Puppetry and Dramaturgy: Western European Plays for Puppet Theatre, 1582-2020

This open access book presents the results and conclusions of research conducted by the author, and assisted by a team of young researchers brought together in the PuppetPlays project funded by the European Research Council. It is the first international survey to examine Western European puppetry through a systematic study of its repertoires, composed by writers or by the puppeteers themselves.

From improvised farces to the refined Baroque operas, from the parodies of institutional stages to the experiments of Modernism, from chivalric epics to contemporary dramaturgy, puppet repertoires are extraordinarily diverse. Their performances have been for centuries the only kind of theatre that many people could attend, but also a means of dramaturgical innovation. Their plays have crossed linguistic, geographical and social boundaries, adapting and spreading the great myths and classics of Western culture, and helping to build Europe’s cultural identity.

The analysis of these repertoires sheds new light on the history of theatre and society. When and how did puppet theatre compete with actors’ theatre? When and how did it serve as a laboratory for new dramaturgies? Why do writers and performing artists chose to use them today? These questions can only be answered through a close examination of the many forgotten or unpublished sources collected by the PuppetPlays project.

Didier Plassard is full professor in Drama and Performance Studies at the Université Paul-Valéry (Montpellier), France. His research fields include avant-garde theatre, stage direction, dramaturgy, multimedia, and puppetry. Main publications: L’Acteur en effigie (L’Age d’homme, 1992); Les Mains de lumière (Institut International de la Marionnette, 1996, 2004); Edward Gordon Craig, The Drama for Fools / Le Théâtre des fous (L’Entretemps, 2012); Mises en scène d’Allemagne(s) (CNRS Éditions, 2014). Since October 2019, he has been the Principal Investigator of PuppetPlays, a research project funded by the European Union (ERC Advanced Grant 835193).