The Devil's Violin

After reading chapter four there were many unique puppets I could choose from but the one that stuck out to me the most was the Devil's Violin. This is a traditional puppet from Gdansk Poland. It came about when the avant-garde "discovered" a new device in the puppetry world: the visual-pun puppet. If hadn't guessed already ths puppet is made from a wooden violin using the string-tightening screws as eyes, the bow as a second leg, and boer's hair as a beard. This puppet was used to represent the evils of secular music. Obviously the puppet was meant to be an antagonist and seeing as it represented evil it was the ultimate antagonist, we don't like it at all. So the character traits of the Devil's Violin are evil, mischeivous, and just in general bad. I found this puppet intriguing because the violin has always had it's place art musically but it's cool to see it have a part in the theatre world and not just as an instrument in the pit-orchestra. I've also found it intresting to see how society sneaks in these "what's socially acceptable" messages into art. In this case, secular music was evil and unacceptable and therefore took on an evil character in the show.

President Mubarak Puppet Show

The scene is set in President Mubarak's lavish lving room. All the finest paintings, sculptures, and other works of art west of the Taj Mahal. President Mubarak is pacing back and forth, clearly he is not well.  Coming from the window we can hear shouts of protest against the presdent.With every shout he becomes more and more ansy. He decides he's going to take a nap to try and calm his nerves. He takes a sleeping pill and drifts away. We then cut to his dream world where there is a tea table set almost identical to that in Alice in Wonderland. The president s confused at first but sits down anyway and starts chomping away at a crumpet. Out of no where appears Loui V, a once over thrown leader of France. He sits down without a word and observes President Mubarak. Then once again out of no where appears Hitler, also a bad egg leader. He sits and observes just as Loui. A few more puffs of smoke and Marie Antonette and Sadam Housain appear and sit. Marie is much hefter than she was when she was alive. And she can't seem to stop stuffing her face with rasberry cake. Finally Che Guevra appears and sits at the head of the table. He pours tea for all his guests and then begins to speak. He tells the president that he is a bad egg. "Everyone at the table are bad eggs whose people betrayed them and they paid for it. Mare Antonette paid a horrfying penalty forced to eat cake the rest of her afterlife until she explodes. The others won't even discuss what their punishments have been. Just give up the fight, give the people what they want. Learn from our mistakes. Nobody likes the stench of bad eggs. Well, since we got that out of the way, let's have a nice sit down dinner and forget our troubles, now that the gang is all back together."

It's short but sweet. You get the gyst of it.