| In the wake of human rights abuses by a repressive military regime, Graciela Monteagudo set out to bring the perpetrators to justice. Although the Argentinian regime had collapsed in 1983, many of its members were still living quietly in Buenos Aires and Monteagudo wanted to out them. Accompanied by musicians and fire-spinners, she used puppets to tell the story of the regime and its brutality to the residents of the neighbourhoods where its ex-leaders were living.
Monteagudo is coming to Calgary this week as part of the bi-annual Puppet Power Conference, whose theme this year is the use of puppets for social change. Organized by local W.P. Puppet Theatre Society, the conference runs May 25 to 27 and features workshops and performers from around the world, tackling both the nuts and bolts of making puppets and using art as a tool for political activism.
After Argentina’s economic crash in 2001, Monteagudo holed up in an abandoned building with fellow puppeteers to build a show about the millions who had been plunged into poverty by the downturn. They took the show through the streets of Buenos Aires and gathered feedback from victims of the crash. When she performed at a Buenos Aires factory where police had killed one of the workers during the civil unrest that followed the economic crash, the scene turned emotional. "There were people crying. Those folks loved the show; they were happy to see that we would tell their story," she says.
Monteagudo started combining puppets with activism when she was a university student. She and fellow activists demonstrated against university tuition fees by blocking the doors of their school with puppets and engaging passersby in conversations about the issues.
Monteagudo says she turned to using puppets to combine her love of art with her political awareness. "(Art) can give a political cause a more emotional level," she says.
Over the years, her activism took her across the hemisphere, putting on shows in several cities. One trip brought her to Calgary in 2002 for protests against the G8 summit, where she staged street theatre with Bread and Puppets Theatre. While her goals are long-term, her work gives her satisfaction and has helped connect her to people across the hemisphere. "Art can communicate a social and political message," she says. "We can take joy in the struggle to change this world."
For Wendy Passmore, artistic director of W.P. Puppet Theatre, politics and puppetry are a perfect fit. "You’ve made (the puppet) yourself, it’s a person," she says. "Even making art is a revolutionary act in itself."
Previously, she’s used puppet shows to explain complex environmental and social issues to elementary school children, including the destruction of the rainforest and the need to save endangered species. In some cases, kids who’ve seen her shows have told her that they wanted to be involved in some of the issues she had raised, and Passmore hopes to do the same with the conference.
At the conference, local groups will hold a social action fair to let people know how to become active in the city, while a panel discussion will explore human rights topics. On Saturday, participants will practice building giant puppets of the kind used by Monteagudo and parade them around the campus of the University of Calgary. In her suburban garage, Passmore already has a few puppets made, ranging from a cardboard dragon to a foam owl, and hopes to build many more in the hour and a half-long workshop.
The most important thing is to put on a good show, she says. "My goal has always been to produce good theatre. When it’s good, you’ve affected your audience in some way."
Gary Friedman, the conference’s keynote speaker, sees puppets simply as a tool for the message he’s trying to communicate. The puppets themselves have no sentimental value, he says, but are effective in communicating messages that can otherwise be hard to get across. "You can get away with saying a lot more," he says.
He started using puppets to speak out against apartheid in his native South Africa in the 1980s because the government at the time was intolerant of dissent. On a couple of occasions, he was beaten up in the street for his work but remained undeterred, later using puppets to travel the world and educate about AIDS. His travels took him from African villages to the Canadian Arctic, where he trained local puppeteers. Several hundred puppeteers he trained in Kenya over 15 years ago are still thriving and holding their own festival in Nairobi.
A few years ago, he stumbled across a puppet play written by a 13-year-old boy in a concentration camp and set about giving it its first production. The play, Looking for a Monster, is an allegory about tyranny whose young author, Hanus Hachenburg, died at Auschwitz in 1944. He is currently working on a documentary about Hachenburg and fellow child artists who lived in the concentration camp at Terezin in what is now the Czech Republic.
While his puppets and locales have varied widely over the years, Friedman says that people are essentially the same and puppetry is an effective way to get them talking. "I like to think of all the work having an impact on people’s lives," he says. "If I can just touch people and inspire them, or get them to do inspiring work."
The Puppet Power Conference runs May 25 to 27 at the University of Calgary. Participants can register by visiting www.wppuppet.com or calling (403) 228-3373. |
Copyright ©2007 FFWD. All rights reserved.