Laurent Mourguet

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Laurent Mourguet (born March 3, 1769 in Lyon , † December 30, 1844 in Vienne ) was a French puppeteer and creator of the famous hand puppet Guignol .

Life

Laurent Mourguet came from a family of canuts , the traditional silk weavers in Lyon. He worked in various professions (including a showman , salesman ) before he became a tooth breaker in 1797 . At the time, it was common for dentists to go to public places and fairs and make their patients believe that tooth extraction was painless. With the same aim, Laurent Mourguet distracted his patients from dental treatment with a puppet show inspired by Italian puppet theater ( Harlequin , Pulcinella and other characters from the Commedia dell'arte ).

House at 43 rue des Clercs, in Vienne, where Laurent Mourguet died

In 1804 Laurent Mouguet gave up his job as a tooth breaker in order to devote himself fully to puppet theater. He was accompanied by père Thomas ( father Thomas ), a shoemaker from Lyon, who is said to have looked a little too deeply into the bottle and whose red and bloated nose testifies to his somewhat too pronounced love for Beaujolais wine. At this time, Laurent Mourguet, inspired by the facial and character traits of père Thomas , created his first own character, Gnafron .

Between 1804 and 1808 he then created the figure Guignol , who had his own facial features (big eyes, snub nose and flushed cheeks). In addition he gave Guignol a braid ( catogan), as the silk weavers ( canuts) wore their hair , to prevent his hair that got caught in the loom. Rebellious, cheeky and cheeky, he spoke the Guignol and thus resembled the canuts, whose mouthpiece he became when the traditional silk industry in Lyon faced competition from foreign silk manufacturers. A little later, Mourguet invented the character Madelon, a woman at Guignol's side.

In 1820 Laurent Mourguet founded his own theater company and his children accompanied him to the performances.

In 1839, at the age of 70, he and some of his children founded the first Guignol Theater-Café.

Laurent Mourguet retired in 1840 and from then on lived in Vienne (Isère) at rue du 4 septembre, where he died in 1844. Two of his ten children took over the Guignol Theater after his death.

The Mourguet dynasty

On November 22nd, 1788, Laurent Mouguet married Jeanne Esterle in Lyon. He had ten children with her, including Jacques, who managed the Guignol theater Guignol du Café du Caveau (Place de Célestins in Lyon). But above all it was Étienne (born 1797) and Rose-Pierrette (or Rosalie, born 1804) with whom he played numerous performances in the Lyon region. He was accompanied by the puppeteer Louis Josserand, who became his son-in-law through his marriage to Rose-Pierrette.

Mourguet later transferred the management of his theater to Josserand, who let the puppeteer tradition continue. Victor-Napoléon Vuillerme-Dunand, who was one of the members of his troupe, is considered to be one of the first to write down the pieces about Guignol.

Bust of Laurent Mourguet in Lyon

Rosalie Mourguet and Louis Josserand had two children who also became puppeteers: Louis and Laurent. The young Laurent married Vuillerme's daughter.

From 1907, Pierre Neichthauser, great-grandson of Mourguet, continued the family tradition in his theater on Quai Saint-Antoine. The Neichthauser Fund (stage design, puppets, material ...) was bequeathed to the city of Lyon by the two Neichthauser sisters.

Many documents were donated to the Musées Gadagne - Musée des arts de la marionnette and the Museum of City History Lyon or the Association of Friends of Lyon and of Guignol (Association des Amis de Lyon et de Guignol).

In 1929, the last direct descendant of the Josserand family, Jean-Guy Mourguet, took over the management of the municipal Guignol Theater ( Théâtre municipal du Guignol de Lyon) at the age of 54 .

For more than 50 years, Jean-Guy Mourguet upheld the Guignol tradition in Lyon. In the 2000s, however, he had to give up due to an osteoarthritis . He gave the entire family collection to the municipality of Brindas , so that in 2008 a museum dedicated to the Guignol could be built there. Jean-Guy Mourguet died on October 8, 2012 at the age of 82.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Agnès Pierron, émission les p'tits bateaux sur France Inter, June 26, 2011
  2. ↑ Acte de décès 483 - vue 87/95
  3. ^ Jean Baptiste Onofrio: Théâtre lyonnais de guignol
  4. ↑ Guignol, putain 200 ans . December 18, 2007.
  5. ↑ Guignol: fin d'une dynastie . October 11, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Mourguet, Laurent
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French puppeteer
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1769
PLACE OF BIRTH Lyon
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 1844
Place of death Vienne