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I offer a picture of contemporary developments in European puppetry, in the hope that the reader will find it intriguing to note the similarities and contrasts with those of Brazil. On the briefest acquaintance with Brazilian puppetry and theatre, I am daunted not only by my ignorance of Portuguese, but also by the immensity of Brazil’s landmass and the diversity of its cultural heritage. It is surely as difficult to speak of and compare this one country’s puppetry aesthetics and styles as those of all the countries of Europe combined. Yet through my description of the latter – with a heavy accent on Britain the reader may well find the pleasure of recognition in some characteristics shared between our worlds. In Europe, the puppet’s actual modus vivendi in performance is still most often practised in a traditional context. The earthily secular godfathers and heroes of European puppetry, i.e. the extended family of Punch, Pulcinella, Polichinelle, Petrouchka, the German Kasper and the Czech Casperle, the Hungarian Vitez Laszlo, the Portuguese Dom Roberto and many more are perennially popular, because their ‘heroism’ lies in their anti-authoritarianism, their fight for individuality and independence (from the tyranny of matrimony and parenthood, the medical profession, the Church, the Law). Most of us can identify with their rebelliousness, to a greater or lesser extent. They are there on behalf of the Common Man, ending their show with a confrontation with the Devil, sometimes in the guise of a Bogeyman or a Crocodile or a Bull or, rarely, a Skeleton, come to take the comic hero down to hell. In the most satisfying folk shows Death and the Devil are defeated too. There are scores of Punch ‘Professors’ in Britain, and there is surely more than one such folk hero in Brazil, although I know only of the Mamulengo show. There too the ‘hero’, represents the downtrodden, the exploited and the poor. All of them still exert their power to make us laugh (we call it slapstick humour – broad knockabout action involving hitting and tricking the opponent:

Ancient into Modern Perceptions of an onlooker