VÝVOJ A SPÔSOBY PREŽITIA BRITSKÉHO MAŇUŠKOVÉHO DIVADLA PUNCH A JUDY – VYTVÁRANIE POST-TRADIČNEJ TRADÍCIE
DEVELOPMENT AND WAYS OF SURVIVAL OF BRITISH GLOVE PUPPET THEATRE PUNCH AND JUDY - CREATING OF POST-TRADITIONAL TRADITION

Summary/Abstract: Punch and Judy is one of a number of traditional popular glove puppet forms found across Europe. It is, by a considerable margin, the most numerous of these forms. This paper seeks to account for its relative success. It calls on research undertaken as part of an ethnographic study of contemporary performance undertaken between 2006 and 2007 towards a doctoral thesis. The research consisted of historical analysis and contemporary field-work. The article concludes that the success of the show in part depended on its emergence at a moment when late-modern class identity was coming to be constructed in Britain, that new class-oriented markets were emerging which commodified cultural products, that performers adapted themselves and the show to these markets, professionalising themselves and, in more recent times, instituting organisations whose purpose was to secure the profile of the form. It goes on to suggest that current western preoccupations with heritage have provided a useful role for the form. The article argues that Punch and Judy has used the mechanisms of late-modernity to maximise its capital as an ostensibly traditional form.

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