Acrobatic Homicides

In 2013, Dan Hurlin, a performance artist and puppet artist, was working at the American Academy in Rome when he stumbled on evidence that during the First World War Fortunato Depero (1892-1960), one of the Italian Futurists, had written four puppet plays that were never produced. Where were they? Hurlin travelled to Depero’s home town, Rovereto, at the foot of the Italian Alps, to examine the man’s archive. “I sat at this big table, wearing those white cotton gloves they make you wear,” Hurlin remembers. “The librarian brought out a huge box, full of sheets of paper, each covered with tissue paper. And I turned the sheets, and there they were—the plays. I practically wet my pants.” What the box contained was pages and pages of stage directions, and also set designs. There was no dialogue, and there were no drawings of the puppets. This last discovery, I thought, must have been a blow to Hurlin, but he reported it to me with no apparent sorrow. I should have known. He is a puppet designer, and he was not unhappy to have to design the puppets himself. They are a triumph of cubo-constructivo-Bauhausianism—pear-shaped heads, conical legs—all of this in Fisher-Price reds and greens and yellows, and sporting nice little accessories: an aigrette, a cigarette.