Object Puppetry

Object theatre explores the expressive, dramatic and narrative power of everyday things. In the place of crafted puppets, the performers of Lunatique Fantastique use ordinary/found objects either in their raw form or rapidly altered in front of the audience. Everyday objects displace traditional crafted realistic or fantasy figures-a little girl might be represented by a napkin; a box becomes a pulpit, a gurney, a church. Because they are free of an imposed personality/identity, mundane objects activate the imagination and creative intelligence of puppeteer and audience. Since Lunatique Fantastique is a company in the forefront of this kind of object-based puppet theatre, they are simultaneously discovering and inventing a new form, continuously trying new possibilities! In a recent piece, for instance, they incorporated food, and a manipulator's bare head becomes a penguin's belly.

Working within a flexible creative process (some pieces, for instance may originate with the artistic director's story idea, some may spring from objects introduced by other members of the ensemble), Lunatique Fantastique has developed its entire body of staged works through collaboration.

The work is very low-tech, performed on a tabletop with the puppeteers usually hooded and black-clad but visible. The audience can see how it is all done, created out of nothing special, brought to life through movement and gesture. In one recent show, for instance, wrapping paper is twisted into a femme fatal, and a crab is made up of two soup spoons, two dinner forks, and two dessert forks. And because the puppet-objects have no manufactured, crafted personality, the audience is half creating what they "see." They are partners in the creative act.