Georges is animated and inanimate.
Georges performs.
Georges raises his voice.
Georges is articulated.
Georges tells “dead people stories.”
And what if those dead people had a presence, a spirit, and a sense of humour ?
Georges was created by Mylène Benoit and Julika Mayer, a puppet artist from Stuttgart, for the Sujets à Vif / Festival d’Avignon 2018.
It plays with biography and fiction, and looks at the invisibility of the dead in Western civilisation, through the art of dance and puppetry. It turns out that “some living are able to welcome the presence of the dead”.
What if the dead support us, even console us ? What if they are present here with us, with their spirit and sense of humour ?
Julika Mayer & Mylene Benoit are recycling puppets from shows no longer “living” to be re-animated in a new context: puppets created by artists Arnaud Louski-Pane, Ingo Mewes, Antje Töpfer, Janusz Debinski & Paulo Duarte. These puppets come out of their boxes as if in a sacred ritual.
Julika Mayer is a puppeteer. Her work focuses on the relationship between the body and the space, the object, and the puppet. In 2011, she won a residency at the Institut français in Berlin. She returned to Germany to be co-director of the puppeteering department at the State University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart.
