Pity the Puppets

For centuries Kasperle, a long-nosed marionette with the virtues of Galahad and the deportment of Mortimer Snerd, has been muddling his way to victory over the villains of Germany's popular puppet dramas. Last week at a Berlin congress of 400 East German puppeteers, Professor Sergei Obraslov, director of Moscow's State Central Puppet Theater, explained the changed duties of Kasperle and other puppet characters in a Soviet state.

Kasperle's new model should be his Russian cousin Petrushka. The Bolsheviks first banished Petrushka from the Russian puppet stage, as "an outdated anarchist figure." After the building of the Soviet state, Obraslov said, Puppet Petrushka was revived "and given significant tasks." German puppeteers, however, must be careful not to turn the converted Kasperle into a Communist Party functionary. Warned Obraslov: "It would do harm not only to party functionaries but to the personality of Kasperle himself."

Obraslov told his German colleagues that German puppet plays were not up to revolutionary par, that they failed to stress present-day themes. Concluded Obraslov: "You must attack evil conditions."

Loyally responding to the challenge, one German delegate outlined the plot of a brand-new puppet play recently produced in Dresden. Its heroine, a little girl named Annamie, writes a letter to Stalin saying: "You never have any time, you poor man, to sleep at night, because you have to work for peace day & night." Touched, Stalin invites Annamie to visit him in the Kremlin.

While she is there, the Devil, a traditional puppet character now togged out as an American spy, enters and attempts to lure Stalin away from his peacemaking. The Devil is promptly killed. Shortly thereafter, Death himself arrives to inform Stalin that his time is up. "Oh no," pleads Stalin, "I am so busy, I have to work for peace!" Impressed, Death exits gracefully and leaves Stalin master of the scene.

It looked as if poor Kasperle might soon be out of the running altogether, in favor of a newer hero.

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