This issue of Puppetry International Research opens with a continuation of our Founders of the Field series. Lawrence Switzky’s article on Jane Taylor outlines the influential work of an energetic scholar, teacher, and playwright, who passed away all too prematurely in September of 2023. Switzky, a longtime friend and colleague of Taylor’s, introduces us to the depth and breadth of her work and resurrects her vibrant presence in his remembrances of her approach to art, scholarship, and life. His bibliography offers readers further paths for connecting with Taylor’s ideas.
Special thanks go to Kathy Foley, who stepped in as Guest Editor for this issue’s peer-review section. Two articles in this section provide detailed investigations into sources for texts and stories in traditional puppetry forms. Peri Efe’s “Molière in Karagöz and Karagiozis from Mid-19th to Mid-20th Century” and Rudy Wiratama’s “From Samarkand to Spain: Islamic Tales in the Wayang Purwa Repertoire Traditions of Central Javanese Puppetry” offer insights into borrowing and adaptation across cultures.
A third article in this section takes a very different path into thinking about performing objects and narrative. Thomas Fish’s “Restorationland: The Lost & Found Objects of Atlanta’s Doll’s Head Trail” reflects on the narratives created by visitors to the the Doll’s Head Trail site in Atlanta, both in constructing and observing suggestive scenes made from found items in the park, once the site of a brick factory. Fish characterizes these arrangements as grassroot performances that reanimate Atlanta’s racially conflicted past and evoke contemporary social issues.
Our report section includes Karen Smith’s account of a workshop on Korean traditional puppetry, held in June 2025 in South Korea, directly after the 24th UNIMA International Congress in Chuncheon. Hosted by the puppet company Eumma Gaengkkaeng, the workshop took participants through the process of carving wooden puppets on Korea’s traditional deolmi model, while teaching about performance of this and related traditional Korean arts. PIR anticipates further articles on traditional Korean puppetry growing from the UNIMA events in South Korea in future issues.
Kairu Yamanaka’s report reflects on a puppetry panel at the Symposium of the Society for Arts and Anthropology in Japan, the first of its kind in this context. The panel importantly included not only scholars but Miyako Kurotani, an established artist of contemporary Japanese puppetry, to put artistic and scholarly voices into conversation with one another.
The book review section includes Asya Gorovits’s review of the bilingual, English and German, collection, In the Beginning Were Puppets: Towards a Poetics of Puppetry, edited by Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Lisa Nais along with Jennifer Goodlander’s review of the first volume of the two-volume collection Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects, edited by Tim Cusack and me. Together, these three anthologies offer a plethora of fresh scholarship in our field. Further reviews include Felicia Cooper’s article on Heart of the Beast’s performance Phantom Loss, Chee-Hann Wu’s review of the exhibition, “Puppets: Expressions of Cultures,” at the National Taiwan Museum, while Kathy Foley takes readers through the exhibition, “Ralph Chessé: A San Francisco Century.” The Ralph Chessé exhibit reexamines Chesssé’s art and puppetry through the lens of the revelation of Chesssé’s Black heritage.
I extend my thanks to the PIR review board, who have generously provided their time and expertise in giving feedback on our submissions, and to the PIR team—Pune Dracker, Melissa Flowers Gladney, Colette Searls, Karen Smith, Jungmin Song, and Skye Strauss—for their continued contributions to PIR.
Claudia Orenstein
Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY
