Schapinsky and the disappointed world
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| © D.R. |
Sven Stäcker is a well-known puppeteers,
enough to have his puppets exposed in the museum… So it was a privilege to
discover his works here in Feldkirch during the Luaga und Losna festival, even
if this show isn’t really for children (but it’s noticed so it’s okay) because
it’s too dark and full of adult references. This performance shows a very
pessimistic point of view on our world that we can’t show to our children to
let them hope a little bit more…
I have to confess, as a non German
speaker, I don’t understand what he was saying but fortunately the scenography
is really interesting to comment and well-orchestrated to be understandable
only with the general context.
A contrasted world
Schapinsky is a puppet made with any
old thing to show that is fragile naked personn and a real part of this world,
made by the what it’s rejected. We assist at his birth, and at his world’s
discovery. All start with the language, the letters come to him, first the “M”
too big for him, that he can’t handle it, then the “O” with his hole where he
can put thing, like his penis… no he wouldn’t dare… then the “R” which is
presented by the back taking the appearance of a submachine gun he used to fire
on the audience… and the “T” presented like a knife. All those innocent letters
are, since the beginning of his life, shown like some dangerous things and
announce the duality of the world he’ll notice little by little. We see how
he’s trying to learn the language by putting all this letters together to
create some word, until he creates the word “Wort” (by returning the “M”to make
a “W”)… this creation proves that he’s now able to control the language, wich
can be as beautiful as painfull… Because it could be painfull, he decided, like
a monk, to make a vow of silence by cutting off his mouth…
This narrative that we exposed for
the lost of his mouth is a repetitive process which consists to tear him apart.
After discovering beautiful things, he finds out the other side of the coin and
decides to reject the world by renouncing to all his senses, all his way to
perceive this deceptive world, after the mouth, he takes off his eyes, ears,
nose, penis, legs, arms and head… the only thing left is his chest! A fun fact
is that when he’s pulling out all his members, he’s doing it without hesitation
except for one thing, the thing that governs the world – or at least the boy
mind – his penis. It’s a real solemn moment coming with the music usually used
to make a tribute to someone dead for his country… which makes a good
transition with the evocation of the war coming next… Under the humour tone
everything is well prepared and very surprising, even if we expect the
destruction of his body, we’re each time surprised by what cause this...
The tale of Schapinsky’s life
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| © D.R. |
The story of Schapinsky is presented
to us like a tale, the puppet doesn’t speak so much – because he quickly can’t –
so it’s Sven Stäcker who’s telling his story by adopting two postures. One is
the description of what happens to Schapinsky when he’s experimenting the
world, the other is when he’s commenting what happens to him. In the first way
of speaking, the scenography, the voice and the light are “regular”. But when
he’s commenting his life, he’s going in front of the stage, the dark take
position of the scene and he’s speaking to a micro only lightned by a
flashlight which projects the light from under his face to give him a terrified
face, the same that we used when we were child to terrify our friends when we
were telling an horror story. His way of
telling the story is also a way to show the ambivalence of the world one good
side and one bad side… like he did with the public. At the beginning of the
show he divided the audience in two groups, the good and the bad and we read a
text that corresponds to our group. Those two texts are first read separately
then together to show the perpetual opposition which resides in this world.
All the performance is based on this
contrast, the opposition between the light and the dark, the good and the bad,
the life and the death, and the meaning of a word and how we can purposely misuse
it by making cynical and dark humour like he did all along the play.
Even if Sven Stäcker said he’s a
pessimistic person and his puppet he’s his own projection about a world that he
dislikes, we can’t stop thinking that the show ends with a light of hope
symbolised by the green light. The tale begins with a red light, the colour of
passion but also of blood, and a worrying music to finally give birth to
Schapinsky by getting him out of a box belly like a doctor, this light should
announce a tragedy, but it turns directly on green, as if his birth, originally
placed under a bad sign, could finally give some hope. If it’s true that this
hope quickly boils over, the end brings hope with the green light coming back
from the dead heart of Schapinsky which bring us some real heart in paper in
our hands… so it’s up to us to use it well.
If the show seems to be pessimistic,
the ends gives us a little hope, but the hope is coming from the death, so what
can we think about it? This is exactly what this show is about, making us ask
questions about the world and our perspectives with a lot of dark humour…
Jérémy Engler, from L'Envolée Culturelle
