Speaking in Other Voices

What is it about?

This book is about the folk puppetry of Liège, Belgium, a tradition that has existed since the middle of the nineteenth century. Wooden rod puppets manipulated from above portray medieval stories of knights and wars of religion. The beloved local character, Tchantchès, interrupts the high-class discourse in French with a gruff dose of common sense, usually delivered in the regional language, Walloon. The puppets’ voices are produced by a single puppeteer who incorporates performances of earlier puppeteers and (conversations he hears on the street. There are few countries where language issues so quickly become political as in Belgium. Puppeteers pay close attention to the ways that language reveals not only personality and emotion but also social class, gender, race, and region. Master puppeteers are verbal virtuosos, switching quickly from voice to voice, using the language attitudes of their audience to create puppet characters who attract or revile. Verbally artistic forms like the puppet theater play an important role in maintaining lesser known languages and sustaining cultural ties. By examining the puppet theater both as an ongoing artistic practice and a performance tradition embedded in local realities, we gain insight into the relationships between language, culture, and performance and their transformation through time.

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