“A New Marionette Theatre” (ca. 1928)

As Jeffery Kennedy observes in the introductory article for this piece, the authorship of “A New Marionette Theatre” remains ambiguous because of problems of archival preservation. Although “A New Marionette Theatre” was found in the folder titled “James Light typescripts” at the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Kennedy makes a compelling case that it was likely Remo Bufano who wrote the typescript, or at the very least, collaborated with Light while preparing an application for a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1928. Although this ambiguity of authorship may be resolved with further research, I use “the author” for purposes of this introduction.Far from a polished essay, “A New Marionette Theatre” has textual evidence of multiple revisions, perhaps by more than one author. The manuscript has typed and handwritten alterations above lines of text on five of the seven pages, sometimes above words that have been crossed out and other times with a caret indicating placement and the stubborn relevance of proofreading symbols. Although marginalia are intriguing for theater historians, I have integrated alterations into the edited typescript for readability, except where changes imply different meanings. On page 3, the word “when” is handwritten over “if” as part of the phrase “that . . . they fail,” with the distinction between “if” and “when” implying the difference between apprehension and cynicism. On page 6, the word “practical” is typed above “physical” as part of the phrase “beyond the . . . reach of the stage,” with the distinction implying spatial or conceptional differences. In those cases, I bracket the alteration. Corrections on the manuscript are many, including letters typed over mistaken keystrokes, words crossed out, and slashes to cross out erroneous punctuation—all of which have been silently corrected. Typographical errors have been amended too (see emendations).The author includes footnotes on pages 2 and 3, which I preserve here. Page 3 includes both a typed footnote and handwritten notes running perpendicular to the text on the left margin (see figure 1). A large caret preceding the handwritten notes (and the content of the notes) suggests this marginalia expands the typed footnote, so I have integrated both into footnote 2. The essay ends, mid-sentence, on page 7, following the word “PLACE:”—an interruption that suggests that this document is an early draft of a larger project, imagined or completed.Thanks to Robert M. Dowling, who originally brought “A New Marionette Theatre” to the attention of Alex Pettit, former editor of this journal; to Thierry Dubost, who provided clarifying information about Henri-Martin Barzun; and to Jeffery Kennedy for this fine introduction. Without further ado . . .The potentialities of the marionette theatre have never yet been realized. It is time they were at least considered.The ideas which called forth this program for a new marionette theatre come from two men, Samuel Butler the second, and Henri-Martin Barzun. Butler’s notebooks, and his Erewhon, and Martin Barzun’s L’Ère du Drame, express the ideas which form the matrix for this proposed marionette theatre.Butler answers the old philosophical puzzle, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” by “A hen is an egg’s way of making another egg.” If we accept this, and apply it to ourselves, we discover the humbling possibility that we and our elaborate civilization are the means the one-celled animals of which we are composed have chosen to make more one-celled animals.In his Erewhon, Butler presents another aspect of the idea that mankind is not, except to itself, the reason the world was made. At the time the story begins, machines are forbidden in the country of Erewhon; the narrator is jailed for carrying a watch. There are no machines in Erewhon anymore, except the few carefully imprisoned in museums. This ban has dated from the great and successful revolution of man against his masters.As with us, the machines in Erewhon had included so great a variety of mutually useful types that they were all but self-sufficient. They were dependent for one thing only on an alien unit—for procreation they required the service of man. And they had made not only a procreative agent of man, but a eugenic procreative agent; man helped them to meet the needs of their environment and to improve their breed. The machines waxed steadily in power until the day their tool realized what he was, when he turned on his tyrants and killed them.It should be pointed out here that in certain sections of the world where the procreative agent man is underdeveloped, the machines too are underdeveloped, crude, and primitive. The Ainu of Japan, hairy and simple, would not in the least understand Henry Ford’s belt, a modern marvel which would shatter any man’s health in five years1 if any man kept a Ford job that long. Butler might say that the machines have not yet developed the Ainu into an efficient tool. Butler might also say that the machines are pleased with Ford, and satisfied with his employees as procreative agents (for their work is now so simplified that if [when] they fail, there are always plenty more). But then, as Butler does say, the machines’ values are different from ours.2Martin Barzun sets out with two conceptions: first, that the drama is and always has been underdeveloped; second, that this stunting is caused by man’s view of the world as centered around himself.Barzun says that the drama has always, musically speaking, been a structure of single melodies. The story of a hero, his conflict with circumstances, his eventual defeat or triumph, is like a shepherd’s air for the pipes in its simplicity. A shepherd’s tune can be a very good thing; but who would choose to drop the curtain on the history of music before the symphonies came on the scene? Music today is an intricate architectural structure, carrying a number of themes, developing close mathematical relationships, challenging the attention and expressing the emotions of the most mature minds.Relatively speaking, the drama is still primitive. Barzun claims that the reason is man’s anthropocentric point of view. Man, at least in what is called western civilization, has tyrannized over the world, for he regards it as naturally his own; and he states his drama in terms of his individual life. But even in these terms he cannot avoid consideration of the effects of inanimate influences—the sea, floods, lightning, food or the lack of it—on his personal life and on his history. Since we obstinately interpret the world in terms of ourselves, let us not say that we interfere with the life of inanimate nature: let us say that inanimate nature gets in its blows at us, in spite of our being the world’s chosen race.Therefore, says Barzun, we must take off our anthropomorphic spectacles. We must let into the drama those forces which, together with man, make the total drama of the world.He complains, for example, that though a mood created by trees may have the strongest influence on a hero of drama, the trees themselves are not allowed to play parts. This may seem a merely aesthetic objection; but when today we see the definitive part played by deposits of coal, of iron, above all of oil, in the making of war—a mortally important matter to thousands and thousands of people—we need look no further to understand that the forces which Barzun insists must come on the stage are much more than a poet’s fancy.Some of the forces named in L’Ère du Drame as possible actors in the future drama are: unions, transportation, food, climate, gold deposits, factories, inventions, a newly-discovered law of physics, etc. As characters in the human drama, these quantities are not only equal in importance to the strictly human quantities; they are superior to them, because they are causes not only of misery or prosperity, but of life or death. Only the greatest heroes can claim as much. The ordinary run of dramatic heroes can claim nothing of the kind.The present stage is obviously inadequate to express such ideas. It is fixed in the tradition of the individual drama: its technical makeup and the training of all its members are conditioned for the drama of an individual in conflict with circumstances. Also, it is financially impossible to realize a drama using such ideas as Butler’s on our present stage. It is physically and financially impossible so to realize the ideas of Martin Barzun.There is, however, a neglected instrument for our theatre which could enable us to say much more, and that direct, about our life than the stage has ever said. It is the marionette theatre.The marionette stage at present is used to display ingenuity in imitating human actions, and to present stories—fairy stories, chiefly—which can employ to advantage the marionette’s ability to simplify and underline.The first of these uses is quite aside from the point of almost any play. Mr. Gordon Craig’s hopes to the contrary notwithstanding, a marionette is not yet as good as an actor of a human character as a man is; and there is no reason to suppose it ever will be, no matter how clever its human manipulator is. As to the second use, it is sound enough; but its scope is at present very limited. (The possibilities of its use for caricature have hardly been touched.)The chief appeal of today’s marionette theatre lies in the fascination of children (and of adults) by beings smaller than they are used to. The new marionette theatre’s appeal to adults (and to children) could be our fascination by ideas larger than we are used to.There is no reason why the marionette theatre must continue to be an underprivileged child. It could tower, almost overnight; for it can handle themes of terrific import, far beyond the [practical] physical reach of the stage.It can, for example, use Butler’s idea of the relationship between the machine and man. It can throw into a blaze of light our functional position in the industry, including the industry of war; and it can do this by nothing more complicated than turning us around and showing us, for once in a way, the machines’ view of their position. (They are naturally more interested in themselves than they are in us.)Henri-Martin Barzun] Henri Martin-Barzum; anymore] any more; Ainu] Ainus; underdeveloped] under-developed; tyrannized] tyranized; aesthetic] esthetic; dramatic] drmatic; makeup] make-up