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Charlotte Puijk-Joolen: Living a dream on stage
Puppeteer Charlotte Puijk-Joolen is the driving force behind the world-famous The Magical Little Theater (ât Magisch Theatertje), who designs, sculpts and performs all the plays herself
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Puppeteer Charlotte Puijk-Joolen is the driving force behind the world-famous The Magical Little Theater ('t Magisch Theatertje), who designs, sculpts and performs all the plays herself.
Charlotte, who will turn 63 in November, has a wandering mind, but she is not lost. Her interests in the mystery of life and the human subconscious mind are reflected on stage ' her world of dreams.
The Netherlands-based theater recently staged A Little Fairy Tale for toddlers and Cantos Animata for adults at Erasmus Huis in Jakarta, the second visit after last year's Panta Rhei II.
The theater will also perform in Saung Angklung Udjo in Bandung, West Java, on Friday.
There is nothing typical about Charlotte's show and her puppets.
'I use puppets because they can do things actors can't. They can fly, they can move in a way no actors can in a small theater. I like to create my own world, a dream-like world. I want to create three-dimensional paintings, moving paintings. I love to do sculptures and I like to build these atmospheres, these images,' said Charlotte, adding that she usually used archetype characters for her puppets.
'With puppet plays, you don't need to hire actors and you are your own boss,' she quipped.
On the minimalist, darkened stage, surrealist puppets of various sizes and forms take turns presenting images that interweave with each other, although do not necessarily build a story.
Charlotte said that some of her audience members had shared with her their own associations of the whole performance which, she said, were a bit different to what she had originally intended to convey.
At the outset of Panta Rhei, for example, the audience interpreted the image of a shadow popping out into a human being as a representation of birth, while Charlotte said it depicted the world of inspiration.
'When you are inspired by things you see images in your head, but they are not really there. I make the images materialize, like the shadow, and suddenly they are there.'
In her imaginary world, the use of narration is at a minimum, so action on stage can resonate with the audience.
With 30 years in the world of performing art and 20 years of creating her own shows, Charlotte is an artistic genius who combines movement, texture of fabric, light and sound to build emotion to the play.
From the age of 16, she studied art at the Utrecht Art School and continued her study at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht where she learned scenography, the art of theater design and costumes.
She had worked for and with different theater companies and artists until she decided to work 'from inside outside' and specialized in puppetry.
She worked together with Henk Boerwinkel of the renowned Theater Triangel for 10 years, her tutor in puppetry.
Henk, now retired, encouraged her to create her own performances. She founded her award-winning little theater that has performed in more than 35 countries.
For each performance she created 20 to 25 puppets and it took two to three years to complete the whole story.
'I never work on a story. I have the images in my head, I have a theme. I work like a painter ' from one image comes another ' and so the story is developed,' said Charlotte.
Her favorite creations are the hand-puppet dwarf and the mask of The Woman with Branches on Her Head, or Taka Frau, as she as fondly named.
While most of her puppets come from her imagination, one is modeled on a real person.
'I met a woman on my trip to Tibet. She was so beautiful with wrinkles all over her face. I took a picture of her and modeled The Very Old Woman mask on her,' she said, referring to a character in Cantos Animata.
She refused to be called a genius, saying she often failed to present the images. When she started working on Panta Rhei, where she wanted to depict human beings growing into the 'light', she failed to find the right technique to create it.
'It was just recently that we found a very thin fabric that if I put a light on it, it looked as if it had disappeared. I'm going to use the scene for our next project, Exuvia.'
She has invested everything in the theater with her husband Roel Puijk, a light sculpture artist who is the technical director at the theater. Their elder daughter Ananda Puijk, a stage actress and independent producer, gave new energy to the theater from 2005 upon Charlotte's request while she was working on the large-scale Cantos Animata.
'I told her I needed someone who can move [in theatrical performance], someone to create with. We collaborated and supported each other,' Charlotte said. 'Performing has become a family business for us,' she said jokingly.
The family, which includes Ananda's husband and 14-month-old daughter, travels together and builds the props by themselves, dismantling them after the show.
'We should have hired a technician, but I don't think we can afford it,' she said.
All the preparation and cleaning-up has taken its toll, with Charlotte deciding to take a long break after finishing the production of Exuvia in December.
The influence of Buddhism and Sufism in her work will be also expressed in Exuvia ' a term in biology for the cast-off, outer skin of an arthropod after molting ' which will probably be her last masterpiece.
'I want to take time for myself and help my daughter with her own performances. I don't want to stop but I don't think I want to hold big shows anymore. After all, this isn't work. This is life.'
