‘The Marionettes’ Provides Glimpse into William Faulkner’s Past

By John Gillespie
for HottyToddy.com

The University of Mississippi Department of Theatre and Film presented a little-known play by author William Faulkner on Monday.

“The Marionettes,” written by William Faulkner in 1920, deals with the aging process through the use of numerous metaphors about nature and love. File photo.

“The Marionettes,” written by Faulkner in 1920, deals with the aging process through the use of numerous metaphors about nature and love. This production of the one act play, directed by Peter Wood, who is a part of the Ole Miss Common Reading Experience. Incoming freshmen are given a book at orientation, with this year’s being Faulkner’s “Collected Stories,” to read before they start their fall semester, and topics from the book are featured in classes.

According to Wood, this year’s Common Reading Experience helped lead him to his discovery of Faulkner’s play.

“When I found out that they were doing the Common Reading Experience with the Faulkner stories,” Wood said, “I flashed back to a production that I had seen years ago of an adaptation of ‘The Sound and the Fury’ by a playwright by Eric Ehn, and it was brilliant.”

According to Wood, he was unable to find a published form of Ehn’s version of the play, but continued his search for other pieces of Faulkner drama.

“I went looking for Faulkner plays, and this is what I found,” Wood said.

The play was performed as a “reading,” in which the actors simply stand on stage and read aloud the stage directions and dialogue instead of performing it. According to Wood, he decided to produce the play in this way due to its length and the amount of production that would be necessary to perform such a short play.

“It kind of worked really perfectly as a reading because it’s a short play,” Wood said. “It would be a lot of effort to stage it just to stage this one play, so a staged reading seemed to make the most sense.”

Most of the actors in the reading were theatre majors, but some are studying other fields, including communications major Ryan Medina. Although she is not a theatre or English major, Medina says that she volunteered for the role in the play due to her love of acting and that Faulkner’s use of metaphors and vivid language were not difficult to grasp.

“I’ve always loved acting,” Medina said. “I love Shakespeare. That helped a lot, [because] I’ve already been kind of used to it. It’s not quite as ‘old-timey’ as Shakespeare but I think that definitely lent a hand.”

In a Q&A after the production, Wood was joined by Howry Chair of Faulkner Studies Jay Watson to answer questions concerning the background of the play as well as what audience members could learn about Faulkner’s life from the production. Although Watson was familiar with the play, he had only seen manuscripts of it and gained a new perspective on the work after hearing it read aloud.

“This was a really amazing experience to actually hear the voices and hear the words,” Watson said. “I had only really encountered this on the page, and not that many times even there. There’s something very woozy about it when you hear it in a way that I think doesn’t come across on the page.”

According to Watson, seeing this production of a play written by Faulkner helps shed a light on how artists develop and sharpen their skills over time.

“One of the things you can learn about Faulkner is that great artists develop,” Watson said. “There are a lot of growing pains for William Faulkner between this work and the work that we really remember him for. It’s a long way from this work to Faulkner at the top of his game, and Faulkner at the top of his game is writing fiction.”

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