Chatting about gaze and definitions

IMPORTANT: None of the quotelike parts in this post are literal. They are condensations and interpretations of the actual lines, which can be found in the link to the footage of the meeting, previously posted.

After these two first experiments, the group gathered for a brief discussion.

Mario mentioned the importance of the game because it demonstrates and practices the principle of focus of the puppet.

Cariad said that the experience has a more metaphoric meaning to her, once it is somehow related to the space between the performer and the material, and about building inseparable bonds between them at the point one could never exist without the other.

Then she addressed more specifically the matter of gaze, asked: 1) how could we have a focus difused gaze? Some kind of environmental gaze, which is more difused, but capable of drawing attention at the same time (could it have anything to do with the VP´s soft focus?); 2) When does the internal gaze becomes the external gaze?

About it could be argued that an internal gaze concerns to the attentions and feelings towards the acting-manipulating jog, and the external gaze is the result of portraying a lifelike performance that arises from this commitment.

Chusi asked if for this exercise (the rope) the created puppet had to portray a recognizable body structure. A resposta é não, mas Cariad adiciona:

You can explore materials to the end of the world, and the audience might find it really boring, and the you go like this (picks up the rope in way it portrays a body and a head), and the audience clicks. The audience wants to make sense out of it. But it´s kind of a challenge because it limits us, because coming up with this kind of form is something of a “quick solution”.

Marie argues that sometimes it could be harder to make the audience believe in the “life” of the puppet according to its shapes and ways of blending with the performers body. Cariad says it´s ok, and that this belief may not be mandatory. She mentioned the work of a dancer called [Mikkel Bastelot] (Note: I haven´t found any reference of him, or his precise name), who mixes his performance with materials without the need to suggest independent life.

But then: how do we define puppetry?

Mario: whenever I exercise over this question I end up thinking what is the point of trying to do so.

Cariad: We are coming to a point in which puppetry is belief. It may have something to do with ritualistic behavior of religious images and statues.

Marie mentioned a show she saw in which the actors didn´t relate to the puppet-object characters in way to insert them in the action of more than a kind of demonstrative way. Mario mentioned a show he saw in which the puppet characters that shared the stage with the one actor were treated by him in such an intense way their presence could be felt by the audience, although there was no illusion of independent life shown through their looks or their movement.

Maybe it has something to do with gaze…