Introduction

In 1975, an International Research and Exchanges Board grant supported our five-month visit to Poland and the former Czechoslovakia, then behind the Iron Curtain. In Prague, we happened upon a screening of a doll animation film entitled The Apple Maiden by the celebrated animator Břetislav Pojar (1923–2012). In one memorable scene, a prince on horseback gallops at lightning speed, his betrothed clinging to him from behind. As the horse leaps over a canyon, a jealous witch appears and, in a flash, pierces the betrothed's heart, appropriates her engagement ring, casts her into an abyss and usurps her place behind the unsuspecting prince. At first sight of this hideous interloper, the terror-stricken audience, strangers in the darkened theatre, responded collectively with a sharp gasp. I imagined classical Greek and commedia dell'arte spectators expressing similar fervor.

That Czech public's impassioned reaction has become a focus for reflection over the decades: How did these wooden dolls, from the first moments of the film, induce our suspended disbelief? Why, at the moment of greatest danger to these objectively lifeless characters, did the audience feel viscerally engaged and impelled to respond?

That Prague audience's con-spiring (“breathing together”) in 1975 provided the incentive for a rereading of my years of study with Decroux, and guided me to a more detailed exploration of Decroux's family tree—Copeau, Craig, Artaud, Jouvet and Dullin. Seen together, for all their differences, they foster an aesthetic that resonates in that Czech audience's decisive intake of air. Beyond the practice and theory of these French theatre practitioners, I have found distant and disparate performances impelled by a similar artistic vision. Indeed, the transfixing power of the wooden actor operates as a unifying principle among performance forms from ancient periods through the present day.