Puppets Come Alive in German Theater
Bailey Triggs
Issue date: 9/30/03 Section: Arts
Watching Toccata, 'what's going on here?' was certainly what was on the audience's mind before, during, and even after the performance. It's one thing to flip open your program and read about "the technique of collage" and "freely combining" objects, but it's quite another to see a man sitting under a table while a clothed figure above him drums its fingers loudly on the table while water drips into a filling cup in the corner. It's one thing to read about music and language as "independent forms of art;" it's another to listen to Wilde playing a manic piece on the organ sitting on the stage half-masked behind a gauzy piece of cloth, while Vogel breaks the long stretches of his silence with bursts of German and excerpts from Schumann's diary.
Toccata is about the life of Schumann, but not the life you'd expect. It is not the life of achievements that you see in most pieces that take up the challenge of retelling a life on stage. Toccata is about the life Schumann lived in his head. It is about the depressed man, the hallucinations. Instead of explaining to you Schumann's emotional state as a footnote to the greater story of his life, Wilde and Vogel focus on this aspect, endeavoring to put you in his place, to show you what he sees through his mind's eye and to experience in your own way some of the same emotions that he feels.
This endeavor is all around fantastical, and so is the piece that results from it. Watching Toccata is like being caught in a dream, whether that dream is pleasant or nightmarish is up for debate. The puppets Vogel uses are both frightening and comical. They range in size from huge (doubling Vogel's size when he embodies it), to tiny enough to fit in your hand. The subjects of the puppets range from small woodland creatures, to butterflies, to a giant horse, but a majority of the puppets are some degree of human. Each of the human puppets has a ghost-like quality about it; many are draped in thin layers of gauze to enhance that effect.
Toccata is about the life of Schumann, but not the life you'd expect. It is not the life of achievements that you see in most pieces that take up the challenge of retelling a life on stage. Toccata is about the life Schumann lived in his head. It is about the depressed man, the hallucinations. Instead of explaining to you Schumann's emotional state as a footnote to the greater story of his life, Wilde and Vogel focus on this aspect, endeavoring to put you in his place, to show you what he sees through his mind's eye and to experience in your own way some of the same emotions that he feels.
This endeavor is all around fantastical, and so is the piece that results from it. Watching Toccata is like being caught in a dream, whether that dream is pleasant or nightmarish is up for debate. The puppets Vogel uses are both frightening and comical. They range in size from huge (doubling Vogel's size when he embodies it), to tiny enough to fit in your hand. The subjects of the puppets range from small woodland creatures, to butterflies, to a giant horse, but a majority of the puppets are some degree of human. Each of the human puppets has a ghost-like quality about it; many are draped in thin layers of gauze to enhance that effect.
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