| BRITISH COLUMBIA ARTISTS |
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We have said a good deal about the life of puppets. I think it is high time something was
told of the puppeteers - those excellent manipulators who bring the dead marionettes to
life in the two puppet plays at the Vancouver Art Gallery this week. When we spoke of Tauber's Puppet Players we spoke only of the puppets themselves. But perhaps the real players are behind the scenes. They have worked much longer and much harder than the puppets. Day after day, patiently and understandingly, the puppeteers, unders the guidance of Mr. Tauber, brought life to the things of threads and patches. In centuries past the puppeteers were persons of high and important functions, belonging to a craft mysterious and venerable, and today, if they are not all that, they are at least a study of the past. Besides his personal assistant, Mr. Les Planta, Mr. Tauber is aided by eight other puppeteers, well-known Vancouver people. There are Miss Jean Brown, Mrs. Ernva Code, Mr. Rudolph Engel, an Austrian; Miss Lilias Farley, Mrs. Ellen Harris, Miss Beatrice Lennie, Miss Margaret Williams, and Miss Isobel Wintemute. As for Mr. Harry Tauber, he comes from many production successes in Havanna, Cuba, Budapest, Berlin, and especially the famous Burg Theatre in Vienna, where he was for eights years the Ausstattungs-Vorstand or, as we would say, the Big Boss. Here he introduced to the European stage the modern art of Cubistic technique. In Paris and New York about this time his exhibitions of Expressionistic stage technique won him the Gold Medal. He is about 30 now, but it was many years ago that as a small boy he got his start when the leading Viennese director chose his designs from hundreds submitted at an exhibition. Since then he has created over 8000 costumes of marvellous fantasy and meaning. His two teachers are now internationally famous: Professor Czisek and Josef Hoffman. So perhaps a puppeteer's life can be more interesting that a puppet's. What do you think? |