More About the Puppet Show at the Frye

A picture of a housewife who appears to be in some sort of hell populated only by Muppets. A room full of wooden ventriloquist puppets dancing on the floor, their clomping so intense it sounds like an earthquake. Wooden furniture giving birth to baby furniture, dressed in Baby Gap. A video of the Harvard Arts Building, expanding and contracting and expanding, as its marionette architect looks away in distress.

The idea for the Puppet show at the Frye initially came from the play "Ubu Roi." In a program leaflet, it is said that Ubu provided the perfect "allegory of grotesque government and acts of puppet transgression". The idea of puppet transgression is quite apparent within the exhibit; the clomping marionettes by Dennis Oppenheimer look like they're transgressing the line between human and puppet. In another room, with a picture of Meryl Streep, it seems as if the puppets (the Muppets) have taken over the soundstage, transgressing their role as that which is to be controlled by humans.

There are also other, broader, political allegories. As Jen Graves wrote in the Stranger about the show, "what better way to further the questions of pop and minimalism (and the entire political situation of the 20th century) than puppetry? It's the oldest question—which parts of us do we control and which parts belong to systems that pull our strings?—asked another way." Puppets, metaphorically, could be seen as the us within our political system, or the identities we create online in our increasingly mediated world.

I was happy to see Ubu Roi and the Truth Commission presented on the television sets in the back room. Here is a play that makes perfect use of puppets. The alligator, Niles, represents Pa Ubu's denial. As he stuffs the alligator full of papers, things Pa would love to forget, the alligator shudders and groans. He has trouble digesting the information, the same way the audience has trouble digesting such grim tales of Apartheid violence. Later, puppets are used abstractly to represent various witnesses to the atrocities of Apartheid. These puppets haunt Pa Ubu, they call out to him from their wooden mouths. Pa would like to think of them as complete abstractions, as the unreal. It would be easier for him to imagine them this way than to imagine them as human beings. Through the use of puppets, theatergoers can fully understand the extent of Pa's denial.