Mamulengo: the puppet theatre of northeastern Brazil
If the string puppet is the form that fills European books, in Brazil the most established popular tradition is another: mamulengo, the glove-puppet theatre of the Northeast, historically centred in Pernambuco.
How it works
The master performer works hidden behind an empanada — a cloth structure that serves at once as hiding place and raised stage. The puppets are gloves: the hand goes in from below and all movement comes straight from the fingers, without strings or rods. That gives mamulengo a particular energy: fast, sharp gestures with plenty of comic knockabout, because the hand answers the instant the intention is born.
There is almost always live music — accordion, bass drum and triangle — and the musicians act as interlocutors: they talk to the puppets, provoke them, answer back. Performances are long, episodic and essentially improvised over fixed plots; the master knows the "passages" and fits them together according to how the audience reacts.
Characters
Benedito and Simão are among the most recognisable figures, archetypes that cross the repertoires of different masters. The dramaturgy is popular in the strong sense: it satirises authority — the landowner, the priest, the police chief, the doctor — and makes the puppet the voice that can say what a person could not. It is the same mechanism as the Neapolitan Pulcinella and the English Punch, invented independently.
Regional names
The same family of theatre takes other names by region: babau in Paraíba, cassimiro coco in Rio Grande do Norte, João Redondo across parts of the Northeast. The differences lie more in repertoire and local figures than in technique.
Heritage
Mamulengo is registered as Brazilian Cultural Heritage by Iphan, a recognition that covers not only the puppets but the masters' craft, the music, the plots and the ways the knowledge is transmitted — almost always through direct apprenticeship rather than formal schooling.
For anyone able to visit, the Museu do Mamulengo in Olinda holds a collection devoted to the tradition. More references in the library, and the full overview on the history page.