The King’s Dream. Created and performed by Michael Schuster, music performed by Rachel Saul. ARTS at Mark’s Garage, Honolulu, Hawai’i, 21 and 28 May 2023. Compelled by isolating pandemic years, puppeteer and storyteller Michael Schuster plunged into creativity. He researched, wrote, and built The King’s Dream, an intimate nineteenth- century storytelling style performance based on the historical interactions between Hawai’i’s reigning monarch, King David Kalakaua, and Elias Abraham Rosenberg. Rosenberg was an Eastern European Jewish emigrant, who had arrived in Honolulu during the tumultuous years of 1886-1887, when the Hawaiian monarchy was under severe political pressure from the Missionary Party …
Author: Claudia Orenstein
PERFORMANCE REVIEW: 9000 Paper Balloons
9000 Paper Balloons. By Maiko Kikuchi and Spencer Lott. Director and Dramaturg Aya Ogawa. Japan Society, New York, New York, Oct. 28-30 2023. Co-created by Japanese artist Maiko Kikuchi and American puppeteer Spencer Lott, 9000 Paper Balloons, performed at the Japan Society NYC from October 28-30, follows the transpacific journey of a swarm of “Fu-Go” balloons (hydrogen balloon bombs deployed by Japan against the United States near the end of World War II) from their creation in Japan to their destined destruction either during the journey above waves or on US soil. The balloons’ trajectory intertwines with the intergenerational story …
BOOK REVIEW: Women and Puppetry
Women and Puppetry: Critical and Historical Investigations. Edited by Alissa Mello, Claudia Orenstein, and Cariad Astles. London and New York: Routledge, 2019. 242 pp., 35 b/w illustrations. Hardcover $170, paperback $49.95, eBook $49.95. There is no shortage of women artists who use puppets as their medium, and there are many female scholars. But we have fallen behind in documenting and analyzing women’s contributions to puppetry’s artistic, cultural, and social efficacies. Women and Puppetry, which collects essays from scholars and practitioners, carries out tasks that cannot be delayed any longer. Its well-thought through introduction points out the inadequate recognition of female artists, the …
CONFERENCE REPORT: Portrait of the Puppeteer as Author
Portrait of the Puppeteer as Author: Second International PuppetPlays Conference: Writing Practices for Puppets in Western Europe (Seventeenth – Twenty-first Century). Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, Montpellier, France, 23-25 May 2023. This report provides an overview of the second PuppetPlays project conference that explores authorship and what constitutes a play script in a broad range of historical and contemporary puppetry. The review includes a link to the conference page that has videos of all conference sessions in French, Italian and English as well as links to artist pages. Alissa Mello, PhD, is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Exeter …
CONFERENCE REPORT: Wayang and Puppetry Now
Wayang and Puppetry Now: UNIMA Councillor Meeting Seminar. Institut Seni Indonesia (Indonesian Institute of the Arts), Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, 28 April 2023. This is a report on the seminar held on 28th April 2023 at the Institut Seni Indonesia (Indonesian Institute of the Arts), Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, 28 April 2023. It was part of the UNIMA 2023 Council Meeting. The report highlights the place of spirit and of ritual practice in Asian puppetry, as a way to understand and to function in the world. Cariad Astles is a puppetry scholar, practitioner, teacher, trainer and director. She is puppetry tutor at …
From the Guest Editors: Kathy Foley and I Nyoman Sedana
Puppetry International Research as a free online scholarly publication was first an idea raised during an UNIMA-USA leadership retreat. Board members brainstormed ways the organization could better serve puppetry locally and internationally—a free online scholarly journal was suggested by Paulette Richard and became one of the “dreams” that made our strategic plan. To become a reality was the work of many hands. It is the hard work and willingness of Claudia Orenstein at Hunter College to take the administrative steps for hosting that made it possible. The meticulous eyes of Karen Smith were crucial: her experience in copy editing World …
From the Editor
I am thrilled and honored to introduce the first issue of Puppetry International Research, the online, open access, peer review journal devoted to puppetry, masks, and related arts, a project of UNIMA-USA supported by the CUNY Academic Commons. UNIMA-USA’s magazine, Puppetry International, has been serving the puppetry community since 1995, under the direction of Andrew and Bonnie Periale until 2022, and now with Alissa Mello and Mike Kelly at the helm. In recent years it expanded to include a peer review section, edited by Dassia N. Posner, allowing for more scholarly approaches to material. While these strong projects continue, our …
