Manipulate Visual Theatre Festival runs from Mon 31st Jan – Sat 5th Feb @ Traverse Theatre.
Decades of Saturday morning cartoons and fuzzy anthropomorphism have turned the once transgressive and thought provoking arts of animation and puppetry into safe family entertainment so cue the Manipulate Visual Theatre Festival which thankfully reclaims the wild and dark natures of these art-forms and showcases what they can do better than any others, feeding our unconscious and acting as avatars for our repressed desires.
Featuring live performance and films from around the world there’s a wide range of styles and approaches on display. From the retelling of serial killing with glove puppets from Frenchman Jonathan Capdevielle, the dystopian disconnections of Metropia a film by Sweden’s Tarik Saleh, to the charming hand cut animations of England’s Matthew Robins and the absorbing puppet storytelling of Scotland’s own Tortoise in a Nutshell company.
We’ve been lucky enough to interview a couple of the key players this year including performer Jonathan Capdevielle and Richard McGuire about there contributions to this vital festival:
Fear of darkness is humankind’s most primeval terror. Seated back in the days before we’d conquered fire when the night belonged to our predators, its power has never left us and even now when darkness can be dispelled by the flick of a switch it can still leave us paralysed and trembling in the night, anyone who’s seen the opener to Twin Peaks will appreciate that. Cue Fear(s) of the Dark, a new animated film that consists of a portmanteau featuring collected short black and white films on fear and darkness with the work of Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Lorenzo Mattotti, Blutch and Pierre Di Sciullo and author, illustrator and animator Richard McGuire:
Fear(s) of the Dark showing @ Traverse Theatre 2nd Feb 21:30
Richard McGuire – The Interview
Your previous film Micro Loup and your work as an illustrator and author seem far removed from the Gothic or horror category so what made you want to get involved in this project?
I saw it as a challenge. The same producers were behind both films. It was their concept: a scary animated feature in black and white. When they approached me with the idea me I wasn’t so confident that I could do it. I agreed mostly because I wanted to make another film, and it would also give me an opportunity to live and work in France. It took me a while to find my way stylistically. Compared to the other directors who made the other parts of the Fears film I don’t feel I have a universe to protect, I think I’m pretty flexible in this regard. I just had to find a solution that worked. I felt that the look had to be ‘realistic’ enough so one could create the right experience but also simple enough to animate easily. One thing that tends to run through all my work is a certain amount of minimalism in the design so in that respect there is a connection to other things I’ve done.
The only restriction in the film was that all sections must be in black and white. Were there any particular challenges or benefits to working without colour?
I love working with restrictions. I often set up parameters, it really helps push me along. In Micro Loup the restriction was that everything would be seen from directly above for the entire film. Everything becomes abstracted but once you realise what you’re seeing you follow the story logically, so it becomes a sort of game. Although the Fears film is much more realistic it uses abstraction in another way, by putting so much in the dark. Some scenes are so minimal that you need the sound to complete the image otherwise you’re lost. I’m interested in that line between abstraction and reality. While researching the design for the Fears film I came across the work of Felix Vallotton, a Swiss artist from the turn of the century. In his graphic work he often did a trick of black on black, a person wearing black against a black background with no line to delineate the two. I liked the way your mind would complete the image. I knew this was a key to how to approach the film.
This is a collective work on the theme of fear by different artists Were you aware of what other animators were creating whilst the film was in production and if so how did that affect your process?
I knew all the other artist/directors on the film personally so I was very familiar with all of their work. We were all aware in a very vague way with what the others were doing, the producers were really the only ones who saw everything. Because each artist/director had their own style that demanded a different technique different production companies were involved. The Charles Burns film was made in a 3d studio in Paris, Lorenzo Mattoti’s film was animated by hand, pencil and paper, all in Korea, and then later all rendered in France, Marie Caillou’s film was made with Flash in Belgium, etc…so each of us were working in different locations. I wrote and storyboarded the film along with Michel Pirus in Paris. Most of the animation was made in a small town called Angouleme. We used a combination of techniques: traditional, Flash, some parts that were made with 3D programs, some After Effects techniques were added to help unify the different looks. I then worked on the sound design and music in Brussels, and the final edit was made back in Paris. It wasn’t until the first rough cut that we all sat down together and saw the entire film. Early into the production the producers had the idea of inter-cutting the story-lines. Three of us resisted, Burns, Mattoti, and myself. The other three directors had no problem with the cutting so this is why the film is structured the way it is.
From ghost stories around the campfire to slasher movies human beings seem to love being terrified. Did you come to any conclusions about why that is during the making of this film?
It’s a thrill when your heart beats faster, you get a little adrenaline rush from being scared, maybe that can be a bit of an addiction, I don’t know. Because of the Fears film I was invited to a horror festival. The audience was so intense. Watching a horror film with an audience like that was more like an amusement ride more than a film experience. I was very aware of being in an audience. They were much more vocal and were really participating with the film. When I go to see a film I want to get absorbed into what is going on in the story and loose myself to the experience. When I was writing the film I did spend a lot of time thinking about what is scary and why. When I would get scared I would try to stop and examine it. I put a few things in the film directly from my own experiences. Like the scene when the bat comes out of the cabinet. That actually happened to me while I was writing the film. A bat came flying into the room I was staying. After I shooed it out the window I thought about how I reacted and drew some sketches. I always keep a journal and I write my dreams and nightmares down all the time, so that disturbing part of the dream sequence when he pulls out the long wire out of his hand that was directly from one of my nightmares. I went back an analysed a lot of films that scared me. So much of the time it’s all about what is not seen that is scariest or just the sound of something can scare you. I analysed The Shining without the sound just to see and hear what is happening that makes it work. There are all these clichés we all react too especially with music. It’s easy to add a little atonal music and it pushes the buttons. For that reason I tried to suppress the music in my film, I was hoping to get the audience drawn in by the silence and make it feel more intimate.
Obviously this film will intrigue horror fans and those of a dark sensibility but do you think the film can appeal to a wider audience?
This film is not exactly a genre picture it’s an odd little cult film at best, the audience it attracts and appeals to are the ones who like horror and comics and animation. I think it’s next to impossible to predict what would appeal to a larger audience. I think people like to know what they are getting before hand and want to be equally surprised by it. Who would have thought David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, such a crazy film, would have such a wide appeal? It starts as a crime film then gets more weird and is wildly entertaining not to mention remaining completely artful. Roman Polanski has a great way of getting to that same place with a very dark humour. His film The Tenant is so underrated, it’s one of my favourites and it was a flop when it came out.
One final question. What scares Richard McGuire?
I’ve been asked that question a lot since I made the film, one of my personal fears, or phobias, which actually made into the story is claustrophobia. Speaking to an audience was a fear for a long time but I think I’ve gotten a handle on that one now hopefully. Unpredictable madness is something that is scary to get close to. Right wing fundamental extremists can be pretty damn scary…
An Extract of McGuire’s part from Fear(s) of the Dark:
Jonathan Capdevielle – The Interview
Jerk showing @ Traverse Theatre 3 Feb @ 21:00
Between 1970 and 1973 Dean Corll tortured and killed 27 teenagers in Texas. During this time he co-opted David Brooks and Wayne Henley as accomplices to his horrific crimes which finally came to light after Henley shot and killed him.
In Jerk directed by Gisele Viènne, Puppeteer Jonathan Capdevielle takes the role of David Brooks using glove puppets to tell his tale to a group of psychology students. It’s a disturbing, unsettling, shocking and occasionally darkly funny experience as the tools of childhood innocence are turned into tools of horror.
Viènne and Capdevielle deliberately choose subjects for their work which are confrontational and dark and this is a perfect example. Perhaps the only way it’s possible to retell a story like this is to place it at a distance, removed from reality.
Can you tell us a little about the genesis of Jerk?
Gisèle and I are puppet masters. We studied at Charleville Mezieres Puppetry School in France . But for a few years now, we’ve been working in contemporary dance. Jerk, the Dennis Cooper novel, was the opportunity to come back to the traditional puppetry technique (the gloves puppets), and to explore the image of the puppet master.
The first step of this work was a radio play for the ACR (radio workshop creation) at France Culture. The idea was to recreate the sound atmosphere in the prison. It was all about sound . About David Brooks’ puppet voices, and how we would be able to describe the fragility and the confusion in his mind when he confessed about the crimes he committed.
The second step was the performance. We chose a very simple stage setting: David Brooks sitting on a wooden chair facing the audience, a bag with six puppets and a ghetto-blaster.
Did you know anything about Corll, Brooks and Henley before taking on this project?
No, I didn’t. After a few performances I was looking for Wayne Henley and David Brook’s interviews and I found some. David Brooks mother’s phone call when he was arrested by the police….and a more recent video when he’s in jail, and talking with a journalist about the murders and about Dean Corll. I also found a picture of Wayne aged seventeen, and I have to admit that he looked pretty cute.
What do you think is revealed by telling the story through this medium that’s different from a straight dramatic performance?
The most interesting thing is that all the speeches, the set design, the aesthetic, the music, are related to one and only one person, the main character and teller of the story: David Brooks. Then it’s a question of distance: how can you express such a traumatic event or thoughts? How can you achieve your goal in making people understand it, or not?
There is also something about loneliness: in this piece, David brooks appears as a lonely character, only accompanied by memories, ghosts, sounds…
How much was the inherent innocence associated with glove puppets a factor in choosing them to recreate these horrific crimes?
Glove puppets has always been a subversive medium, able to carry hilarious speeches but also horrible talks and politically incorrect subjects… In this particular story, the glove puppets interested us for their “therapeutic” use. Of course they also refer to childhood, because they are toys, but they are also associated to cruelty, and not only to innocence: you can’t think innocence without guilt, vulnerability without aggression… Glove puppets allow us to make David Brooks vulnerability stronger and strengthen the audience’s compassion for him.
At previous performances you’ve had audience members walking out. Do you think the show sets out to shock or provoke or is the story itself fundamentally difficult for some to absorb?
I think both, but curiously the puppets scenes are more difficult for the audience… For example when the “Panda” is eating the balls of one of the dead puppet boys, some people leave the room, maybe because the stuffed toys remind them of the flavour of childhood… I’m also doing sound effects during the murdering scenes, like the knifes and stomach sounds and yells and it’s really uncomfortable for some people, maybe because it’s about the body: liquids, flesh, spit, and tears too .
Some people might say that puppets are used in Jerk simply to try and make the piece even more shocking, as particularly in the UK puppets are seen as purely for children by most people. Their use in this piece could be seen as controversial for controversies sake without helping to understand the character or his motivations.
Firstly I’d say the use of puppets is part of the novel. David Brooks has learned puppetry in jail to tell his story: “They describe situations I feel incapable of representing adequately in my puppetry at this time, they also allow me time to move scenery around, prepare my puppets and so on…” Some traditional puppet gloves show for kids are really trash. Like Punch et Judy for example: there is a scene where their baby’s crying and they decide to throw him in a sausage machine (“machine à faire des saucisses“)… For me it’s little bit of gore for kids. Our idea in Jerk is not to add provocation. Au contraire puppets are used to put distance between the character and the horror of his acts. And it can also help the audience to keep distance too.
[Here’s a Jan Svankmajer Punch & Judy for the die hards:]