Autorzy:
Magda Podsiadły
When I watch puppet theatre, I invariably ask myself whether it is the human being who hides behind the puppet. Or perhaps it is the other way around?
It is like the ritual use of the mask in Africa. When the dancer puts on the mask, they become someone other than who they were before. Not a human being. They cross the boundary between the sacred and the profane.
Les Grandes Personnes is a collective of giant puppets active in Boromo, Burkina Faso, and in Aubervilliers near Paris.
Giant marionettes are not an African tradition, but a European one. Processions involving them originated in fourteenth-century Europe, and today they form part of the living cultural heritage of Belgium and France inscribed on the UNESCO list. In 2000, the French puppeteer Christophe Evette from Aubervilliers, where a group specializing in giant puppets is based, led theatre workshops in Boromo, Burkina Faso. There, through a deep friendship with the traditional sculptor Bomavé Konaté, the idea of street parades with giant puppets in Burkina Faso was born. The giant marionettes were very quickly absorbed into the local spiritual and social forms of traditional theatre. This theatrical tradition—contemporary for African communities—has been developing dynamically. Often, a master of giant puppets sets out on an artistic journey and creates a new collective elsewhere on the continent. One such group was also formed within the framework of the Festard Festival in Dubréka, Guinea-Conakry.
This reportage has been developing over many years, and it is probably not yet finished.
I took the photographs and filmed in Boromo, Burkina Faso, in 2012 and 2023, and in 2024 in Dubréka and Conakry, Guinea, during the Festard Festival.
