Who are they, those passionate lovers of all things usual, - Petrushka and his ‘brothers’ from all aver the world? The two awkward humps of Petrushka are similar to those of England’s Punch, Italy’s Pulcinella, the Turkish Karagoz, or India’s Vidusaka. They all have grotesque-looking noses and caps, and a staff in their hand

Which type is Petrushka closer to, Ivanushka the Simpleton or Ivan the Tsarevich? In his red costume, with a golden belt and a stiff white collar round his neck, he is handsome. When he finds it difficult to mount his unusual steed, a little grey donkey, he appears to be Ivanushka the Simpleton. But as soon as they take flight, he turns into Ivan the Tsarevich before our eyes! Children recognize him at once, hailing him with cries of joy. He will shake hands with boys in the audience "in a manly way", asking appropriate questions about names and "how things are going". With the girls, he will be a courteous gentleman "kissing the ladies' hands". Petrushka the marionette is good-looking and charming. His shrill-sounding voice, combined with his articulate gags and lively gestures, produces a disarming impression on many a spectator — becoming a discovery for everybody in the audience.

For nearly twenty years now, the joy of being with this wonder of the world has never left me...And I feel I should make a declaration of love for Petrushka the puppet.

It was in 1981, at a folk film festival, that I encountered the puppet for the first time. The marionette was doing a complex little dance, saying in that odd voice of his: "I'm going, going...", while a woman beside him, in a long black dress, kept urging him to come out: "Come on, Petya, come on..." The woman was Yelizaveta Trofimova, the follower of Ivan Zaitsev, a renowned Russian puppeteer of the past. Petrushka would fall down, and Yelizaveta would ask the joker: "What's wrong with you?" "I've died." "Why are you still talking, then?" "Force of habit!" the sly one would joke, and, in a while, was back again on his donkey, racing. At the time, I never imagined that this encounter with the marionette would change the whole of my life. After all, the puppet has a history spanning over a hundred years.

Ivan Zaitsev, the original creator of the puppet, also created a puppet theatre. Besides Petrushka, his company included such characters as the gypsy, the liar, the policeman, the dog and many others. There was even black cloaked Death, with his scythe.

The founder and director of the celebrated Moscow Puppet Theatre, Sergey Obraztsov, used to refer to the old puppeteer as "The Last of the Mohicans". He recollected with delight his first encounter with the man. Once upon a time, when Sergey was young and was standing by the window on a summer day, painting a picture (being an art school student, he dreamed of becoming the next Raphael), he suddenly heard a shrill-sounding voice coming from the yard. Sergey ran out of the house and saw a street-theatre performance going on. A travelling street performer (who turned out to be Ivan Zaitsev) swallowed swords, fire, and even live chickens and bent horseshoes. Then he set up some big screens, and — to the sound of a hurdy-gurdy — brought to life some amazing puppets: acrobats, jugglers, dancers, Moors. They all chased Petrushka, who beat them off using his stick. The puppets, made of timber, had been carved by Zaitsev himself.

Many years after, Sergey Obraztsov invited Zaitsev to his puppet theatre, but Ivan Afinogenovich only joined the theatre for six months, after which he went on travelling on his own with his beloved Petrushka, giving open-air performances and working with glove puppets as well as marionettes. If a marionette became entangled, he would not bother to untangle it, but would simply bring out another one from his company.

When he remembered Ivan Zaitsev, Sergey Obraztsov expressed amazement at the man's talent for ventriloquy, the production of the voice in such a way that the sound seems to come from a source other than the vocal organs of the speaker, and his ability to work with "buzzers" (he had swallowed five of them), the "buzzer" being a special device used by an artiste to give Petrushka his ringing voice, clearly heard at a distance. In Italy they call this instrument a pivetta, a kind of clarion.

Yelizaveta Trofimova continued Ivan Zaitsev's work in the art of puppetry. She was nine when she happened to see the wondrous artiste for the first time, and she watched his performances, yard after yard, all along the street. In the 1930s, whilst working as a dancer in a travelling theatre, she encountered by then elderly Ivan Zaitsev on a railway platform. Soon she bought his puppets, painted them up, sewed costumes for them (she was quite good at dressmaking too), and then started performing with her puppet theatre.

I used to watch Yelizaveta Trofimova's puppets, delighted by and envious of her art. Once, during an interval, when she was going out for a brief rest, she asked me to hold Petrushka for a while, because, in her words, the puppet should not be left lying on a couch — "otherwise he would dance badly afterwards." And then, as soon as Petrushka heard the sounds of music, he started to dance with ease in my hands. "Aha! It's you who'll be his puppeteer," Yelizaveta Filippovna judged in a resolute tone.

Some time after, 1 bought her puppet theatre as well as the puppets of her sister, Natalya Yakshina who had also worked with marionettes for over 30 years.

It took me about two weeks of experimentation before I found the correct place on my palate where I could hold the "buzzer" (1 cm by 2 mm large) in a horizontal position. I had to learn to exhale through it in such a way as to make the lace strained between the two metal plates give out a shrill tremolo sound — stronger than the sound of any human voice. And then I remembered my childhood years — I had so loved sucking bread on my palate back then. Had not I been preparing myself (unconsciously) to meet Petrushka and work with him in later life? Anyway, learning to use the "buzzer" was not too difficult. Nowadays I can easily keep it in my mouth for a long time, which turns out to be very helpful, for instance, during Shrovetide festivities when my Petrushka keeps talking nonstop all day long.

The old puppeteers told me that they had run into problems insofar as Petrushka's huge nose was concerned. "Why does this Russian Petrushka have such a long, un-Russian nose?" people from their audiences would ask. And so the artistes shortened the puppet's nose.

Yelizaveta Trofimova is now 90 and cannot perform any longer, but she wishes to see Petrushka carry on — in his Russian way, of course. But that very Petrushka nearly died 20 years ago when a fire broke out at her country house. When she came to the site of the fire, she saw the puppet's head near the burnt-out house. "I've found him!" she cried triumphantly.

Such is Petrushka! Like a cat he has nine lives. He fears nothing!

After I began working with Petrushka, I very soon understood that his image was far from simple, and I studied its distant historical roots. Then my theatre started to grow. Using old models, drawings and photographs, artists made other puppets for me, and now I have puppet shows such as Christmas, Easter, The Lives of the Saints, Ilya of Murom and Dobrynya, the Bogatyrs of Old Russian Folklore, St. George,  St.  Nicholas, The Twelve Apostles. The puppet show at the fair in Nikita Mikhalkov's film The Barber of Siberia, however, was performed using only Ivan Zaitsev's genuine puppets.

Within the joky puppet shows Petrushka gamely uses his staff to defend himself, but at the same time he attacks and teaches all those foolish enough to chase after him a sound lesson. The spectators laugh less at his ability to beat his enemies with his club, but more at what he says when doing so. His wit rather than his club is his principle weapon.

If you think hard about it, you come to understand that all the great cinema and theatre actors resemble him in a sense. Their principal method is their loving heart. The protagonist is willing to give out anything he has, but those around him cannot accept him. Such are the characters of Charlie Chaplin, Louis de Funes, Yuri Nikulin, or Andrey Mironov.

Petrushka is the world's most consummate actor. Take a closer look at him: hunchbacked, with a huge hooked nose, his only true passion is to make everyone happy. But those who are foolish and unwise should be taught a lesson, from time to time. Petrushka's loud voice, full of inner enthusiasm, can be heard from a distance — a voice which unites all those around him.

by Tatyana Belokoneva (Chunakova)

(“Moscow today & tomorrow” December / 2002)