Sad stories: Spleen, performed in Jakarta on Sunday, was based on the work of Charles Baudelaire and utilized puppets in a “kaleidoscope of pictures, songs and miniatures.” Courtesy of Figurentheater Wilde & VogelThe euphoria of the French Revolution has more or less subsided and the city of Paris was exhausted from successive dictatorships and stubborn socio-economic disparities.
It was in this setting that “cursed poet” Charles Baudelaire wrote his poems published posthumously in 1862 as a collection titled Le Spleen de Paris or The Paris Spleen.
The word “spleen”, embodying all that is bitter and melancholic, is quite befitting for the collection, which tells stories of poverty, temptation and godforsaken characters.
“Which one of us, in his moments of ambition, has not dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of reverie, the jibes of conscience?
It was, above all, out of my exploration of huge cities, out of the medley of their innumerable interrelations, that this haunting ideal was born,” went Baudelaire’s preface to Paris Spleen.
Spleen, directed by Hendrik Mannes and performed by Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel, is a “kaleidoscope of pictures, songs and miniatures” inspired by Paris Spleen.
Having won several awards such as the Grand Prix and two special awards at the International Festival of Puppet Theatre Warsaw in 2009, It was performed Gedung Kesenian Jakarta on Monday. It is scheduled to play in Yogyakarta and Bandung as well.
Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel’s Michael Vogel and Charlotte Wilde delivered an hour-long performance of Spleen that was both haunting and entertaining that night.
It might be tempting to conclude that the characters, such as the forlorn skull wearing a white gown and the frog-like creatures animated through Vogel’s fingers and strings, are simply manifestations of Baudelaire’s poems, which were recited by children, recorded and played on stage.
However, a closer look would reveal that Spleen extends beyond a single interpretation of each of the prose poems by combining various elements, including a song popularized by Johnny Cash and the usage of both puppets and acting techniques.
“What we are doing is very comprised. The music that tells its own story, there is the text to tell its own story and the picture and the puppets also tells its own story and these three make another story altogether. …the puppets are never illustrating the text…” Vogel said after the show.
In one scene, for example, a puppet with the face of a sensuous woman dances slowly to the music played by Wilde, who uses a number of instruments including a guitar, a violin and her own voice.
The puppet’s dance, however, turned into comical convulsions as her face was removed and replaced with a frog’s head.
Vogel then assumed the woman’s face and paired it with a somewhat weathered torso. It is with such happenings that Baudelaire’s N’importe où hors du monde — a rough translation of its first line is “This life is a hospital in which each patient is possessed by the desire to change beds…” — was recited.
Spleen went on to tell more of Baudelaire’s stories, of poor children who introduce the wealthier to their toy of live rats, of other poor fighting tooth and claw for a piece of bread, and of Fancioulle, the doomed jester who was asked to perform before a looming death sentence.
Several times the performance took the audience into grim city nights lightened by street lamps under which various characters perform grotesque little dances of their own, seemingly happy with the superficial pomp and triviality remaining amid the harshness of realities such as poverty and depression.
The audience was treated to several humorous moments, albeit still with a touch of irony such as when a puppet managed to kill the grim reaper at the end of a Punch-and Judy style scene.
Vogel’s puppeteering and acting skills allowed for fluid movements and transitions between the puppets and himself, as he sheds the role of an unconcealed puppet master and becomes the actor on stage. At times, he is both.
According to Vogel, despite his European origins, he is more influenced by Asian puppetry, partly
because the latter has a wider context than pure children’s entertainment, encompassing religion and spirituality.
In fact, he believes that his puppets face “change” as they perform more and more due to a form of energy received from the audience.
“Even after the first night I have the feeling that now the puppet is grown up. I didn’t change anything on the puppet but I look to her and say now he has a place in this earth,” he smiled.
Wilde said that the last scene of the performance was “a joke about a happy ending”, although she said the “real” ending came before. She described it as symbolizing the end of romantic times.
She added, however, that everyone, depending on their knowledge and environment, was entitled to their own interpretation of the scenes. “I would have to say that one message we would have is … about having your own imagination … a free imagination,” she said.
Delina Kasih, a student who was watching the performance, for instance, saw Spleen as a story telling the life of one person from infancy to old age. “I like it, it’s like their version of wayang golek with the jerky movements,” she said.
She added that she had trouble understanding the story due to language barriers.
This is perhaps perpetuated by the usage of children’s voices, at times unclear and monotonous, to recite the prose poems.
Interpretation, then, plays a key role in Spleen, both for the audience and the performers. According to Vogel, he listened to the words through his puppets, as if his frog-like characters were the last ones on earth listening to the funny problems of the human race.
“That’s why [the puppets] are not really characters from the story. And they don’t suffer. Puppets can’t die. They pretend to die … So there’s a lot of puppet reality,” he laughed.
