Man and puppet as object or subject

HamidrezaArdalan

If puppet, as an object, is in our mind – that is man’s mind –, it is a lifeless creature which we pretend is alive. This puppet is always under man’s dominance and cannot stand where man is standing. By stand, we mean exist, with which man has been known. From another point of view, puppet, as a subject, is a living creature whose life, through man’s life, can be a concept close to a creature that exists. In common puppet plays of Iran, puppets are still experiencing the objective realm and the puppeteers have no other view of puppets than their objective role. They even insist on keeping puppets under the control of their minds. These objects keep their qualities in their nature and sometimes become plural in form and theatre makers take them as variety or change. In the contemporary era, when the idea of “crossing” objects, and most importantly puppets as objects or subjects, is occupying the minds of post-post-modernist artists, we, the puppet theatre society of Iran,cannot keep being accountable in our theatres because there is no longer a true response in modern man’s disposal and also because art in the modern world connotes questioning. In the past eras, neither man nor puppet could be subjects. They were considered determined objects which manifested in the presence of the subject that was the absolute order. Puppet and man, in equal positions as objects, went through the same stories together and were both interlocutors of the eternal subject.
Another word: the universe, as a comprehensive being, assures the talents of man and puppet to return to existence together. This existence has a comprehensive and conceptual aggregation.
Another other word: while puppets are in the hands of puppet theatre makers, they will remain in alien hands. This absence, will lead to forgetting the ritual position of puppets which they possessed in the past. If puppet theatre makers want to express the puppets’ hidden truth in thecommon language of man and puppet, they need to introduce a word in their language which ends their career as the propagators of the idea of man as subject against puppet as object. This word could be “trans” combined with the concept of modern ritual puppet theatre