ABSTRACT
The rod puppet is firmly established in Soviet puppet theatres. Its direct predecessors first appeared in Russia in the early 1920s in the theatre run by Nina Simonovich-Efimova and Ivan Efimov. Above the screen of their theatre the fable-writer Krylov “leaned” on a stick, and the witch Baba-Yaga “flew” on her broom. These puppet’s heads were supported on actors’ fingers, as was the case with Petroushka, and gestures were conveyed by means of a stick or a broom which served as a rod. But soon (in 1930) the Efimovs presented scenes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in which the charactors gesticulated freely using both hands.
