Puppeteer carves his own characters

Press, 30 August 1989, Page 27

Puppeteer carves his own characters

TANYA GADBSY

An actor is always an actor, says Norbert Hausberg. But a puppet is its character.

"You can have genies that fly, you can have unspeakable things emerging from boxes, you can create an emotion as a figure. You just can’t do that with actors.” In his Sumner workshop, surrounded by halfformed characters for his new play, the roof hung with faces, hands and rabbits, the floor scattered with woodshavings, Hausberg talks of his beginnings in West Germany, where puppeteering was an old and revered form "of theatre.

He remembers going into the workshop of his tutor on freezing winter mornings, and the scent of the lime wood which filled it. Now, in a country where Hausberg himself could be seen as the father of the art, he carves his own lime wood. He picks up an offcut, but the scent is gone.

He smiles. “It’s still with me.”

Norbert Hausberg is the creator of Strings Attached Puppet Theatre, established in Christchurch in 1984. He writes and directs his material, designs, carves and clothes all his puppets and is the sole human performer in his productions. He also makes all the backdrops. “It’s not a very specialised job being a puppeteer,” he says wryly. The productions are technically simplistic — just the marionettes, Hausberg and two spotlights. There is no amplifiction, which means the size of his audience is limited by the distance his voice can carry.

That audience consists mainly of children, particularly for the play which he will be staging in the Great Hall from September 2 to 5. “Mustapha and the Moon” is a comic fairytale about the first New Zealander in outer space.

Hausberg describes it as family entertainment. “I usually have a lot of adults at the shows. They enjoy it as much as children. Sometimes you still have this adult who has to have a child with him to see the show, but we’re improving.” He feels it important that the whole family is there. Often, children who have seen the play at their school get their parents interested enough to want to see it for themselves.

To many New Zealanders, his would seem a rather strange profession, but Hausberg explains that in West Germany, it was not such an unusual career choice.

"I got a lot of encouragement from my parents. There is a lot of puppetry in Europe, on television and in the theatre, and a lot of learning opportunities. Coming to puppetry was easier there than here, I think.”

Becoming a professional puppeteer was not so much a conscious choice as a natural progression. Positive reinforcement, says Hausberg, had much to do with it.

“If you get good feedback in one particular area you tend to concentrate on it. The bottom line of every art form is you do it because you’re successful.

“I suddenly found myself after all these years being a professional puppeteer.” Of course, an artist also has to have a love for his medium, and Hausberg’s long-term fascination has been with marionettes. This was the form of puppetry which he learned from his German tutor, and that which he has always found more interesting, as it involves whole figures rather than cut-off handpuppets. In making his marionettes, Hausberg prefers to get their character across rather than make them realistic. Their features are often sharply angled, with dramatic paintwork. As Hausberg unveils some of his favourite creations, which hang in special bags from the roof of his storage room, he brings each to life with an easy flick of the fingers. Some have moving eyes or mouths, but Hausberg feels that too much emphasis on constructional cleverness distracts the audience from the story itself.

The emphasis is on the face and exaggerated hands. A genie has no body at all, just floating fabric, which sails gracefully through the air under. Hausberg’s control. He treats his puppets like old friends, obviously delighted to have an audience.

“Everything can come alive,” he explains. “You are only bound by your imagination.” If you want an animal character in an ordinary play, you either have to get the real thing or

someone dressed up as it. A much better alternative, says Hausberg, producing a camel from its bag, is available in puppetry. The puppets, of which he has about 65 complete, are usually designed for the story, but he says some characters are inspiring in themselves, like the main character in “Mustapha and the Moon.”

There is no one aspect of his work that he prefers — the only disadvantage is that this country’s small population means that he has to tour a lot to make a living, sometimes being away from home for two months at a time.

At the moment he is working on a play for high schools, sponsored by the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council and the 1990 Commission, which allows him to stay at home and work. It is a more serious play, the life story of an immigrant to New Zealand, spanning the two World Wars.

“Mustapha and the Moon,” while it has a much lighter touch, also contains a message or two. There is a perception, says Hausberg that every play must have one strong mean character. He has tried to avoid this, and create more positive characters, by introducing an alien who is presumed to be a “meanie” but who turns out to be “a really nice person.” “It has quite a few messages, but they’re not delivered with a hammer. They’re there if you want to pick them up.” Some do pick them up, others are simply carried away by the magic of Norbert Hausberg’s special brand of theatre.