The Tripod

Issue date: 9/30/03 Section: Arts

"It is difficult to arrange every phenomenon into its place and oneself remain un-deranged," reads German puppeteer Michael Vogel from the diary of composer Robert Schumann, the subject of Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel's Toccata. It is equally difficult to arrange every aspect of Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel's Toccata into a cohesive analysis without deranging the meaning of the piece.

The Austin Arts Center brought the German puppetry duo Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel to Goodwin Theater Friday night as part of the Austin Arts Center's Guest Artist's Series Performances (GASP!). Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel was founded by puppeteer Michael Vogel and composer Charlotte Wilde in 1991 and, since its inception, has traveled throughout the world performing at various festivals.

Toccata is based on the life and writing of German composer Robert Schumann. When Schumann was young, he had aspirations to become a poet and a musician. His dream of being a pianist was cut short when he badly injured his hand, an injury that had possibly resulted from the use of a self-made practicing machine. Schumann also suffered from depression throughout his life and feared that he was becoming mad. He began suffering from headaches and hallucinations that drove him to a suicide attempt in 1854 when he jumped into the Rhine. He was pulled out of the river and put in an asylum for the last two years of his life.

Toccata is a performance that incorporates these events in Schumann's life and turns them into art by fusing puppetry with live action, text with music, meaning with madness. In the program for the show, Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel describe its work as using "the technique of collage in its productions and animates puppets, materials and objects which can be freely combined." The program goes on to explain: "The open play, where the puppeteer is visible on the stage, facilitates a continuous dialogue between the puppeteer and the puppet and stimulates the imagination of the audience. The acoustic level is treated with equal value to the visual. Music and language are included in the productions as independent forms of art."

I include so much of Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel's self-description of the performance in my own description because I have found in my experience with avant-garde art that many times the artist, rather than the critic, more coherently answers the audience's central question: 'what's going on here?'

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