Museu da Marioneta

Directed by: Stephen Mottram For: Puppeteers, actors and dancers Number of participants: 12 Language: English and Portuguese
A workshop about why things move in the way they do, and how knowing about this helps the puppeteer to express ideas more successfully to an audience. “It is important for the puppeteer to become aware that every movement on stage means something to the audience. Often in order to communicate clearly with the audience we must reduce the movement activity of a puppet down to the bare essentials to be sure the correct information is conveyed. Often the ‘intuition’ of the puppeteer will add in movement details which feel right, but which in fact interfere with the message of the puppet.
I think that an understanding of how movement tells the audience things, needs to be a big part of the development of all performance work with puppets. We will look at the way we take in information from things as they move. This study will include a detailed analysis of how human and animal bodies behave in loco¬motion. A large part of the work will be based on movement sequencing – how everyday movements often have a simple set of elements which we immediately identify in order to ‘see’ the movement. We will look at many aspects of focus – how creatures demonstrate their consciousness. We will look at body language and the relationship between the mechanical and emotional basis of our movement. We will also look at prioritizing movement, when designing marionettes and other puppet figures. We will see how design impacts on performance and the movement expression of our puppets. We will try to find ways to exploit simple knowledge of how creatures move, in the way we think about what we want our puppets to do when we make them. We will also try to become more conscious of the mechanical reality of certain types of behavior so that we can build this directly into our figures”.There will be some limited making and construction elements to the whole work¬shop, but the emphasis at all times will be movement and performance.
Stephen Mottram is an artist, craftsman and puppeteer. In 1980 he joined a traditional English marionette company and in 1982 won an Arts Council bursary, which took him to the Hungarian State Puppet Theatre School in Budapest. Since 1988 he has been developing a unique theatre language, which exploits the relationship between electro-acoustic music and the movement-image. His performances are the result of detailed collaboration with the composers with whom he works. His solo show “In Suspension” has travelled all over the world. His performance “The Seed Carriers” has so far toured to over 18 countries and won three international awards. Stephen has also worked on a number of films including “The Little Shop of Horrors”, “Tales from the Decameron” and “Strings” – a marionette feature film whose UK premiere was at the London International Film Festival in 2004.
Ciclo: Funicular Project