InternationalThe art of puppet making
A long and cherished history at the Yerevan State Puppet Theater
Published: Saturday December 12, 2009
A character in a Hovhannes Tumanian play performed by Yerevan State Puppet Theater. Elaine Krikorian
Yerevan - "Once you make the puppet you already love it," says Karine Babayan, puppet maker at the Hovhannes Tumanian Yerevan State Puppet Theater, "They're like your children, you can't say you like one the most; you love them all. One puppet might come out a little better than another but you regard them all the same." Babayan has been working as a puppet maker at the theater for 19 years. She graduated from university with a degree in art and this was her first job.
The theater itself is 74 years old. Besides the central hall of the building, where there is a puppet museum that you might graduate to, if you're a puppet, to be displayed in a glass case, there are many storage rooms with puppets covering the walls and ceiling, some of which date back to the 1930s. Babayan can show you every puppet and tell you its story. Many of these puppets she has worked on herself as designer or sculptor, and if they predate her arrival at the puppet theater, she has likely had a hand in restoring them. This is true of the grandmother and grandfather puppets from the show "The Fisherman and the Goldfish," story by Alexander Pushkin. The show was first staged in the early 40s and in the many performances thereafter the same puppets have been used. She preserved the original sponge faces and sewed on new eyes and hair while new costumes were made for the puppets.
The Tumanian Puppet Theater was founded in 1935. One of its principal founders was Hasmik Kyozalyan, who had gone to study theater in Moscow with the intent of returning and opening up a puppet theater in Armenia. The first theater was opened in Gyumri and three months later the second opened in Yerevan. Its first performance was a staging of Hovhannes Tumanian's "The Cat and the Dog." Vartan Ajemian, who would become the general director of the Sundukian Theater, began his career here directing puppet shows and adapting works for the puppet stage.
After World War II the theater was closed down for economic reasons. When it was reopened in 1957, Yervand Manaryan was brought in to get things started again. Manaryan would work as head director of the theater off and on for 20 years before starting his own puppet theater in Yerevan. He is credited with bringing puppetry to a higher level of art. Manaryan believed that puppets could have a positive affect on society as a whole by bettering the lives of children. Manaryan says of the effect that puppets and puppet theaters have on children, "It's a wonder when a child plays and converses with a puppet. The child asks questions to the puppet as though the puppet can hear them and starts to answer those questions. The puppet becomes for the child a conversation with life, many questions find answers by this means. The child raised with puppets has a large imagination, has faith in regards his work and knows that at his side are similar-minded children."
Claims about the origin of puppetry are many, using dates that go as far back as 2000 B.C.E. There were tribal masks used in rituals and religious ceremonies with hinged jaws and jointed skulls. There is evidence of puppets having been used in Sanskrit plays, and in Egyptian hieroglyphs that seem to show "walking statues" that were used in religious dramas. Puppets have a long history of use in religion and were even used by the Christian church for morality plays up until the seventeenth century. The folk tales that are used as the stories for most of these puppet shows have similar mythical qualities. They are timeless and expand a child's imagination in a realm that is removed from their everyday experiences. Each puppet is made with such care and imagination by the puppet makers that looking at the puppets you seem to be looking into an ancient world that has much to offer our own world.
The State Puppet Theater performs folktales from around the world, but also performs many of the works of the theater's namesake, Hovhannes Tumanian. Since the beginning the theater has been taking its shows to international festivals spreading the work of Armenia's great author and winning awards, starting with their version of "The Master and the Laborer" at the "Moscow First All-Union Festival of Children's Theater" in 1937. Since 1975 the puppet theater has also had some shows for adults, like Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors," or Gogol's "The Overcoat," which can be seen today.
The puppet theater uses many different kinds of puppets: rod puppets, body puppets, finger puppets, marionettes, and hand puppets. In addition to its large stage, which seats 360 people, the theater has a small, 60-seat stage where finger puppet performances are held by the young actors without a director. This is their chance to experiment in a more improvisational arena. "The younger actors are wonderful because the acting comes naturally," says Babayan. "Although the theater has its head directors and managers, staging each show is a collaborative process. We take turns being the head artists and if I'm not the head artist or designer then I have to show my work to the designer and he'll have to agree." Babayan says when she first began working at the theater she was scared but she was immediately accepted by her co-workers and has felt herself to be an integral part of the theater ever since.
Babayan works with the directors of the shows to produce all the art and design that must be accomplished for the staging. The director decides what puppets are needed for the performance and selects and draws pictures to use as models for each puppet. Babayan was art director for the theater's new production "The Golden Chick," story by Vladimir Arlov, in which a wolf and a fox plot to hatch an egg, seeking to start a hen farm for their personal benefit. After the wolf sits on the egg for some time it hatches as a rooster and upon opening its eyes calls the wolf ‘dad.' Upon hearing this, the wolf and the fox find that they don't have the heart to eat their new companion, and since roosters don't lay eggs anyway, they forego the entire scheme. The fox, wolf, and chick look like family members by their very design. The puppets have wooden bases onto which Babayan wove their distinctive features in broad pieces of yarn, but they share a soft color scheme and zigzag patterns across their bodies.
