Jumping Jack

Grangeat Simon

Blin André

Ceronetti Guido

Biancolelli Domenico (aka Dominique)

Two actors, first dressed up as gorillas, relate murders using a ventriloquist dummy and paper toys. The killers – represented by articulated heads – confess the reasons behind their crimes and reveal several details: the arms they used, the time it took for the victims to die, or the amount of blood they shed. They killed out of vengeance, passion, or even because of daily trivial conflicts. The killers’ heads often wear banners asking for forgiveness, and some crimes are told using shadow theatre. After reading each story, the actors stop to sing a nursery rhyme and play a clapping game. The show ends with a murder on stage.

Portugal

Lisbon

Curtas em papel, osso e fel (Compagnie A Tarumba, 2019)

Curtas em papel, osso e fel

García Lorca Federico

Rod marionette

For several years now, the question of the co-presence of the puppeteer and the puppet on stage has become a dramaturgical issue that is increasingly present in contemporary theatre. Numerous artists such as Neville Tranter, Duda Paiva, Ilka Schönbein, Philippe Genty and the Compagnie Mossoux-Bonté have questioned the nature of this co-presence, which presents an ontological ambiguity because it confronts two beings of different essence: one is a subject, in other words a being endowed with consciousness, and the other an object, in other words a thing, which in the reality of the stage appears, or at least tries to appear, as a subject. It is not insignificant to stage human beings with one or more protagonists embodied by puppets. The ontological ambiguity of the puppet offers several possible interpretations of the puppet as a figure of the Other.
My paper looks at the stage writing of two shows by the Belgian company Mossoux-Bonté, Twin Houses and The Great He-Goat, which were created twenty-five years apart. These two shows take a very different, if not opposing, approach to the co-presence of the puppet and the human being. In Twin Houses, a solo with five puppets created in 1994, the puppets appear as doubles of the character played by Nicole Mossoux. The Great He-Goat is a show created in 2019 with ten performers and several hyper-realistic puppets that appear as physically autonomous beings to their human protagonists. 
I will first discuss the creative and writing process of each of the two shows. I will then continue my study by comparing the figure of the Other in these two works in order to analyse how the Mossoux-Bonté company was able to create two forms of otherness between humans and non-humans through two different dramaturgies of co-presence.

8 - Session 11: Two dramaturgies of co-presence by the Compagnie Mossoux-Bonté

Adam

Amnesia

Avarice

Beard

Cabaret

Christmas preparations

Diving suit

Enchanted forest

Fascism

Feast of Saint John

Homesickness

Husband

Imaginary country

Inflation

Initiation tests

Parole

Prosthesis

Robinson

Ugliness

Casperl gets drunk with the hunter Thomerl and Thomerl offers to put Casperl’s wife Grethl to the test: Casperl has to fake an illness that will lead to his death, and Thomerl, disguised as a doctor, will come and certify the death. As soon as Casperl is pronounced dead, Grethl tries to console herself in the arms of Lieutenant Pulvermann. The fake dead man is resurrected, a fight ensues in which Pulvermann is killed and the corpse is taken backstage. A police officer comes to seize Casperl, but husband and wife join forces against the impetuous man, who is forced to give in to the violence. To celebrate their reconciliation, Casperl and Grethl go to the inn, where they also meet with Thomerl.

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Curtas em papel, osso e fel

Federico García Lorca

Rod marionette

8 - Session 11: Two dramaturgies of co-presence by the Compagnie Mossoux-Bonté