On the Nature of Edward Gordon Craig's Über-Marionette
Résumé
There is no consensus among scholars about what the term 'über-marionette', coined by Edward Gordon Craig, refers to precisely. Is it a life-size marionette? A masked dancer? Or is it simply a metaphor for an actor who exerts perfect control over his body and emotions? The present article, based, among other sources, on recently discovered material in the Edward Gordon Craig Collection of the National Library of France, gives a brief overview of several perspectives regarding this issue before proposing another hypothesis, namely, that the über-marionette may actually have been a full body puppet.