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Report: France

Puppets take over town in eastern France

The 18th International Puppet Theatre Festival is underway in Charleville-Mézières. Held every two years, it hosts all kinds of puppet theatre from 25 countries. Some of the shows make their debut here, while others make the most of the big gathering which attracts locals as well as professional puppeteers or fans from as far away as Japan.

Magic Mirror, a hall installed in the Place Ducale
Magic Mirror, a hall installed in the Place Ducale Rosslyn Hyams
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Charleville-Mézières, the regional capital of the French Ardennes, is a world puppet centre. About 240km east of Paris, it’s the home of the International Puppetry Institute and France’s National Puppet Art School.

The bi-annual festival started out on a local level in 1961. It’s been held every two years since 2009. A puppet theatre lover called Jacques Félix got together with friends to indulge their passion. Today, according to the festival director, 40 per cent of more than 500 shows are from outside of France. Most of those are from Europe, from nearby Belgium, but also from the Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain.

Puppeteers from the other side of the world also make the journey, a sort of pilgrimage from places where this traditional performance thrives: for example Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam. Culturally, the festival is a vibrant mixture. Burkinabé and Malagasy puppetry is part of the French contingent.

As the years pass, new forms of puppet theatre emerge using new materials and leaving their enclosed stalls to take up entire stages, as well as in the streets. However, some puppets and forms remain popular.

The Magic Mirror, a temporary 19th century-style theatre set up in the grand Place Ducale in Charleville-Mézières, houses the festival’s daily ‘Poliduchales’. It is a take on the French character Polichinelle, which has roots in the 16th-century Italian Pulcinella. Also inspiring the British Mr Punch, of Punch and Judy, the character has long enchanted children and adults alike.

“Puppet theatre is for all ages,” says Anne-Françoise Cabanis, who is the director of the International Puppet Theatre Festival in France. “It’s not really for children, although it can be. From its origins, puppets have been for the family - in fact, for adults. There is however in all puppet forms a sense of childhood, giving an imaginary life to a doll (poupée in French, whence the word puppet) or an object. I think that all adults have something of the child in them. It’s something ‘noble’.”

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