Puppet Museum (Museu da Marioneta) in Lisbon.

Puppet Museum (Museu da marioneta) entrance in Lisbon. (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

I know, I did travel to Lisbon at the end of September 2011, but as with many other experiences in my travels I could not share it when this happened. To every thing its time comes.

That visit to Portugal was a total delight, and although I did not see a single play or dance performance (I remind you that I actually went to a party to Andalusia, where I would give my first presentation of Butoh to a live audience), there were some "performance" experience worth sharing. One of these experiences has already appeared in this Blog: Hieronymus Bosch painting "The Temptation of St. Anthony", a masterpiece at the National Art Museum in Lisbon. Today I offer you a second one I consider interesting to share: the pictures I took inside the Puppet Museum in Lisbon (Museu da Marioneta).

Lisbon is a city of lovely and very old neighborhoods, we can walk among streets with Roman ruins, Islamic period buildings, medieval churches or, especially, Portuguese imperial era squares and palaces, take a charming tram or even a street elevator to a "miradour". Yes, walking is the best way to know and enjoy the city. So in one moment you get to discover the beautiful facade of the former Convent das Bernardas, a seventeenth century building (today completely remodeled) that now houses the Museo da Marioneta (The Puppet Museum).

Puppet Museum in Lisbon, former Convento das Bernardas. (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Of course, inside the tourist guide a museum dedicated to puppets does not have a big role but even though I wanted to visit it; I had the wrong idea (read somewhere before my arrival) that Asian puppet tradition entered though Portugal and its influence caused the development of puppet theater in Europe, so I wanted to see those objects-documents (the puppets) who testified that idea. As I said before it was not an entirely correct information: yes, there is a whole ancient tradition of puppet theater in Portugal but there is no great evidence of ancient Asian influence in it; the Portuguese Puppet tradition comes originally from the southern province of Alentejo, with the puppets of Santo Aleixo, which were very famous in the late eighteenth century, currently enjoying a renaissance in the same  Portuguese province with performances, festivals and exhibitions of ancient collections.

Boneços de Santo Aleixo, Puppet Museum in Lisbon (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

My visit to this museum in Lisbon could not be what I was expecting at first but it paid off, I enjoyed  the big collection of puppets from around the world on display, as well as the curious creations of several Portuguese Puppet theatre companies of the twentieth century, especially by the promoter for the realization of this museum, the puppet company of S. Lourenço.

As I'm used to do, I'll show you the more interesting pictures (in my point of view, of course) but you have in the end a slideshow with all of them; in the same way you can visit flickr.com and open the album (following the link from each photo) and see them with more calm on that site.

Stage of traditional Portuguese puppet theatre. Puppet Museum in Lisbon (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Portuguese puppets from beginning of twenty century. Puppet Museum in Lisbon (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Modern Portuguese Puppet. Puppet Museum in Lisbon (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Modern Portuguese Puppet. Puppet Museum in Lisbon (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Vietnamese aquatic puppets. Puppet Museum in Lisbon (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Indonesian puppets. Puppet Museum in Lisbon (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

 

Indian elephant Puppet. Puppet Museum in Lisbon (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Slideshow (36 photographs) of Museu da Marioneta in Lisbon

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Henrik Ibsen advices to a young writer.

Laura Petersen (Later Laura Kieler)

 
In 1870 he was not at the peak of his career but he was already famous and a controversial writer, a good poet and was on his way to becoming an European personality; around his 40s Henrik Ibsen could receive letters with texts of new born writers, especially women writers.
Laura Petersen, a Norwegian young writer, published a kind of sequel to Ibsen’s poetic play Brand entitled Brand’s Daughters. Michael Meyer, Ibsen’s biographer, depicts this text as “an imaginary sequel (...) an emotional contribution to the debate on women’s rights”. Today we recognize Ibsen as a 19th century champion for women rights (thanks to some of his plays of maturity), but in that time, around 1870, that wasn't a very easy subject for him.  In fact, he wasn't a very open minded man about that: when he was younger and living in Italy he asked for the expulsion of some members of the Scandinavian Club in Rome who let their wives enter to the club (reserved only for men) without being noticed; and years later he used to have some lively debates with Camilla Collet, a Norwegian novelist recognized by her fighting for women rights; Collet, following Meyer’s text “... was scandalized by what she regarded as an old fashioned man about ideas on women’s place in society”.

So, when Laura Petersen sent to him her Brand’s Daughters asking for advice, one could only expect the letter would be ignored or at least rejected in a polite way.  But no, something happened to Ibsen when young women writers approached to him asking for advice.  Suddenly, the gentleman surged from him,  and a patient and kind wise man always replied. Thanks to that attitude towards young women artists we can now read a document with some advices, coming from his own hand, directed to a young writer.
Letter to Laura Petersen (June 11, 1870):
"Are you thinking of continuing to write? (…) Much more is needed than mere talent. One must have something to create from, some genuine experience. If one lacks that, one doesn't write in the true sense, one just makes books (…) Intellectually, man is a long-sighted animal; we see most clearly from a distance; details distract; one must remove oneself from what one wishes to judge; one describes the summer best on a winter's day (…) The main thing is to be true and faithful to oneself. It is not question of willing to go in this direction or that, but of willing what one absolutely must, because one is oneself and cannot be otherwise. The rest is only lies." (*) 

Laura Petersen never went out from Ibsen's life, both were linked for ever; she married later and her name changed to Laura Kieler, and a terrible real anecdote with her husband was Ibsen's inspiration for A Doll's House; Nora Hellmer was modeled on this young lady who was thinking on women rights since her adolescence.

Ibsen, with the honesty and wisdom his letter shows, was not only a good mentor to Laura Petersen but a prophet of his own future way to work.


 





 

(*) Henrik Ibsen Biography. By Michael Meyer. Page 320.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

"At the other half upon the journey of my life...

This was during my last rehearsal in November 2011 (Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Blogs, I know, no longer are, in the hyper fast and ephemeral world of internet, the only way of personal contact between the author and his readers, but in my case they may be the only way to stay a little longer in the reader's memory (digital memory) than is achieved with an update on my professional facebook page or the seconds following the publication of 140 words in my twitter.  My theatre blog here on Blogger remains a recurring place for those who want information about me, my work and my dreams themselves as creator and as a person. In that sense I now use it after so long an absence.

For several months I've been away from my professional life as a theater watcher and narrator, as a writer and practitioner on the scene, and that's been due to the "overwhelming" need to stay almost motionless and due to being engulfed an altered state of my mind with powerful pain medication that would not let my head function normally and coherently.

In early January 2012, after two months of clinical tests and an annoying illness, I had to undergo neck surgery to get rid of two huge blood clots that had become completely infected all around. The cause? A Butoh exercise performed with extreme depth and concentration (in excess), coupled with a lack of medical care; the specialist's confusion led him to delay longer than he should have in trying to discover the cause (and possible consequences) of the lumps in my neck, without realizing the dangerous infection that developed unhindered by medication for almost a full month. The surgery, an emergency one, fast and simple, was quite successful, but recovery has been long and painful. The healing of the wound, which in English is called "packing", consists of keeping the wound open until it heals "itself" helped only by daily changes of dressings that fill the gaps to try to maintain the skin moistured and prevent the closing of the wound too soon leaving gaps that may cause other abscesses in the future.

Two months have passed so far and I can barely see the beginning of the end of the healing process; although it hasn't closed completely, the wound is already healed by some 90% and I hope that in about two weeks it will have healed fully.

This unfortunate event interrupted a very interesting part of my creative life because I was immersing myself in the creation of my first professional Butoh performance; after nearly two years of study and practice I was at the right time to start.  Also, the very long process of publishing the book of the Acting Method by Gonzalez Caballero had to come to a stop (I'm at the end of 25 years of work with this book), as well as my current analyses on my theatre and acting techniques blog that follow from the work of the four authors proponents of this method of acting: Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov and Pirandello. That which I was able to continue was my practice of painting and drawing in digital format, and thanks to the altered states of my mind caused by medicine and pain, the writing of poetry.

I restart my professional work slowly and with new energy, without fear of cliché, I promote in me the idea of a renaissance: and I am clearly walking in the other "half of the road of life", outside of that dark and ominous forest in which I fell for many moments of uncertainty and pain.



Thanks for following and staying close.



Gustavo Thomas
Toronto, Canada
March, 2012.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.