It’s World Puppet Day 2006
Posted By Kathleen David on March 21, 2006
Today is World Puppet Day according to UNIMA-USA (Union Internationale de la Marionnette). Pick up a sock and make a new friend. They have two interesting pieces on their website by “Michael Meschke (Poland)” and “Dario Fo (Italy)”. They present very different points of view about something that is so universal.
I have had a lot of people ask me when I got into puppets and honestly I cannot remember a time in my life I have not been into puppets. I believe strongly in the power of the puppet. I get a good feeling inside when I have introduced someone else to the art of puppetry and I can see that gleam in his or her eye known that I have helped kindle a passion that will probably last them a life time. There are a couple of kids I have taught over the years that are now making a career out of puppetry.
I have made a lot of both friends and contacts through puppetry. It was because of a Klingon puppet I did that I first met Peter and we all know what came out of that many years later. It was because of a Sandman Puppet I did that I first met Neil Gaiman. My puppets have made me memorable to the various people who own them. They have a small piece of me in their house.
I can remember meeting Peter Davison for the first time. A number of years ago I had sent his Dr. puppet up to him with a good friend and I told him that I was the creator of that puppet. He told me how wonderful and clever he thought it was and said, “Tell me that you are still making puppets.” I said that yes I was and he was pleased since he thought I had the knack for it.
So today I think I am going to throw on the Muppet Show while I am cleaning up around here and see if I have an episode with Bruce Schwartz’s puppets. And I think I am going to start making a new puppet in honor of the day.
I would like everyone to pick up a puppet today and play with it a bit. Find that space between inanimate object and living being. You will be glad you did.
I am grateful for all that puppetry has brought into my life.
I see you’re doing a puppet workship for children at ICON… What’s the age range that it’ll be appropriate for?
SHAME SHAME!!!!!!!
to the major of milan!
Death of an anarchist is accidental – yet again
By Richard Owen in Rome
“Inspector, keep me here with you or I’ll throw myself out the window. What floor are we on? Fourth? Well, it’s almost standard practice: I’ll jump! I’ll jump and when I’m lying down there dying, splattered all over the pavement and giving the death-rattle. . . I’ll look up and say — it was him, the inspector! He threw me out. Inspector Bertozzo did! And I take a long time to die. I’m not fragile like the anarchist.”
– From Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo
DARIO FO, the Nobel prize-winning Italian playwright, accused the Milan authorities of “turning lies into history” yesterday after a plaque recording the death of an anarchist — the subject of his most famous play — was altered overnight.
The death of Giuseppe Pinelli at Milan police headquarters in December 1969 became a cause célèbre and the subject of Fo’s play Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
Pinelli died after falling from a fourth-floor window while being interrogated by police three days after a bomb explosion that killed sixteen people. The Left blamed Luigi Calabresi, then the Milan police commander, for Pinelli’s death. A plaque put up by leftwingers described Pinelli as an innocent man who had been killed.
However, Gabriele Albertini, the centre-right Mayor of Milan, who is stepping down in May, said that he had ordered the plaque to be replaced with an official one declaring that Pinelli had “died tragically”.
Signor Albertini said that Calabresi — who was murdered in 1972 in an apparent act of revenge by the far Left — had long ago been cleared of any involvement. He had promised Calabresi’s widow, Gemma, that he would alter the plaque before leaving office to “remove any stain of the accusation of murder from her husband’s memory”.
Gerardo D’Ambrosio, the judge who acquitted Calabresi of murder, said: “Why do this now, shortly before the general election in April and the local elections in May?” A week ago, a Milan election rally was marred by violent clashes between far-left protesters and neo-Fascist activists. Signor D’Ambrosio said that although the riots were not on the scale of the street battles that formed the background to Pinelli’s death, “history is unfortunately repeating itself”.
Fo, who stood unsuccessfully in primaries to be the centre-left mayoral candidate in the forthcoming Milan election, said that whether the new plaque stayed was “up to us, the Left. If we can sleep in peace it will stay. Otherwise not”.
The playwright said that this was “not an incitement to revolt” and that Pinelli’s death was “clearly the responsibility of those who detained him in that room without any reason”.
Bruno Ferrante, who defeated Fo to become the centre-left mayoral candidate, said that he was “astonished that such an historically sensitive decision could be taken without reference to the council as a whole or the people of the city”.
Yesterday anarchists stuck a piece of paper with the word “killed” (ucciso) over the word “dead” (morto) on the new plaque and draped a black and red anarchist flag over it.
THE PLAYERS
On December 12, 1969, a Milan bomb killed 16 people and wounded 84. Pinelli was held for three days before his death
Murder charges against Luigi Calabresi, the police commander, were dropped
Three neo-Fascists were convicted in 2001 over the bombing; cleared in 2004
Calabresi was shot dead in 1972
Adriano Sofri, of Far Left, was sentenced to 22 years for ordering the killing. Now an author, he maintains his innocence
Dario Fo won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997
The Times March 21, 2006
by Victor blogger from milan
Yes, practicing with my naked puppet from the FarPoint workshop in the car in traffic is a great stress reliever. Though I do get the oddest looks…
*grin*
-=- Em (Cora’s Mom)