Puppets (review 1)

Puppets, a form of theatre that requires mastery of skill, great humour, a good plot and a lot of heart.

Hold that thought.

Now take a combi to Centro Fundación Telefónica Av. Arequipa 1155 Santa Beatriz, Lima. Watch the entire show.
Did your thoughts evolve to "THANK GOD IT WAS FREE, I JUST WAISTED AND HOUR AND A HALF ON THIS C-R-A-P".

Upon entering, the "stage" is set up in a black, box shaped room like structure in which the puppeteers operate from the inside while the puppets are shown on the top, you assume that the black cloth would prevent the puppeteers hands from showing but... the lighting, or the lack there of, was terrible.


The first mini play was called "El zorro y el Puma", set in a desert land with a soft andean music in the background, you think "hey, this could be good."

You were wrong.

Through a series of predictable twists, turns, chases and falls, it tells the story of a lonesome wolf who trips around the desert searching for food. On his way he encounters a squirrel, a grey form of Scrat ripoff (the squirrel from Ice Age robbie... the squirrel from Ice Age...) whom he misserably attempts and fails to eat. (Predictably, of course, the wolf is hurt during the process, this does get several laughs from the kids and some from adults, but from us, it merely got slight chuckles that expressed our boredom.)
The wolf then is teased by a fly, this, as to be expected, leads to another series of chases and falls. Finally we are introduced to a Puma, who is proudly hiding his fresh food, eventually the wolf finds the food and eats it and the Puma, well, he kicks his butt, for all our sakes.

What I did find interesting from the first play was the use of voice, it was all through sounds that were representative of each animal and they were the most enjoyable, maybe even funny part of the play, but in true crappy puppet show fashion, all good things must never start, or in this case, come to an end. The actors started speaking, the voices were very Risas y salsas-ish and they ended making the play even worse.

The second mini play, "Divertino", was done with another technique, called Visible puppeteer, in which you can see the actual person moving the characters. The actual puppets were interestingly made, out of paper and tape (the kind you put on your radio) and colored with pens and pencils. You think: "isn't he point of puppets that they move on their own? why go that way? hmm, it must be REALLY GOOD to afford doing that".

Again, you were wrong.

This one was about a homeless hippie who steals garbage, on his way he meets an angry cop and a rat who lives in the garbage, they both try to stop him.
The good thing is it had a more developed plot and characters than the first one but again, it became so repetitive that we found ourselves trapped in a loop of bad dialog, and sadly bad puppeteering skills.
In a very kiddie-theatre way, this was the only play that interacted with its audience, unfortunately this made it even more of a cliche and less of an enjoying experience.

The third and last actual play was called "Fuga" and it was part of a series of plays that were adapted for kids, it presented a very intriguing concept: a dead person escaping from death (yes, more chase sequences), sadly...it was bad too.
Death ended beaten up by a Hitler-ish man who dug his way out of the grave, I, on the other hand wanted to dig my way into it.
The music was somber and very Horror movie-esque, there was no use of lights but one candle on the corner that was about to fall and burn the place down...yay.

The last of the mini plays wasn't even a play, it was a series of "dances" of two marionettes, it showed a lack of skill because the so called dance, was just the wiggling of the strings in order for the legs to move, and yes, it was also a complete disaster.

I consider this a learning experience, a how not to, if you will. Since the school play this year will be for children, we needed to learn what were the conventions of that kind of theatre, and this represented every single one (falling, chasing, interacting with kids, etc.) but ended up being just bad theatre.

You see, what was meant to be a celebration of the now established World Puppet Day turned out to be an endless, utterly painful experience. The weird thing is, when we were little toddlers we enjoyed this kind of theatre, we loved to see the main character fall down or be beaten up/ripped to shreds by an andean puma, but now that we are older we see the flaws, we don't se the fun but the flop.

So i can't help but wonder, if we need to put on a good quality play that makes both children and their parents laugh, but we can't do what we saw, what can we do?