Reinette’s Marionettes

As a little girl Reinette Fourie used to love dolls much like any other little girl. The only difference being that her dolls used to be suspended from strings and her love for them just grew stronger as she got older.

By Benno Stander

Reinette Fourie Although Reinette was born in Louis Trichardt, and grew up in Pretoria, she has spent the past 30 years of her life living in Nelspruit where she has largely kept herself busy with her lifelong passion, marionettes.

Reinette attended the School for Art, Music and Ballet where she learnt all sorts of handy skills that would assist her in her career. “When constructing and working with marionettes one combines skills used in painting, sculpting, costume design, drama and music,” she remarks.

“It’s hard to say exactly when and why my passion for marionettes was sparked, but as far back as I can remember I’ve just always been in love with them and some of my earliest memories are of making clothes for my dolls and suspending them from strings,” Reinette remembers. She started The Little Marionette Company in TV’s heyday and when things started taking off in South Africa Reinette already had a foot in the door and was ready to deliver some top notch puppets for national television.

some of my earliest memories are of making clothes for my dolls and suspending them from strings

Reinette Fourie Reinette also studied graphic design at the University of Pretoria and loves doing design projects when she gets the chance. “I was also able to design all the posters for the shows we performed.” The list of live performances she was involved in is endless and includes Peter and the Wolf, The Little Prince and Haas Das se Nuuskas. She was also involved in many TV productions like Mina Moo, Mega Wott and Mannemarak. Mina Moo was her own creation and apart from coming up with the character, Reinette also built the puppet used in the production and currently also owns it.

“When the scene building departments of the SAUK closed down they wanted to throw away all the marionettes so we rescued them and kept them at a facility at the University of Pretoria. When I counted last year the collection was over 800 puppets big. In 2013 we held a retrospective exhibition to showcase this massive collection of marionettes which includes all the famous South African puppets like Sarel Seemonster and friends. We are planning to exhibit the collection at a couple of venues and might even consider showcasing it in White River at some stage,” says Reinette.

Giving back

To make the marionettes Reinette uses a type of paper mache that she developed over the years. When properly cured and applied this mache dries to a very rugged material that can be sanded, painted and worked quite vigorously. The workable properties of the material have given Reinette many ideas for new projects and in most cases these ideas turned into community projects.

Reinette Fourie

Her latest project involves women from rural areas who receive training on how to make chickens from the paper mache using a mould. These chickens are then sold to artists who get total freedom as to how they want to decorate or modify the chicken to suite their artistic interpretation. All the chickens will then be placed on auction at the White River Gallery on 16 May 2014 and a percentage of each selling price will be donated to Grip (Greater Rape Intervention Program).