It opens up an alternate universe for audiences interested in stories from the ground" "Theatre is by default a storytelling device. “Another objective is to promote conservation treatment for age-old puppets,” the puppet enthusiast told The New Arab. “Tunisia has an immensely wealthy past and, as far back as the reign of Habib Bourguiba, has had a voracious appetite for puppetry,” he said. “Collectors have been more than accommodating,” Hourani said, commenting on the generosity shown by individuals and also established cultural institutions, such as the National Theatre in Tunisia, that have opened up their prized collections to Hourani and his team. Rare photographs, VHS recordings, and even scraps of paper onto which stage lines were scribbled decades ago will also be displayed in video installations at forthcoming collections. The museum’s remote archivisation approach arrives at an important compromise, preserving the sentimentality of objects while empowering duty-bound archivists to recover the past and decipher the provenance of objects. Each encapsulates the maker’s past and that of his respective nation.īy digitising these objects, the end goal is to stimulate story-telling and knowledge, and as Hourani emphasised in conversion with The New Arab, the treasure-hunt-process was never about procuring other people’s puppets.Įnigmatic street artist fuses Western, Maghreb identities to inspire new forms of art Hournai spoke of his delight at the efforts of private collectors for having safeguarded inherited puppetry-themed objects as treasured family heirlooms. They have also been introduced to private collections preserved by the families of celebrated puppeteers no longer with us. ![]() In Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, and Tunisia, researchers have been trawling through national archives and rooting around the musty basements of theatre houses. Scenes from Tunisian play Dove of Peace from the archive of Tunisia's National Centre for Puppetry The endeavour is to tell authentic stories which has resulted in fruitful collaborations between the museum and local researchers, traversing their respective cities for buried clues about puppetry forgotten past. It opens up an alternate universe for audiences interested in stories from the ground,” Hourani said. “Theatre is by default a storytelling device. Hourani believes that digitising and displaying never-before-seen antique marionettes – glove puppets, shadow puppets, and rod puppets (among other paraphernalia) – could throw new light on the origins of puppeteering, as well as the political and historical events that inspired Arab theatre productions. ![]() "By digitising these objects, the end goal is to stimulate story-telling and knowledge" “In no venue or book has the history of Arab puppetry been faithfully represented,” museum founder and APTF director, Mahmoud Hourani told The New Arab from Florence, Italy, emphasising the need to “jigsaw together with the surviving fragments,” a task performed by his colleagues in London and Ramallah. ![]() The Gerda Henkel Stiftung-funded museum is a virtual space and cultural sanctuary that houses antiquated objects – mainly puppets that collectively narrate the hitherto unknown history of Arab puppetry. The Arab Puppetry Museum, birthed by the Arab Puppet Theatre Foundation (APTF) has no ornate objects displayed in glass vitrines, no exhibition halls or artworks that adorn its walls.
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