The art of puppetry

ALL THE WORLDS A STAGE: Hansie Visagies puppet, made for Sir Antony Sher.

Lucinda Jolly

THE award-winning sculptural constructions of War Horse have captured the imagination of the world. These life-size puppet horses had even the most hardened of audiences weeping at their sheer mastery, putting the work of SA’s Basil Kohler and Adrian Kohler – founders of the Handspring Company – firmly on the map.

Africa, of course, has a long tradition of masks and puppets used in rituals. This influence was felt by South African John Wright, one of the pioneers of SA puppetry. Wright was a puppeteer who formed the company called The Little Angel Theatre in London.

SA was introduced to European puppets when visited by a French company in the 1800s. Given the current buzz around puppets, it seems appropriate that when Verne Borchardt, sister of the famous SA- born Shakespearean actor Sir Antony Sher, was considering a gift for her illustrious brother and his partner, Greg Doran, to commemorate their 25th anniversary this year it should be a puppet.

The celebration comes in the same year that Doran was made director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The pair was one of the first gay couples in Britain to tie the knot – seven years ago, on the same day as Elton John and David Furnish. Last year Sher played Phillip Gellburg in Arthur Miller’s play, Broken Glass, at the Fugard theatre in District Six.

Joan Silver, Borchardt’s friend, had a chance encounter at an aqua- robics class which led to meeting Hansie Visagie, who has been making and working with puppets since he was a lad of 10.

Visagie now heads the motion picture production design department at CityVarsity.

Referred to as the SA Jim Henson, winner of three Astera nominations from SABC-TV 2 and 3 and holder of the prestigious Alumni Laureate award from the University of Pretoria for his contribution to the arts, Visagie’s work was seen last year at Maynardville’s Taming of the Shrew, charming the audience with an articulated shaggy lion made from cane and a toy dog.

A contemporary of the Handspring Puppet Company founders Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler, Visagie was largely influenced by the work of puppeteer John Wright and the eastern European style of the Salzburg puppet tradition.

Visagie freelanced for the SABC for 20 years working on numerous children’s TV favourites such as Haas Das se Nuus Kas and Knersus and was the artistic director of his company, The Little Marionette Company.

Although Visagie produced some adult shows including The Magic Flute and The Little Prince, his work focused primarily on children’s puppets, whereas Kohler and Jones chose the adult route.

What Borchardt wanted was a rod puppet of Shakespeare holding the heads of Sher and Doran. Sher has had a number of art exhibitions, and after every production, he creates a painting which encapsulates the production.

The man who in the role of Richard III was described as a “bottled spider”, has said were he not an actor he would be an artist, so Borchardt knew her artistic gift would be truly appreciated.

The pictorial sources for the puppet were taken from the wood panel of Shakespeare by an unknown painter in the 1600s which belongs to the collection of the Cobbe family, and an engraving by the Flemish artist Martin Droeshout – the one familiar to every school kid – which graced the cover of Shakespeare’s first folio of work.

The painting is regarded by some as the authentic image of the bard and the engraving is supposedly based on the painting.

The painter shows Shakespeare as a good looking redhead with a long elegant nose, a classic bobbed hairstyle, wearing a very expensive Italian Elizabethan collar and a blue doublet.

Visagie chose to keep to the colour range found in the painting, but moved away from the blue doublet.

Instead he dressed the puppet in fine velvety and silky fabrics of deep purples with gold brocade edging complementing Shakespeare’s skin colour and beard. A long black cloak completed his attire and a fine white lace collar spotlights his face.

The process took four weeks and was the first time Visagie used papier-mâché from pulped egg boxes. Once Borchardt had seen Visagie’s sketches, she knew she had made the right choice. Delicately fashioned hands much like the long fingers of his creator came next, then the head and polystyrene torso.

Visagie is not fond of a highly polished finish, so the face retains an interesting texture of the papier-mâché.

Shakespeare’s dark eyes, in the tradition of puppets, have no irises as this is considered distracting for an audience.

At the beginning the puppet was to hold papier-mâché likenesses of the heads of Sher and Doran. The ancient Romans would have approved – many of their statues show a figure carrying the heads of ancestors. The ancient Greeks, however, would have considered such a sight to be tantamount to decapitation. A colleague of Visagie’s felt the same. Instead, the Shakespeare puppet holds two half-masks, one of Sher complete with his round wire- rim glasses and the other of Doran, which can be raised to fit over the Bard’s face.

A nice twist to the roles of actor and playwright.

l Call Hansie Visagie at 021 488 2030.