From Guiñol to Tomatic: a fascinating journey through the history of puppets
Palau-solità i Plegamans hosts the Moner Puppet-Teia International Museum, an exhibition, conservation and study space for this little-known world art.
Away from the hustle and bustle of the big cities, but well located, the newly opened International Puppet Museum of Catalonia-Teia Moner (MIT), in Palau-solità and Plegamans (Barcelona), is the new exhibition, conservation and study space puppets from all over the world There is nothing like it in the autonomous community. Why? No one has the answer, and that is because Catalonia benefits from a great puppetry and theatrical tradition. One of the objectives of MIT is, therefore, to remove all these figures from the boxes. Or those that fit in the enclosure, which is already getting too small for all the material that exists.
Located in the restaurant farmhouse of Can Falguera (XIV century), in the homonymous urbanization of Palau, the MIT immediately gives hints of what it holds inside. As soon as you enter the lobby, on the left, next to the door, a ceremonial puppet of Mali, which reflects the international character of the room. on the right, Berta (Little) and Avi, marionettes that represent a girl and a mayor, as proof that the exhibition is for all public. And, beside him, tomato, one of the emblematic characters of the children's program of TV3 of the 1990s. The tour begins, and there is the possibility of doing so with the comments of its promoters, the multifaceted puppeteer and creator Teia Moner y Michael Espinosa. "We are collectors, and thankfully every time we have acquired a piece we have written down the numbers, which has made it easier for us to display", she explains.
Different types of manipulation
On the same ground floor, the next scene that the visitor finds is the story corner. Its number leaves little room for the imagination, but, paradoxically, what is on display there does allow children and adults to fantasize: a collection of children's stories and all kinds of puppets that come out of the drawers of a chest of drawers that Moner inherited from his grandmother . There are also the devil, the witch, the dragon and the wolf, characters well known to the public. And, two steps away, one of the dolls that most fascinates the little ones in the house: a kind of reptile sitting in the bowl of a toilet... with surprise included Among other wonders, before going up to the upper floor, stand out the Don Quixote and the Sancho who acted in the Seville Expo of 1992, and which allow entering into another aspect of this art, that of the materials used. "We are the first recyclers of history", relates Moner, while showing that the spear of the Cervantino character is made with a billiard cue and a flannel. However, there are things that do buy them, although they later modify them.
Every corner of the farmhouse is used. It doesn't stop short. The MIT collection exceeds those 800 pieces, of which only about 150 are on display. On the stairs, in fact, there is another good display of puppets, among which the characters of Mafalda, created by Roman Martí, among others that also make you aware that not all figures are handled in the same way. There are puppets from finger, of glove, of yarn (puppets), of rod, automata, marionettes lifted, objective… the variety expands. As they detail, in addition, "each culture stands out for one type of manipulation", and the Catalan technique it is unique in the world: the dolls are designed so that three fingers support the head - that's why they have wider shoulders - while the thumb and little finger make arms. But there are very few people who dedicate themselves to it and it can disappear. Thus, one of the objectives of the museum is to "give it visibility". It has a reserved space. There is also a room where some of the colorful and award-winning creations of Teia Moner herself are exhibited.
Guiñol, the star of the collection
"One of the characteristics of MIT is that the pieces are grouped by manipulation techniques, so that allows us to compare the pieces and the techniques depending on the country, and also helps us to discover part of the historical and social evolution of the countries of origin", explains Moner. For example, not all of them Chinese shadows they come from China. The museum also exhibits silhouettes from Thailand, Java, Bali, Greece and Turkey, among other places. And differences in shape and color can be seen, depending on what they were explaining, whether it was questions related to the divine or traditional scenes.
But, without a doubt, the star of the collection is the wink (piece of 1810), character created together with others (como Gnafron) fear Laurent Mourguet, a silk merchant who had to reinvent himself in the face of the crisis in the sector resulting from the French Revolution and who ended up as a peddler. To make the bad drink more bearable for his clients, he first had an assistant who entertained them, but as he often fell asleep due to his fondness for alcohol, Mourguet got creative and created these cloth and wood characters with which to distract the citizens who put themselves in their hands to have their teeth pulled out. His performances, which due to his own experience focused on the criticism of power - censorship forced him to write his works, which allowed the appearance of the first puppet theater texts -, differ from those performed in other parts of the world . Likewise, the protagonists of this art also change their number depending on their place of origin, and in many cases they have been lexicalized: wink (France); Polychinella (Italy), más oscuro, focused on death, on the devils, on evil; Punch and Judy (England), characters from the bat puppets; Kasper (Germany); I mumble (Brazil)…
Therapeutic tool
The exhibition ends with another selection of treasures such as puppets from the theater water puppets of Thang Long from Hanoi (Vietnam) - which the creators had to sell due to economic problems -, sicilian puppets, Czech marionettes, from India... And, as a colophon, a space reserved for these dolls like educational and therapeutic tool, because they are also used for these tasks, and not only for entertainment – or pedagogy, as in the past, when religion was explained through puppets–. "We are looking for puppets with history, that they have or that explain" about the life and customs of their countries or their manipulators and builders, he says.
Of course, with the thought placed on MIT's "raison d'être": guard, catalog, interpret, study and exhibit that richness that helps to understand how the popular and scholarly imagination focuses its reality on the stage from a plastic point of view. In this way, the Can Falguera farmhouse has become an open space in which companies can sell or donate their most relevant pieces; a place where enhance the Catalan puppet technique; a forum for the promotion of the como puppet educational and therapeutic tool; an area of research, and a sphere that contributes to the strengthening of human values and mutual understanding between peoples. All this from Palau-solità and Plegamans, but with a vocation of national and international projection.
Gerard Mateo
Editor-in-chief of current affairs and edition.
