Is bigger always better. Are the large stone figures on Easter island. ….puppets? Shambling along the shoreline of Easter Island with its stone statues cradled under his arms. Germut, the nephew of the biblical Goliath was arrested by 300 crewman of a U.S. aircraft carrier, USS Gittite, for allegedly removing inventory from a United Nations Heritage park. It was akin to a scene in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels . He was later released after questioning and charges were dropped.His assistant eluded capture. The towering nephew, his mug shot (which will be posted in a coming column ), reveals a height of 14 cubits and 2 spans, or roughly 24 feet tall, and 2000 lbs, taller and apparently more lyrical and poetic than our knowledge his notorious uncle would indicate.
Germut claims the Moai statues are actually form part of a Marionette puppet theatre and that the Polynesian Island is a puppet centre. Furthermore, he claims and that his team built the big weird statues, but left them unfinished until needed. His new play, ”Death of David” turns the table on Goliath’s misrepresentation as an archetype for paganism and satan. ”Its about catching that little creep with a slingshot, and setting the record straight,…f—in prick plagiarized my uncle’s psalms, he added . Alas, the curse of the puppet master. Germut informed his captors, that puppets often elude human control and they contain quirky, complex forces not easy to comprehend, and for his expeditious release from custody, he would not turn captain and crew into wood puppets as he had previously done with Somali pirates who attempted to corner him for ransom.He quoted Dante’s Divine Comedy, as a clue to his next production dealing with male mid- life crisis, ” In the midway of this our mortal lives, I found me in a gloomy wood astray, gone from the path direct”.
.“Puppetry is always thought of as for kids, and cute, little, soft, talking animals,” he said. “And so I’ve spent the better part of two decades trying to wrest the form from that preconception.” ( Ronnie Burkett ); who has pushed the limits of puppets into both a fine art and dramatic art showdown with innovative theater design, composition, narrative and quality workmanship of his original puppets, which effectively, are fine art collectibles. It is Puppet theatre where the puppet master is not invisible, but on stage interacting with his puppets, almost an invocation of the craft of ventriloquist and perhaps, to borrow from the world of circus, a puppet tamer.
“These puppets are built and designed and exist solely to be those characters. It’s a whole kind of weird chemistry magic thing that goes on, because I don’t really make them come alive. I do the voice and I move them around, but the audience has to suspend their disbelief. And when they do THAT, that’s when the character comes alive. And the audience doesn’t know they’re doing that, but they’re actually giving those things breath when they admit and get over the fact that these things don’t breathe and they don’t think. But I can always tell that moment in the show when the audience goes to that place.” ( Ronnie Burkett, Playwrights Canada Press )
What passion can do!