my interest as the storyline grew predictable. Tropes of a rainy night in the Roaring 20s Manhattan, a soldier in the trenches in Vietnam, Hitler giving a speach, orgies at Woodstock beside a VW bus are overplayed in American media and this imitation, while impressive in its detail and physicality, detracted from the previous intimacy of the story, as the puppets were reduced to stock characters inhabiting a generic history, rather than with deep personal histories of their own.

This love affair eventually segues back to revisit the image of the painted hand, perhaps signifying the immortality of love, or human connection, across time. It was an abrupt wrap-up and I yearned for an alternative conclusion in which the protagonists transform from mimicking 1960s hippies to becoming something totally unknown.

This being said, I am conversely reminded of the beauty of the manipulation of the ordinary human hand, to give it so much character and invent clever ways to express a range of human action and emotion through only five fingers was thoroughly inspiring. By mimicking the tropes from various decades, they were also effectively commenting on the mannerisms and representation of those characters in media and history. Though the storyline felt broad and loosely composed, the physicality brought precision and awe to my experience.

The next show, Opus II by Le Petit Theatre du Bout du Monde, I will try to recount, stands out for its use of space, inventive technique and singular aesthetic. The show takes place on a bare landscape of thin, curved plywood. It is not embellished by way of paint or stain. The boards are pieced together fairly cleanly though some seams overlap and the general impression is that of a large scale architectural model. The curving wood creates a pleasing if not desolate landscape. So too are we, the audience, a part of this landscape – standing along the narrow perimeter or the stage – forming a sea around this island. Along one wall are two large, open curio cabinets, with each shelf displaying a single figurine of white plaster. They stand idle in wait as if within a museum basement or artifacts recently dug up and staged for archeological examination. It brings to mind the unearthed terracotta soldiers, brought up by the thousands from a lost and rediscovered age of ancient China.

On a table beside the figurines are two dog skeletons, further emphasizing the sense that we are in a museum, while adding an element of the macabre. As a pair they suggest religiosity as two guard dogs flanking the tomb of a deceased king. Along the bottom row of the curio cabinets stand with bulging blocks for torsos and small, stately heads. They are perhaps soldiers, guards, followers of some sort; not the main characters at any rate.

More detailed tableaus sit atop the table as well. And along the walls in every direction are contraptions with levers that resemble catapults with rocks on ropes weighing them down on one side.

The audience wanders, taking in their surroundings and reach an apprehensive stasis. The scene opens. Performers in blacks place a flat wooden block on the landscape.

An invitation for something to occur. An establishment of space within the space.

The block is pushed forward towards the sloping, rising land across, until the performer has pushed it as far as their arm will extend. They then bring out a stick with a flat end, like a sand rake in a Japanese garden, though of a cruder, utilitarian appearance. Using the flat end, the performer pushes the block forward.

The physical limits of distance now shown, the performers now move simultaneously up from the corners of the stage, with lines of rope tied to sticks. As they lift a form at the middle of the rope comes into view – a pale, cloth figure with no arms – pulled at the torso and scalp by the rope, holding its body up with the tension offered by the opposing performers. The aimless figure rises and descends onto the wooden block.

This begins the journey. The figure traversing slowly, tenderly forward.

Each step, a miracle – the fragility of this body’s life so clearly held in a tense, delicate balance between the ropes’ opposing forces. The figure is alone, more totally than any I have seen, and yet the forces that aid its humanity are made plain.

Out of this solo journey, this walk-about in the desert, comes a storm. A thin film billows like dust clouds – a plastic sheet unravels and spreads over the land as the figure disappears. What weather has fallen over the land?

Street lights are placed in far corners and edges of the landscape. A figure of a lone man under a lamp. The sound of static. It is perhaps raining. Dogs placed under lamps, and metal cages of different sizes, misshapen, warped, lined up side by side. The sound of dogs barking. A blacklight revolving like a siren casts a soft, cold blue along the south side of this land.

Perhaps it is night on the edge of town, a desolate place of junkyards and a lone bus stop.

The land shifts again.

The figures and lamps are plucked up, the semi-transparent film drawn away.

A slumped, stout figure with a sinister expression sits at a desk. His desk may be connected to some machine, as ropes extend from it like cables. Performers knock at his desk with slips of paper. All are denied their requests with perfunctory dismissal. Finally, a performer come with a paper bag of food, a bribe that sways his approval. From the desk the ropes are taken and drawn across the landscape and latched to wooden stands clipped into the edge of the opposing side.

Various pieces of junk and refuse are clipped onto hanging tubes that function like ski lift gondolas to send the objects from the desk. Performers use extension rods to help the objects across.

There is a sequence where a great many balls are deposited offstage over top of the slope.

The final series of tableaus are assembled onstage: a lone man with a metal scaffolded soundsystem behind him. Another man faces a megaphone. Men with block bodies surround him, listening to a speech. A third figure is in a pile of ashes. A group of figures are placed onstage, then buried under a pile of sawdust. With a gentle dusting of a brush, their forgotten skeletons are again revealed.

There is little movement in these tableaus, yet they are living scenes. The sculptures are quite transient despite their idleness. They rely on each other for a shared sense of identity, and their overlords – the performers and their extension poles – can quickly whisk them away. But until then, these simple, slow, dreadful and disjointed lives are simply there, not going anywhere.

The performers often take the levered contraptions and, dangling the lamps over the figures, create shadows and swells of light that sway and breath.

Out of passivity and dread, the shows idle figures and their wasteland environment grows more outright violent.A drilling machine with the body of a tank and a modified skull welded to its hammer bangs at the ground. Simultaneously, a performer from below drills holes up through the stage and then carves out the section with a reciprocating saw to reveal a square window in the stage. A void that cannot be simply patched; the stage, the world has been irreversibly altered.

The performer lifts his head through the hole to inspect the landscape from within. A bank robber having made a way into the safe, or a burrowing, underground mammal coming to investigate the above world.

Another section is pulled away to reveal a figure drenched in a pool of black sludge. The loudspeaker facing the suited, box-like men blares.

At some point the play ends.

Throughout this scene the men separated across the landscape are shifted slightly as if drawn to one another unconsciously. The man in the ash pile shovels. Two dog skeletons look over the scene from the corner.

It is a puzzling spectacle. Who are these people, their feat entrapped on wooden bases, staring out across the grim, sand colored land?

Who are these performers – delicate, quiet, poised – placing the figures, gently pushing them across the land with their sticks?out across the grim, sand colored land?

Who are we, watching this unfold below us on this miniature island?

Opus II by Le Petit Theatre du Bout du Monde, as the name suggests, is a part of a grand, strange, tiny world. It is a compendium of dreams in plaster, metal and wood. It is fragments of souls moving the weight of the earth when no one is watching. It is a glimpse into this secret.

Playdoh Kolo