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.