The ERC  PuppetPlays project : contribution for a non-linear history of the European theatre

This article is a presentation of the ERC Advanced Grant project PuppetPlays - Reappraising Western European Repertoires for Puppet and Marionette Theatre (GA 835193). After a short overview of the project itself, it begins with a definition of puppetry, based on the phenomenon of double vision. Then it explains the choice of the corpus limitations, describes the variety of the available resources, and underlines the great discrepancy in the amount of material available in the different countries. The article continues with a brief overview of the role played by puppetry in the wider frame of performing arts: how much can we consider that puppeteers developed specific repertoires? What kind of differences can be observed between puppet or marionette theatre and actors’ theatre? The answers to these questions differ in a considerable way according to the cultural and sociological contexts: sometimes puppet and marionette theatre were the only forms of performance allowed, and they acted as substitutes for actors theatre; but sometimes also - and this is increasingly the case since the end of the 19th century - these instruments were chosen for their specific expressive qualities. In a last movement, I emphasize that collecting and analyzing puppet and marionette repertoires brings us to reconsider the general historiography of theatre: firstly, because we bring into the light theatrical genres that have been neglected by the historians; and secondly, because the plays written by the puppeteers, when we look closely at them, reveal a stratification of different layers that can be considered as a kind of heterochrony ; an alternative construction to social time. The forgotten patrimony of puppet and marionette dramaturgy conceals therefore many possibilities for research in humanities and social sciences.