Puppets Are Laughing

;“Puppets Are Laughing” — the title felt like a piece of subtle mockery. Nobody was laughing there: neither the puppets nor the audience.
;And yet, I genuinely love the puppet theater. It is by no means just entertainment for children; its creative potential is vast, far deeper and broader than that of traditional drama. Provided, of course, that it is helmed by a talented, original thinker. Such artists do exist, honor bright.
;…Back in my hometown of Tomsk, at the height of Perestroika, an incredible boom of experimental art suddenly blossomed out of nowhere in our Siberian depths. You’d think people had other things on their minds, but among the intelligentsia, it became immensely fashionable to attend the puppet theater, which had just opened in a small, charming old building on the Tom River embankment.
;Shurik and I attended every single production, and no two shows were alike. In fact, some plays didn't feature any… puppets at all. Yes, exactly.
;One performance, for instance, was built entirely around the monologue of a maid supposedly tidying up her master’s dressing room. As she recounted her complex relationship with the Count in vivid detail, she brushed his coat on a mannequin. Magically, the empty suit suddenly came to life, wrapping its sleeve around the beauty’s waist… It flirted with her, caressed her, grew jealous, raved, and implored. The audience held their breath, mesmerized by the unfolding romantic drama, completely forgetting that there was only one actress on stage — not two lovers embroiled in passion.
;And in the play about Joan of Arc, there were neither puppets nor Joan herself. But what a concept! The tragic tale was narrated by key historical figures: the Queen, the Dauphin, the Inquisitor, and the Executioner. Each was embodied by a simple object.
;The infantile, foolish Dauphin was represented by a bilboquet — a wooden ball on a string. Instead of a puppet, there was a heavy wooden sphere the size of a human head. As the actor delivered his monologue, he repeatedly caught it in a giant wooden cup. His character was crystal clear without a single puppet.
;The Queen was represented by another object: a crude wooden board with two wheels spinning on rusty nails. The actress, reciting her monologue as the dissolute Queen, spun the wheels, occasionally running a finger over the nail heads. So laconic, so erotic — minimal means, yet an unforgettable impression.
;And how brilliant the Little Theater was!
;It was created by a young theatrical prop maker. Right inside his workshop, on a miniature stage he built himself, the young guy used just two children’s toys — a curly-haired doll and a squeaky rubber Hedgehog — to perform anything from heavy Dostoevsky to the poetry of Tsvetaeva. And it was pure genius.
;A completely different kind of puppet theater was brought to life by a former robotics engineer.
;Talking, moving, winking automaton-puppets greeted visitors right from the cloakroom, responding effortlessly to whatever was happening around them. Even in the restroom, tucked in a quiet corner, sat a puppet grandma acting as an attendant, genuinely knitting a sock. The old lady would unexpectedly start a conversation with a visitor at the most intimate moment imaginable.
;Real puppet theater is more than just a show with dolls: it is a self-contained, mystical reality. Yet one must admit that true, high-quality puppet theater is a rare exception rather than the rule.
;…I remember walking with my five-year-old daughter, Inga, in an autumn park in Novosibirsk, having just moved there from provincial Tomsk with high hopes for big-city culture. Hearing a cheery announcement over the park loudspeakers for a toddlers' puppet show called The Tale of Little Ivashka, we eagerly dashed toward the small, painted hut by the main gates. The tickets turned out to be rather expensive for that transitional phase of my life, but I figured high art demands sacrifice.
;How bitter was my disappointment when I realized we had been brazenly scammed, along with a couple of dozen other naive mothers and their kids.
;In front of the closed curtain materialized a slightly tipsy, elderly man with a long side-comb covering his bald head. He had a soothing, overly sweet tone — like a professional nanny, an animal trainer, or a drunkard who had just had one too many. The fellow slipped into a shiny blue jacket on the fly, bowed to the audience, and ducked behind the screen.
;Against a meager, depressing backdrop, a couple of shabby, worn-out puppets moved sluggishly. The main character bore a striking resemblance to a generic freckled redhead, and his complete lack of physical charm was compensated only by the affectionate suffix in his name. A few dreary creatures on wires dangled about, all voiced by the same fake, syrupy voice of the half-crooked Director.
;The plot was pulled out of thin air without a spark of inspiration. The lazy Карабас solved his lack of narrative vision quite crudely: he forced an interactive game onto the young audience.
;“Kids, if the Little Gosling tries to run away, make sure you shout: ‘Where are you going?!’” — and he dragged the gosling into the right wing himself. The children eagerly fell for this cheap trick, and I felt genuinely sorry for them.
;Months and years went by, yet nothing new ever appeared in the repertoire of “Puppets Are Laughing.” Still, this old drunk had the audacity to call our newspaper office regularly, inviting journalists to write a glowing review for his theater. And our editor, Valentina, usually so principled, succumbed to his invitations for some reason.
;Finally, the director played his master card and invited the paper to the five-hundredth anniversary performance of The Tale of Little Ivashka. Valentina was unyielding:
;“Lelya, go. It’s an anniversary show, we have to cover it.”
;Everything unfolded exactly as it had five hundred times before, with one exception: our Карабас had clearly over-served himself before the show. Bringing out a Duck on a long, bent wire (supposedly in mid-flight), the director mistakenly voiced her with a loud:
;“Quack-quack… I mean, Ribbit-ribbit!”
;I almost burst into tears of joy, burying my face in my hands. Now I knew exactly how to write the review…
;“A Duck wobbled erratically on her wire: ‘Ribbit-ribbit… oh, I mean quack-quack!’ It is hardly surprising that the Duck misspoke with the voice of the theater's Director. After all, it was the five-hundredth performance of The Tale of Little Ivashka!”
;The notice turned out to be very short, even by our newspaper’s laconic standards.
;The very next day after it was published, I ran into the director head-on in the city center. I tried to play it cool and pretend I was someone else, but little Inga kept turning her head around.
;“Mom,” she commented, “that man stopped and is staring after us. He looks so confused.”
;It seemed Карабас never did figure out whether the paper had roasted him or praised him.