Tamasaburo Bando Poster Exhibition at The Japan Foundation in Toronto (2012)

Sign at the entrance of The Japan Foundation in Toronto (2012)

I've written before about my fascination with Tamasaburo Bando, since I saw a video of him performing till the moment I had the chance to watching him performing live in Beijing in 2008. Today I celebrate The Japan Foundation brings to Toronto some posters and photo books as well as screenings of some of his greatest performances and, specially, an amazing documentary, The Written Face.

While watching those amazing images today I found a very interesting quotation. When Tamasaburo was 20, in 1970, Yukio Mishima wrote of him, amazed by his face and his performance:  

"The fascination of this beautiful young man is of another era than our own. But it may carry with it a magical power, which by the right and privilege of his young age, will succeed in completely overturning the prevailing tastes of our time."

Posters viewed through the outside window at The Japan Foundation (2012)

Posters viewed through the outside window at The Japan Foundation (2012)

Flyer given as a gift for attending the Tamasaburo Bando Poster Exhibition at The Japan Foundation in Toronto (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.

Helene Weigel in Mother Courage (Mutter Courage): Screen photographs of her acting and gestures.

Rehearsal of Mutter Courage (Berlin, Deutsche Theater. 1949. photo by Willi Saeger)
From left to right: Erich Engel, Bertold Brecht, Paul Dessau and Helene Weigel.

 

Helene Weigel is one of the greatest actresses of the theatre of the twentieth century and she more than anyone was the living proof of Brechtian  theories on acting.

We could read dozens of books on Brecht's performances and how he taught his theories, even more, we could read dozens of biographies of actors who worked with him, but none of this would be compared with direct observation and watching performances given by actors and actresses who assimilated such theories. Helene Weigel is gone but, luckily for us, some documents were recorded and filmed with her work, documents that not only identify her artistic greatness but become a kind of acting teachers, transmitting her form (or style) of acting that otherwise would have dissolved over time in the memory of her spectators and the death itself of its representatives. 

 

I explain this again in this blog (I did previously with Meyerhold's The Inspector General): thanks to certain developments within everyone's reach we can see in a more effective way these film-documents: screen shots made with the computer.  Viewing a video of a performance itself is very interesting, but the possibility of holding postures and gestures of that performance is phenomenal; theatrical photography, which is is an interesting document in itself, of course, is not taken at the moment of the movement itself, but is often taken at moment where the motion stops, while the images that we capture directly from the computer screen where we're watching the film or video is a forced stopping of the image.  It is not the beauty of the position or of the image but the functionality of the image for the observer what I value in it.
I found, in a BBC documentary on Brechtian theater, some shots of the filming of a performance of the play Mutter Courage directed by Bertold Brecht himself and played by none other than Helene Weigel; although it is a very short video,  I decided to segment the video into stills of her movement and gesture, and I think it's definitely of great value for anyone interested in the history of acting and in the dissection of living documents dissection of stage creators.

Enjoy it.

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.

Good Friday Parade in Little Italy (Toronto. 2012)

From St. Francis de Assisi Church throughout all Little Italy, Toronto:

Good Friday Parade in Little Italy (Toronto. 2012), a set on Flickr.

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.