Whether or not you have time to read the Longman explanation, this video does a good job describing it for you and showing you some bunraku puppets and puppet-masters in action. If your previous experience of puppets is limited to Sesame Street, this will be eye-opening.
A question to consider: how does the puppet staging of this drama affect how you read or understand the events of the play? Let's take it for granted that seeing any play staged is more powerful than reading it on the page--any performance is going to be more vivid, ore true to the author's vision, and more engaging to the viewer's mind and emotions. Given that basic feature of a performed play, how specifically might the features of bunraku theater affect how you understand the events depicted? Would the puppets/chanter feel more or less artificial than actors on a stage? What additional pleasures might this use of puppets contribute that aren't available in conventional Western forms of drama? Are there parts of the play that you read or understand differently if you know that the dialogue and narration is being contributed by a single person, not individual actors?
Your response doesn't need to answer all of those questions! They are just intended to get you thinking productively about this poetic form.
Deadline: Monday (2/7), 1pm.
5 comments:
One of the things that impressed me most in the bunraku video was how fluid the puppets motions are compared to other puppet performances I have seen. They closely approximate human movements, but slight differences in motion and the presence of the puppeteers make viewers conscious that they are watching puppets.
Because these puppets are controlled by three people who have to synchronize movements, I'm curious how this would impact opportunities for improvisation. In staged dramas with human actors, performers sometimes make slight alterations in their physical or vocal delivery. It seems to me that these subtler improvisations would be difficult to implement in bunraku because of the need for precision and coordination. This would in turn impact how we perceive these plays because certain movements would dominate our interpretation of the chanter's dialogue.
This isn't an entirely negative quality because coordinating the puppeteers' movements allows for manipulation that is not seen in other puppet performances or even some plays with human actors. But bunraku performances likely require a higher degree of standardization that other forms of drama.
I feel that the puppet staging of this drama would give a sense of fluidity of the environment; everyone works together to create what they think the author was attempting to achieve. The puppets move with such fluidity to the music and the narration. There is a certain flow to it where the narrator portrays what he feels through voice and the puppeteers portray through emotion. Even the people who put together the costumes decorate it in such a way that it flows with the story.
There also room for the audience’s imagination to fill in what puppets cannot express, so the audience is also actively included throughout the story.
I think the puppets would feel more artificial than real actors on a stage. As an audience member, it would be easier for me to identify with actual humans portraying a story instead of puppets. I prefer to watch movies that feature human actors verses movies with animated cartoon characters. So I would rather watch a more believable performance with actors. When viewing the Ningyo Johruri Bunraku Puppet Theatre video, I found the three puppeteers to be distracting. Although I was impressed by their teamwork, I think they contributed to the falseness of the play. The puppets are limited to select facial expressions and physical diversity.
I would still be able to understand the story and the actions that take place in the bunraku theatre. The seeing the actuallt people behind the puppets would be a bit distracting(wanting to see the way they operate the puppets) but eventually my attention fall to the story. As long as the person that is portraying each characters voice and reaction does it with a sense of emotion then it would not seem false. A person is able to connect the different characters to a different voice even if they are being done by the same person. Its just as if some tries to mimic someone, the person listening to the impersonation could easily imagine the actual person speaking.
I do think that puppets would feel less real than human actors. However, this is partially because I'm used to seeing human actors on stage. If I were in the audience of an actual production of this play with puppets, I would probably be able to better immerse myself than I can imagine without having done so before.
There are benefits to using puppets, though. I think it might allow an audience to actually feel more in tune with the characters than human actors, because there's more room for the viewer to interpret the words and actions on their own rather than simply viewing someone else's interpretation. It might be interesting to have to use your imagination a bit more when watching puppets who can't change their facial expressions and a narrator who does all the parts.
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