Quels liens particuliers la marionnette entretient-elle avec le texte et la voix ?

Pour un genre de théâtre qui rappelle beaucoup de monde de la danse classique—où il n’y a pas de paroles—la marionnette maintient des relations précaires avec le texte et la voix. Ces liens particuliers sont souvent connectés à la relation entre la marionnette et le manipulateur, parce que le manipulateur construit l’illusion de sa vie, en la faisant parler. Pour chaque technique différente la faisant parler ou pas, il y a des ramifications uniques. Elles dépendent en grande partie du texte, aussi, qui dirige les manipulateurs et les marionnettes. Somme toute, les relations entre la marionnette, la voix, et la parole suscitent des rapports dialectiques entre le manipulateur et la marionnette, vis-à-vis la liberté d’agir de façon autonome.


Le manipulateur parle fréquemment pour la marionnette d’une façon transparente, afin que la marionnette bouge comme si elle parlait en vrai. Avec cette technique, le manipulateur contrôle les mouvements et la voix de la poupée. Il lui donne l’illusion de la vie, avec une faculté émotionnelle. Par conséquent, la marionnette subit une transformation d’objet à personnage. Quelques spectacles qui exploitent cette technique sont White dog, Chambre noire, Avenue Q, et Nosferatu. Malgré l’illusion de l’autonomie de la marionnette, c’est toujours le manipulateur qui décide tout ce que la marionnette fait et dit. En fait, s’il décide tout d’un coup d’improviser, il peut donner de nouvelles paroles à la marionnette, sans objection, parce qu’elle n’est pas capable de protester. Alors, le manipulateur contrôle aussi la direction de l’histoire. Ainsi, les inégalités de la capacité à dire ce que l’on veut rend toujours la marionnette subordonnée au manipulateur. C’est la raison pour laquelle le chien dans White dog n’aboie que quand son manipulateur le veut, et les marionnettes dans Avenue Q chante quand leurs manipulateurs décident de chanter. Grâce à cette inégalité, la marionnette est toujours obligée de suivre le manipulateur qui dirige l’histoire.

Langston Hughes and Pragmatic Pacifism

In both his dispatches in the Spanish Civil War and his contemporaneous poetry of life in Black America, Langston Hughes brings forth, into the larger conversation of peace, justice, and human rights studies, a methodology that I call “pragmatic pacifism,” which imagines positive peace as a goal, while sustaining negative pacifist policy in the process of attaining that global culture of peace. With his theory, Hughes elevates the conquest of peace to a certainly realistic one, involving ruthlessly destroying foreign fascism, as well as systematically dismantling domestic racism. Given his violent methods for the former, however, it is difficult to declare Hughes a genuine pacifist without understanding his mixed ideologies and relabeling his beliefs under the structure of pragmatic pacifism, a methodology that he actively attempts to leverage in contemporaneous policy. Nevertheless, Hughes presents a novel style of pacifism that employs violent and militant techniques with pacifist motivations to instill a long-lasting culture of equal opportunity, regardless of demographic differences. This innovative technique for pacifism may ultimately be the most effective pacifist stance yet formulated, as it rests upon nonradical governmental changes, without necessitating the elimination of any government structures, such as the military, while simultaneously demanding massive societal reconsiderations, meriting the end of unjustified social practices, such as institutionalized racism.

Giving the Self to the World Beyond

If we elect, we may become the culmination of all that has come before us. Gleaning from the examples of previous generations, we explore expression in an attempt to precisely define our thoughts and emotions in all the complexity they deserve. We struggle to see through the clouds of our consciousness, finding hints of the faraway stars of our thought in our use of techniques passed down to us.

In William Shakespeare’s sonnets; Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos; Jack Kerouac’s Book of Haikus; and Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker’s cutting-edge exploration of the Bebop solo, each artist utilized contemporary techniques, improved by preceding generations’ lengthy experimentation, to relinquish themselves to their audience, leaving nothing behind but the space in which they used to reside. Despite the variances in each of these artists’ methods, their work allowed their souls to transcend the vessel of their lives, to become part of humanity. We, as passive onlookers in times far past their own, must only ask how they attained artistic immortality and how we may follow their lead.

Combating Ignorance with a Fateful Past

In “1945-1985: Poem for the Anniversary,” Mary Oliver weaves her seemingly pleasant ambivalence in traipsing through forestry with the grave consequences of global indifference: the millions massacred in the magnitude of the Holocaust. Though she dreams of aberrating throughout the natural beauties surrounding her, gleefully eying the creatures enclaving her, she notes that even in “lush, green, musical Germany,” when others aspired to similarly descry requiescence in the ignorance of their surroundings, the results of ignoring their responsibilities were catastrophic. In fact, by personifying the German populace of the early 20th century as Mengele sipping wine on a beautiful afternoon in his garden, Oliver condemns all copacetic ignorance, as, in ignoring our responsibilities, any ataraxia stems from devitalizing sources that may be too easily forgotten.

Balancing Unfulfilled Potential with the Demands of Patriarchy

“Biography of an Armenian Schoolgirl” by Naomi Shihab Nye tells a tale of lost chances, empty fate, and life abandoned in the unnecessary demands patriarchies force unto the women in their midst. While the narrator revels in her reveries of one day escaping to a land of liberation, she remains tied to a life in which she is betrothed to a “man with no hair” and purchases her necessities “from the vendor with the humped back.” Although she imagines herself one day flying away like the scattered pages of her thrown textbooks, the protagonist is forever incarcerated in femininity within the Armenian patriarchy, only gazing out at the phantasmagorical scenes beyond her cell window in order to distract herself from her externally validated, yet internally despised, bromidic lifestyle.