I have recently returned from this mind-blowing puppetry festival in a small town near the France/Belgium border, and still feel dazed from the experience. I went there expecting a festival centred around high-quality puppetry performances in theatre venues in the town, most of which would probably be sold out anyway, so I prepared myself to spend five fairly relaxed days trying to find street performances and maybe a few of the puppetry exhibitions on show.
The first day my friend and I spent four horrific hours at the ticket office trying to sift through the huge programme and choose some shows from the hundreds available.
The second day we discarded the programme and almost felt burdened by our obligation to attend the few shows we'd bought tickets for - we had by then realised what on earth was happening on the streets of Charleville, available to anyone, pretty much unscheduled and able to be discovered via chance and instinct.
The streets and, above all, the central square le Place Ducale, pulsed with life and impromptu creativity at all times of day and night. It was absolutely impossible throughout my time in Charleville to plan a trajectory to any destination in the town without arriving there at least an hour late, if at all. In all directions the endless crowds converged in clusters to witness new performances, and a casual glance would often reveal something incredible that couldn't be missed. It just wasn't conducive to a happy bladder at all.
Well, to some particularly inspiring discoveries on the streets...may I introduce Gilbert and his mobile performance/machine/theatre, yes a creation escaping definition.
gilbert.pavaly@numericale.com
Then there was the Clair de Lune Theatre's 'Le Cyclo Theatre', a mobile booth enabling about five people at a time to swathe themselves beneath red velvet curtains and watch a private paper theatre adaption of Little Red Riding Hood, the shadow puppetry and general operations being carried out behind curtains on the opposite side by the owner. This whole festival showed me the power of street theatre, but it made me aware of the issue of photography...performing on the street does mean that someone's creation is likely to be captured by endless cameras and visually reproduced in many different ways...so what I liked about this performance was that, once our heads were inside that red velvet curtain we knew that what we were about to witness would be a moment shared by us alone and available to others only by verbal description. In today's world, that's nice.
www.clairdelunetheatre.be info@clairdelunetheatre.be
Toutemps Theatre
Another accidental discovery in a quiet courtyard of Charleville - the incredible vision of the Toutemps Theatre. This piece featured no words. It consisted of a large, intricately machine-embroidered, quilted sculpture of a hill which we took to represent the Earth. The performer, clad head to foot in white, entered inside this sculpture and the music began. One by one different features and elements began to emerge from within this 'planet' - animals, flowers, people - and in the space given to the audience by the lack of usual 'plot' and dialogue I began to feel that I was watching a symbolic adaption of Genesis, the story of life on Earth. More and more elements revealed themselves, the music changed, destruction came, a beautiful quilted boat arived and animals transferred into the boat. It was a hypnotic, soothing visual journey which unharnessed the imagination and, once again, fixed itself in a completely undefinable creative domain.
Compagnie Creature's 'C'est la Lune qui me l'a dit'
www.cie-creature.net le.dock@orange.fr
Performed on the 'Ile de Vieux Moulin', the Island of the Old Mill, on Charleville's river, this piece was a sheer over-indulgance of romance, wistfullness and childhood nostalgia...it was just sublime. Two beautiful and beautifully-costumed and made-up women surrounded by intricate props based largely on antique objects led us through a tale which I didn't really understand, involving a fisherman, some children and an old man, all exquisitely-crafted puppets with melancholy gazes, costumed with vintage threads. The story was interspersed with blasts of dreamy accordian and singing, performed by one of the women standing in a boat crafted from driftwood. Endless aged trunks were brought out one after the other, opening to reveal miniature scenes for the puppets. What on earth can you do when you witness something as enchanting as this? Swoon from overstimulation, erupt in a fury of jealousy or try and think of ways to constructively harness such inspiration..? The problem is, in this case I just don't know how to - I can't see how I could transport an audience to a magical landscape more effectively than Compagnie Creature transported us on the Ile de Vieux Moulin...
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