The puppet is the devil

Mum Puppettheatre, here in Philadelphia, is doing a theatrical production of Master and Margerita, a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, right now. It’s a love story, the story of Jesus’s crucifixion and a visit to St. Petersburg by the devil — all in one. And they are going to do it with puppets. Wow. I have a feeling I’m going to miss this one, which is too bad because it sounds awesome. I just heard it reviewed on NPR, and the reviewer, familiar with the book, said the production stayed true.

This book is weird. I remember just sort of thinking it didn’t hold together that well. It’s famous, in part, because Stalin banned it and I think he even called Bulgakov a traitor for writing it. Like The Satanic Verses, it was one of those books I couldn’t quite figure out what had made the censors so bad. But I don’t have the mind of a censor. The parts I remember most were the parts about Jesus and, I think, the gospel writer “Mark,” who followed him around everywhere. In the book, Jesus would find ways to sneak a peak at the things that Mark was writing about him and see that it seldom reflected accurately whatever events he was describing or anything that Jesus had said. That idea really nailed my young brain.

My faded feelings about the book aside, I’d still love to see this play: it’s very gratifying for me when forms associated with one kind of storytelling insist on taking a crack at another. One of the best examples I can give you of this is 1977’s animated classic film, Wizards. That film took the lovable style characters and sci-fi setting that people had come to expect in animated movies and made them take on some very tough, very adult, very scary themes. It even gets into Nazi symbolism and, of course, sex. At the time, it was really groundbreaking, and I haven’t seen the movie for years but I’m sure it still stands up to intelligent adult viewing. Similarly, puppets deserve a crack at taking on more than just fun kids’ stories.

All artistic forms are limited by society’s prejudices towards them, but good artists will keep pushing those boundaries. In fact, Mum is not giving up the grown-up stories with Master. Next show up: Orwell’s Animal Farm. I won’t miss that.

[Note from 2020: No memory of seeing either of these shows, sadly. I don’t think I made it happen.]