Czech marionette is definitely well known term amongst professionals from the field and most puppetry fans. For those who are already aware, Czech marionette is also a synonym for high quality hand craft, original design and large scale of local characters.
However, hardly anybody knows that history of Czech marionettes dates far back in history. Puppetry and marionettes theatres have long tradition in the Czech lands. It is a tradition of artistic and educative value.
Back in time to the very beginning
First puppets´ findings in the Czech lands date back in ancient times as being part of various rituals and religious ceremonies. Also fragments of puppets´ theatres were found. In medieval times mostly finger puppets were used by comedians for entertaining not only kids during performances held at fairs or markets. Lately in 17th century, theater groups mainly from Italy, Holland or Britain started to appear in the Czech lands to perform biblical plays or popular English tragedies with live actors and additionally with puppets. It is also important to mention here, that Czech lands weren’t independent by that time. The country was a part of Austrian Monarchy and germanization tendencies affected most of the citizens, therefore most of the plays were performed in German.
Czech pioneers of the 18th century
During the second part of 18th century, original Czech puppeteers started to appear, wandering with their marionettes and plays around the Czech countryside. From these times are even already known names of the popular puppetry families, where the knowledge, skills and marionettes were handed down from one generation to another. The most known are Maisner, Fink or Kopecký family.
Matěj Kopecký
The most significant Czech puppeteer of the first part of the 19th century was Matěj Kopecký, father of 15 kids. The interesting thing is that some of his offspring still go in for puppetry nowadays. Matěj Kopecký is also known as a strong nationalist and patriot who fought against germanization by performing his plays in Czech language.
During the times when predominating German language tried to put Czech down, the folk puppeteers just like Matěj Kopecký played important public role, when indirectly inspired audience (usually simple kind of people) with the ideas of national revival, to revive Czech language, Czech culture and national identity itself. Since the beginning of the 19th century, the repertory included plays from the Czech drama scene about knights, robbers and historical patriotic plays in general.
Kašpárek (Punch, Jester)
Typical comic character of the 19th century was Punch (in Czech we call him Kašpárek [:kash-paa-reck:]¨whose humor conformed to the mentality of the audience.
Up to now, Kašpárek is the most popular and most significant marionette of the Czech puppetry. Even our logo consists of Punch’s cap!!!
Second part of the 19th century
Since the middle of the 19th century, new and official marionettes´ theatres (so called family theatres) were created by popular Prague artists. Many of these family theatres achieved a considerable standard and became basics for the public amateur stages. Puppeteers usually presented children worthy entertainment as well as a kind of practical education.
Golden era of the Czech puppetry
The first decades of the 20th century especially around the time when Czech Republic was established (1918) was the golden age of the Czech puppetry when even popular Czech artists, actors and authors became pretty much concerned about puppetry craft with a goal to stress puppet theatre into an artistic genre. During this period some of the very important things happened in the puppetry field. The Czech Union of Friends of the Puppet Theatre was founded in Prague and it was the very first organization of its kind worldwide. Active till nowadays as UNIMA. UNIMA is affiliated to UNESCO and is a member of the International Theatre Institute.
The other step forward happened when magazine called “Puppeteer” was first issued. The magazine “Puppeteer” (in Czech „Loutkář“) is the first and oldest professional magazine of its kind in the world. It is being published since 1912 (with the exception of the war year).
Marionettes as a support of the Czech nation during war years
War and German occupation, hard and sad times for Czechoslovakia. However, Czech puppeteers managed to fight their way against social oppression. Namely, thanks to Mr. Skupa who, with his ensemble, courageously performed hundreds of performances strengthening the trust of the spectators in a just future for the occupied nation.
Source:
Divadlo : České středisko UNIMA [online]. Praha : Divadelní ústav ,REBEX ČR s.r.o. a ČTK , c1999 , 2001 [cit. 2010-02-05]. Text v češtině a angličtině. Dostupný z WWW: <http://www.divadlo.cz/unima/czhistorie.asp>. Http://www.theatre.cz/unima/en_history.asp.
To learn more about puppets´history, please, follow this link:
http://www.theatre.cz/unima/en_history.asp
