The Goddess Festival is very proud and honoured to be able to bring you the beauty and magic of sacred puppetry by Aja Marneweck and The Paper Body Collective. The La Loba sacred puppetry will form an integral part of the program and participants will interact ritually in the story and its mythical power.
International puppetry company, The Paper Body Collective will be hosting a workshop and performance at the Goddess Festival South Africa on the 5 May. Working with animism, the roots of object ritual and performance, the workshop guides participants (from beginners to experienced) to explore movement, voice and creative intuition using giant sheets of white paper.
As she moves, she gathers fragments of the formative fantastical spaces of her world. Out of her recollections she begins to build something. Much like the archetype of La Huesera, the old bone-woman, the gatherer, La Loba is gathering bones. She looks for pieces on herself, around in the space, to build something new, but it is old, it is herself again, and it is not what she thought it would be.
'Nobody wanted to leave at the end of this astounding performance...Brilliant'- The Cue
Using the archetype of La Loba, the bone gatherer, and creative collections from the residue of the afternoon workshops, the evening performance ritual will use earth and fire, paper and light, voice and movement to create an alchemical puppetry event.
The Paper Body Collective: creating expansive artistic practice that supports our alchemical journeys into the sacred feminine.
The Paper Body Collective promotes the development of women’s sacred Visual Performance and Puppetry in Southern Africa through multidisciplinary creative projects, theatre, performance, dynamic collaborations, developmental workshops, talks, research and training. Under the direction of visual performance artist Aja Marneweck, the company creates its theatre of difference through its avant garde edge and total theatre approach to puppetry, narrative, imagery, choreography and representation. Exploring issues around gender, they are a vital contribution to developing multi-modal Visual Performance in South Africa today.
The Paper Body Collective have performed in South Africa, Zimbabwe, France, Belgium, Czech Republic, Kenya, Finland and Sweden. The Paper Body Collective promotes top-class inventive puppetry, electric experimentation and collaborative creative development in nurturing risk-taking art.
The Paper Body Collective promotes the development of women’s sacred Visual Performance and Puppetry in Southern Africa through multidisciplinary creative projects, theatre, performance, dynamic collaborations, developmental workshops, talks, research and training. Under the direction of visual performance artist Aja Marneweck, the company creates its theatre of difference through its avant garde edge and total theatre approach to puppetry, narrative, imagery, choreography and representation. Exploring issues around gender, they are a vital contribution to developing multi-modal Visual Performance in South Africa today.
The Paper Body Collective have performed in South Africa, Zimbabwe, France, Belgium, Czech Republic, Kenya, Finland and Sweden. The Paper Body Collective promotes top-class inventive puppetry, electric experimentation and collaborative creative development in nurturing risk-taking art.
‘Teeming multimedia always touching’- Laurence Bertels, LaLibre Belgium
Aja is a multidisciplinary visual performance artist, puppeteer and puppet-maker, producer, academic and director/founder of The Paper Body Collective based in Cape Town. She has just completed the inaugural PhD in Practice as Research in Puppetry and Visual Performance, in the Drama and African Gender studies Departments at the University of Cape Town. The Paper Body Collective thus promote top-class inventive puppetry, electric experimentation and collaborative creative development in nurturing risk-taking art.
Paper Puppetry:
Puppetry speaks of the superhuman, the sub-human and the inner human. The mirror it holds up to us can expose our inhumanity, stab our conscience or agitate for change. It can also illustrate our spirituality and the poetry in our soul. Always, the animated figure carries within it the spirit of gods, devils, and magic and of other worlds. Animism lives! (Francis, 2007: 7).
Animism through ritual is one of humanities oldest spiritual and creative urges. Ancient and contemporary puppetry arose from this most basic instinct to see the life within everything around us- in the objects we used in ritual, the masks we wore for worship and the spirits and characters we envisioned in the natural world around us. Puppetry and mask work has been used in African performance and ritual for thousands of years. Figurines and masks are guardians of ancestral bones or powerful partners to the practices of diviners in community ritual. The use of objects to express our humanity and the transformative experience of living is a powerful and deeply creative experience.
The paper puppetry workshops facilitated by Aja Marneweck were developed and inspired by the work of master puppeteer Gary Friedman who used puppetry in the 80’s and 90’s as a powerful medium for social change throughout Africa and internationally. Friedman’s work with paper puppetry was inspired by renowned Spanish performance artist Joan Baixas. For over ten years now, Marneweck has used paper puppetry workshops, performance and techniques, conducting workshops from South Africa to Kenya to Ireland and beyond, promoting the use of this powerful creative tool to express our deepest experiences of our humanity.
website : www.paperbody.co.za
Aja Marneweck:
Aja is a multidisciplinary visual performance artist, puppeteer and puppet-maker, producer, academic and director/founder of The Paper Body Collective based in Cape Town. She has just completed the inaugural PhD in Practice as Research in Puppetry and Visual Performance, in the Drama and African Gender studies Departments at the University of Cape Town. The Paper Body Collective thus promote top-class inventive puppetry, electric experimentation and collaborative creative development in nurturing risk-taking art.
Paper Puppetry:
Puppetry speaks of the superhuman, the sub-human and the inner human. The mirror it holds up to us can expose our inhumanity, stab our conscience or agitate for change. It can also illustrate our spirituality and the poetry in our soul. Always, the animated figure carries within it the spirit of gods, devils, and magic and of other worlds. Animism lives! (Francis, 2007: 7).
Animism through ritual is one of humanities oldest spiritual and creative urges. Ancient and contemporary puppetry arose from this most basic instinct to see the life within everything around us- in the objects we used in ritual, the masks we wore for worship and the spirits and characters we envisioned in the natural world around us. Puppetry and mask work has been used in African performance and ritual for thousands of years. Figurines and masks are guardians of ancestral bones or powerful partners to the practices of diviners in community ritual. The use of objects to express our humanity and the transformative experience of living is a powerful and deeply creative experience.
The paper puppetry workshops facilitated by Aja Marneweck were developed and inspired by the work of master puppeteer Gary Friedman who used puppetry in the 80’s and 90’s as a powerful medium for social change throughout Africa and internationally. Friedman’s work with paper puppetry was inspired by renowned Spanish performance artist Joan Baixas. For over ten years now, Marneweck has used paper puppetry workshops, performance and techniques, conducting workshops from South Africa to Kenya to Ireland and beyond, promoting the use of this powerful creative tool to express our deepest experiences of our humanity.
website : www.paperbody.co.za
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