Week VII — Puppets and Actors (Finally!)

"Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in."
— Amy Lowell

 This quote relates to last week's, that is about actors showing themselves rather than hiding onstage. Actors are artists, and acting is an expression. An expression of what is inside the artist, often expressed in a cryptic way so that they are understood just by those who know how to read between the lines. Now, it ranges from a protest against the government, a declaration of love, a feeling of uncomfortableness... The second of the two plays we saw yesterday, called Más pequeños que el Guggenheim, was about a playwright and a director that came back to their country, Mexico, after wandering around Europe and not seeing each other after a decade. And they decide to make a play narrating their misadventures. And in this play, as he wrote it, the playwright deposited parts of himself in there; such as the death of his daughter. The director became an actor too and acted as himself, and put his inner sadness in it. But what does this have to do with the quote? Well, even an actor posing as an actor puts part of himself out there while acting.

Now, actors are not the only artists out there. There are also musicians, for example. Or puppeteers, in that case. But now, let's get back to the question posed two weeks ago. Who is the actor—the puppet or the puppeteer? I'll remind you of the most important things I wrote about the past two weeks in order to answer this question.

• The puppet makes actions—just as actors do.
• Puppets cause effects on the audience.
• An actor is a person that represents something onstage and produces an effect on the audience.
• There are different ways of being an actor.

By "different ways of being an actor" I mean  Stanislavski and Brecht. Andean theater and Kabuki. Puppets and masks. Puppeteers and puppets.

Puppets act, since they represent something onstage and produce an effect on the audience. But does that make them actors? I believe it does. But a lone puppet is lifeless, and it represents nothing. It is by the puppeteer that it comes to life, and it represents what the puppeteer intends it to be; let it be an archbishop, a pirate, a dragon. And isn't then the puppeteer who makes this happen? Well, then the puppeteer is the one who represents something onstage via puppets and produces an effect on the audience. So, the puppeteer is an actor. There you have the answer to the question and the why. Both the puppet and the puppeteer are actors, because together they represent something onstage and produce an effect on the audience.

Now that I have answered that question, I'll leave you with yet another one. What is a mask and how do we use them in daily life?