Meschke, Michael

▪ German-Swedish puppeteer

born July 14, 1931, Danzig, Ger. [now Gdańsk, Pol.]

      German-born founder and producer of the Marionetteatern (“Marionette Theatre”) in Stockholm.

      When Meschke was seven years old his family fled to Sweden from Danzig, which had elected a Nazi government. In his school years he became interested in puppetry and in 1951–52 studied in Braunschweig, W.Ger., with Harro Siegel, who at that time conducted the only puppet school in western Europe. Meschke then went to Paris (1953–54), studying with the mime Étienne Decroux, and became a close friend of the mime Marcel Marceau (Marceau, Marcel).

      Returning to Sweden, he wrote and produced puppet plays and in 1958 acquired from the Stockholm municipal authorities an old theatre that he renamed the Marionetteatern. Over the years he produced dozens of plays, using his own handmade, highly stylized puppets, some operated by strings from above and others operated by rods from below. He also placed puppet operators onstage, dressed in black against black backgrounds or in white against white backgrounds and manipulating luminescent or colourful animated figures. His notable successes include productions of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi and Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera.

* * *