First thoughts on focus and gaze in puppetry

The issue of directing the eye, or placing focus through gazing, is a major subject on puppetry training, but its debate and practice seems to be mostly placed on the puppet´s gaze, rather than in the puppeteer´s (at least from where I´m looking at it). As a fact, sometimes it´s somehow hard to discuss these two focus sources separately, and the use of this separation remains to be proven.

I would like to start mentioning the gaze as a technique for displaying signs of the puppet´s independent life:

Puppetry uses an understanding of the word focus related to a technical principle spread through rehearsal spaces that means, in general terms, the ability that the puppeteer has to make the puppet show perception and sensibility. Beltrame explains this notion when stating that “the notion of focus can be exemplified in moments which the puppet projects its look towards the object or character it acts with” (Beltrame, 2009, p.292). This is an important quality to the perceptive dynamics of the puppet, once being able to address properly to whom one interacts, or to react properly to whatever calls one´s attention, helps building the imagination of autonomy of the puppet, what allows it to develop onstage interactions (Piragibe, 2011, p. 154. My translation).

The ability to look and pay attention shows in fact more about the existential independence of the puppet than just stating the it can see. There´s far more to be noticed about the object as subject through its focusing ability, as states Paul Piris:

'[...] The eyes give the sensation of the puppet´s subjectivity and visual agency, as opposed to being a subject of visual gaze' (Mrázek, 2005: 35). The puppet is more than a thing that can be seen; it is also an apparent subject that can see. The gaze of the puppet reinforces the separateness from the puppeteer by stressing the dramaturgical presence of the latter. The visible presence of puppeteers on stage does not imply that they have a dramaturgical presence. However, if the puppet looks at tis manipulator and the latter responds to his gaze, the human performer appears as part of the actuality of the puppet (Piris, 2014, p. 37).

Thinking of the puppet as something you can´t simply look at, but something that may be looking back at you comes as the result of a deceiving technique that may redefine its perception dynamics. Not simply an object to be perceived and interpreted, but something that lays between semantic keys.

Sight control, as applied to the puppetry performing artist, can be a tool used to stress the ambiguity between him and the puppet he operates on sight, but can be also a device for a far wider form of manipulation.

Maybe we should be looking at sight (or focus aiming) as a force that gives and shifts meanings on stage. As something that can organize the performance narrative through manipulating emphasis; that can join or separate things in different fictional layers; that can suggest movement or existential independence. The eye is a string-maker (a weaver).

O princípio do Espanto (The principle of awe). Morpheus Tetatro, São Paulo, Brasil.