T
C. S. FORESTER Author
of
"The
General"
Marionettes at Home Illustrated
Marionettes at Home in marionettes and puppet shows is steadily growing, and many people have been fired with an ambition to create a marionette theatre of their own. The secrets of this fascinating and inexpensive hobby are revealed in this book by the author of The General and other successful novels. For some years Mr. Forester has been famous among his friends for the entertainment provided by the Forester marionettes. He now takes us behind the scenes and shows exactly how everything is done. INTEREST
JVLarionettes, according to Mr. Forester, have potentialities which have never been properly exploited. The marionette theatre's productions can be things of charm and beauty. They can be works of art, and without any aping of other works of art either, he adds. It is his hope that " there may perhaps one day arise a Shakespeare of the Marionette Stage." JVLariotiettes at Home is the complete
story of Mr. Forester's activities with his hobby. The reader is able to enter Continued on back flap
MARIONETTES AT HOME
Books by C. S.
F O R E S T E R
Novels Payment Deferred Love Lies Dreaming The Shadow of the Hawk Brown on Resolution Plain Murder Two and Twenty Death to the French The Gun The Peacemaker The African Queen The General Travel The Voyage of the Annie Marble The Annie Marble in Germany Biography Nelson Plays U97 Nurse Cavell (With C. E. Bechhofer Roberts)
B I N G O
T H E B O Y
B A L A N C E R
If the stick sways he sways too
C S. FORESTER •
Marionettes at Home
MICHAEL
ffifJ
JOSEPH LTD.
14, Henrietta St., / a lm London
W.C.2
FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1936
Set and printed in Great Britain by William Brendon at the Mayflower Press, Plymouth, in Fournier type, twelve point, leaded, on a toned antique-wove paper made by John Dickinson, and bound by James Burn in Sundour cloth.
PROLOGUE
Spoken by the compare
GOOD EVENING, HUMANS.
HERE BEFORE THE PLAY,
I have a chance to say my little say ; To show you how despite all this to-do We're very little different from you. Our cheeks are painted and our hair is dyed ; Our figures ebb and flow with fashion's tide. The thought of stage fright wakes you in your beds, And we have nightmares, too, of tangled threads. Like you, we're fond of taking striking poses ; Like you, we can't see farther than our noses ; And as with you upon the mortal earth A puppet's clothes decide a puppet's worth. The words we say are said for us. No less Are your opinions moulded by the Press. We think we rule our fates, but do your kings Know more than us about who pulls their strings ? We strut our hour upon the stage, nor stop To think of the approaching curtain drop. We are, like you, at th' ending of our day, Laid in a box. I've said my little say.
APOLOGY THERE REALLY SEEMS VERY LITTLE NEED TO EXPLAIN
or apologise for the ambition to own one's own theatre. Most people seem to have the same desire at some time in their lives. And as for me, I had worked in other people's theatres. I had seen fleshand-blood actors making (or trying to make) the gestures I had imagined for them, and I had heard them saying the lines I had written for them, and I had encountered temperamental actors (half temper and half mental, as my friend K. R. G. Browne said) and untemperamental actors; and in a wild wave of reaction I had come to believe it would be far better to be able just to have to pull a string in order to achieve my effects. Besides, there had been encounters with theatrical managements, too, and, after those, the prospect of owning my own theatre seemed by contrast ineffably sublime. That was how the ground was prepared. The sowing of the seed was brought about by a trifling incident—a visit to someone else's marionette theatre, which in turn was the result of a whole series of trifling coincidences. It was after we had seen that show, Kathleen and G. and I, that, sitting round a table in the Cafe Royal, we agreed that if we couldn't do a better show than that we would eat our hats. And from that conclusion to the decision to run a theatre was only a step. 7
Apology
8
I ought to have suspected that decision. It is just that kind of decision which has been responsible for most of the labour and effort of my life. Once I decided in the same way to abandon the practice of medicine and become a novelist; and that decision has led me in the past ten years into all sorts of unexpected byways, into Fleet Street and the St. James's Theatre and the Vaudeville Theatre and the Savage Club and the studios of Elstree and Hollywood. Once I decided that a fifteen-foot motor-boat was the ideal vehicle from which to see the world, and that decision took me to Paris and Berlin and Llangollen (and, believe me or not, it is far harder work to take a motor-boat to Llangollen than to Berlin) and starved me and buffeted me and pretty nearly drowned me. There were other decisions with profound consequences which I ought to have remembered, about marriage and parenthood, for instance; but I forgot all about these experiences in the enthusiasm of the moment. Anyway, it was round that table in the Cafe Royal that the decision was reached, and perhaps one of these days the management will screw a brass plate to that table to tell the world so. This is all very flippant, but if I were not a flippant person I could moralise to some purpose. The marionette theatre has potentialities which have never been properly exploited. Its produc-
Apology
9
tions can be things of charm and beauty. They can be works of art, and without any aping of other works of art, either. There may perhaps one day arise a Shakespeare of the marionette stage. Our own Shakespeare could have written very competent and lovely work for marionettes, just as he could have done for the films ; but in the same way as his work was pre-eminently suitable for presentation on the human stage, so some day there may be found a genius whose work is specially adapted for the mechanical stage. What kind of things he will do I cannot even guess, just as no one who was not a Shakespeare himself could guess at the nature and quality of Shakespeare's work while only acquainted with the early Elizabethan theatre. Playing with marionettes is a very satisfactory way of amusing oneself and of killing time. It satisfies one's literary tastes as well as one's mechanical tastes, and it offers scope for amusing experiments in dress and colour. But even in a very rudimentary form the marionette theatre can be a great deal more than this, as anyone will find who tries it.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
5
APOLOGY
7
THE THEATRE
15
THE PUPPETS
25
MANIPULATION
44
BERTIE ET CETERA
67
BUTTERFLIES AND ANGELS
81
THE BALLET
91
THE DRAMA
108
LIGHTING
121
PRODUCTION
137
IN CONCLUSION
165
Epilogue
187
Appendix.
AN EXAMPLE OF A PUPPET PLAY
II
189
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
BINGO THE BOY BALANCER
Frontispiece FACING PAGE
THE BARE BONES OF THE THEATRE FROM THE FRONT
l6
THEATRE FROM THE BACK READY FOR PERFORMANCE
16
GOD REST YOU SIRS
32
BERTIE SWINGING ACROSS
64
BERTIE STRIKING AN ATTITUDE
64
PROSCENIUM AND STAGE
112
JOINTS
144
STAGE WITHOUT PROSCENIUM
144
GOOD EVENING HUMANS
160
THE BALLET
I76
BUTTERFLIES
I76
Chapter One • THE THEATRE
AS FAR AS I CAN SEE, THE WHOLE ESSENCE OF A
marionette theatre lies in its portability and adaptability. You want to be able to give shows wherever you like, at a moment's notice. You don't want anything of the nature of a permanent building. Besides (as I realised in a moment of temporary sanity), when the theatre is up in your house and all the members of the family and of the domestic staff are engaged in rehearsals, things have a habit of spreading from room to room until all your meals are being eaten in restaurants and you have to sleep in the garden. You simply have to be able to pack the thing away and forget it sometimes, in order to do some work and restore discipline among the children. All this presupposes a theatre which can be taken to pieces, and which can be erected in any ordinary room. The ideal house for a marionette theatre is one with a double drawing-room with dividing 15