Emma is on the ground. It is definitely her. Her black hair covering her face is her, her small body lying motionless is her. The woman holding her is also her. We are standing in a clump in the back of the Belltable gallery space, in that space at the bottom of the stairs beside the toilet and the bar and where you normally hand over your ticket to an usher. This scene is happening in front of a hospital curtain that is cutting off a section of space, and I am hiding behind a tall person, a little afraid of this theatrical encroachment into the real world. Emma picks up and gently places on a hospital bed not just a puppet version of herself, but a child version. She is caring for her. This is an autobiographical work, and this little girl has been in a terrible accident. The little girl wakes up.
The puppet, the little girl, brings the audience with her into the theatre and into an uncanny otherworld where she tries to cope with the loss caused her disability. She is not on her own, as she is accompanied by another boy from her hospital, though there is a worrying sense of her being alone. As an immersive promenade piece, the audience are directed through a series of spaces and rooms in which we meet various characters who try to help, trick and manipulate them. While this show takes it’s inspiration from Pinocchio, you find yourself thinking a lot about Alice going down the rabbit hole, however unlike the self possessed Alice, this little girl is struggling to negotiate this world and all of it’s deceptions. There is a quiet defiance, however, that emerges through the process of forced change, with the cruel process of a little girl having to make some very internal and almost spiritual decisions about her identity. At the same time, we don’t get a fairy tale ending, just a sense of relief as the lurching surreality of the traumatic journey gives way to a sense of control. The puppet is put away and the grown up little girl is ready to escape this otherworld. The emergency door of the theatre flings open and we are all shuttled into the noisy bright reality of the street, looking like that you-tube video of freed factory cattle.
The visual arts sensibilities of Emma Fisher’s vision spoke to me to me in a way that perhaps might have jarred with theatre folks. Conversely, things that theatre people might not question really distracted me, such as the use of a theatre sound system for the character voices. The under-performed sense of this work really appealed to me, allowing a very engaging story-telling without the insincerity of acting with a capital A. The disruptions and negotiations of the space, and the confusion over whether or not we should pull a string or answer a question is all acceptable in the contrary world of visual art. I didn’t understand some bits, some bits seemed totally anarchistic, and that was good.
Part of the importance of this work is the feeling that this is real. At it’s core maybe this wasn’t really a piece of puppet theatre, but a piece of performance art in which the artist creates a piece of theatre about an event so devastating that the only way it can be properly explained is through her playing herself in a piece of puppet theatre. The puppeteer only looks up at the end, and at this stage I am ready to leave this world, and I can tell she is as well. She has told the story, she looks up and makes eye contact. “There you have it”, is what I can see on her face. I am a puppeteer that has a disabled arm.
Those that know Emma knows that she is the kind of person that has a disabled arm and becomes a puppeteer. It is an act of creative defiance. The biggest challenge in doing this kind of work is not the overcoming of the disability, but the acknowledging of it. It sent her on a scary and surreal journey, a lonely path away from other children, a detour that could have been a trap.
One of the hidden characters in this story is her arm. Not the one that the little girl puppet is trying to find and replace, or the one that Emma injured all those years ago, but the one she built to make this piece. Working with prosthetic hand maker Ivan Owen and the Fab Lab Future Makers project, Emma was able to build an exoskeleton arm that uses magnets to control the actions of Pupa. In a way, this technology allowed her to be physically connected to her childhood self, to connect with that state and that place. It is a bridge and a gap as well. It will never be the same, but for a while it could be the connection.
The event in question may have happened in the 90s, which was the beginning of the cyborg era, and the writings of Donna Haraway are still relevant to our understanding of contemporary post-human realities. I’m pretty sure I need to set aside a whole other text to delve properly into this particular aspect to Emma’s work, but my initial instinct is that it is no coincidence that the sense of defiance in this work ties naturally to the creative integration of a type of assistive technology in the form of the prosthetic arm, only for it to be removed at the point of metamorphosis when the girl puppet is detached and put away. There is a debate she is having about how and where she builds on to herself, adds on a mechanical extension, as a child, as an adult, as an artist.
The fairy story ends, but real life continues. This work is for adults, not because of the sometimes disturbing elements the little girl meets, but because of the kick-in-the-stomach realisations around the cruelties of life, growing up, identity and what it is to be human. We are helplessly watching this child on this journey, unable to protect her from the unfairness of her experience and the physical and psychological threats looming around her. Most well known fairy stories and fables had a moral message at their core. This one isn’t so much about a nice clean-cut warning against stealing or lying, but something more insidious and heart-breaking.
The puppet, the little girl, brings the audience with her into the theatre and into an uncanny otherworld where she tries to cope with the loss caused her disability. She is not on her own, as she is accompanied by another boy from her hospital, though there is a worrying sense of her being alone. As an immersive promenade piece, the audience are directed through a series of spaces and rooms in which we meet various characters who try to help, trick and manipulate them. While this show takes it’s inspiration from Pinocchio, you find yourself thinking a lot about Alice going down the rabbit hole, however unlike the self possessed Alice, this little girl is struggling to negotiate this world and all of it’s deceptions. There is a quiet defiance, however, that emerges through the process of forced change, with the cruel process of a little girl having to make some very internal and almost spiritual decisions about her identity. At the same time, we don’t get a fairy tale ending, just a sense of relief as the lurching surreality of the traumatic journey gives way to a sense of control. The puppet is put away and the grown up little girl is ready to escape this otherworld. The emergency door of the theatre flings open and we are all shuttled into the noisy bright reality of the street, looking like that you-tube video of freed factory cattle.
The visual arts sensibilities of Emma Fisher’s vision spoke to me to me in a way that perhaps might have jarred with theatre folks. Conversely, things that theatre people might not question really distracted me, such as the use of a theatre sound system for the character voices. The under-performed sense of this work really appealed to me, allowing a very engaging story-telling without the insincerity of acting with a capital A. The disruptions and negotiations of the space, and the confusion over whether or not we should pull a string or answer a question is all acceptable in the contrary world of visual art. I didn’t understand some bits, some bits seemed totally anarchistic, and that was good.
Part of the importance of this work is the feeling that this is real. At it’s core maybe this wasn’t really a piece of puppet theatre, but a piece of performance art in which the artist creates a piece of theatre about an event so devastating that the only way it can be properly explained is through her playing herself in a piece of puppet theatre. The puppeteer only looks up at the end, and at this stage I am ready to leave this world, and I can tell she is as well. She has told the story, she looks up and makes eye contact. “There you have it”, is what I can see on her face. I am a puppeteer that has a disabled arm.
Those that know Emma knows that she is the kind of person that has a disabled arm and becomes a puppeteer. It is an act of creative defiance. The biggest challenge in doing this kind of work is not the overcoming of the disability, but the acknowledging of it. It sent her on a scary and surreal journey, a lonely path away from other children, a detour that could have been a trap.
One of the hidden characters in this story is her arm. Not the one that the little girl puppet is trying to find and replace, or the one that Emma injured all those years ago, but the one she built to make this piece. Working with prosthetic hand maker Ivan Owen and the Fab Lab Future Makers project, Emma was able to build an exoskeleton arm that uses magnets to control the actions of Pupa. In a way, this technology allowed her to be physically connected to her childhood self, to connect with that state and that place. It is a bridge and a gap as well. It will never be the same, but for a while it could be the connection.
The event in question may have happened in the 90s, which was the beginning of the cyborg era, and the writings of Donna Haraway are still relevant to our understanding of contemporary post-human realities. I’m pretty sure I need to set aside a whole other text to delve properly into this particular aspect to Emma’s work, but my initial instinct is that it is no coincidence that the sense of defiance in this work ties naturally to the creative integration of a type of assistive technology in the form of the prosthetic arm, only for it to be removed at the point of metamorphosis when the girl puppet is detached and put away. There is a debate she is having about how and where she builds on to herself, adds on a mechanical extension, as a child, as an adult, as an artist.
The fairy story ends, but real life continues. This work is for adults, not because of the sometimes disturbing elements the little girl meets, but because of the kick-in-the-stomach realisations around the cruelties of life, growing up, identity and what it is to be human. We are helplessly watching this child on this journey, unable to protect her from the unfairness of her experience and the physical and psychological threats looming around her. Most well known fairy stories and fables had a moral message at their core. This one isn’t so much about a nice clean-cut warning against stealing or lying, but something more insidious and heart-breaking.
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