Kairu Yamanaka[1] This report reflects on an interdisciplinary symposium on the performing-arts of the anthropomorphic figures, organized by the author and colleagues during the April 2025 Conference of the Society for Arts and Anthropology in Japan. We invited Miyako Kurotani, who has played a leading role in the development of contemporary puppet theatre in Japan over the past few decades, as a guest panelist. The various conversations held over the course of the symposium revealed the deep tensions and possibilities inherent in the practices of puppetry. We reaffirmed the importance of attending to the lived experiences of practitioners, which have …
Author: Melissa Flower Gladney
REPORT: “EUMMA and UNIMA-USA: Korean Traditional Puppet Deolmi International Workshop.”
June 2–5, 2025. Conducted by Eumma Gaengkkaeng (EUMMA), Seoul, South Korea.[1] Co-sponsored by UNIMA-USA and the University of California, Santa Cruz. An immersive workshop in Seoul, South Korea, organized in early June 2025 by members of theatre company EUMMA, led by master artist, Eum Dae-jin, introduced twelve foreign theatre practitioners to traditional Korean puppetry. Titled “Korean Traditional Puppet Deolmi International Workshop,” instruction focused on participants gaining a basic understanding of the history and significance of the traditional puppet theatre and allied performing arts of Korea, including drumming and mask dance-drama, as they carved and built their own traditional-style puppets and …
From the Editor
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 …
BOOK REVIEW: Reading the Puppet Stage: Reflections on the Dramaturgy of Performing Objects
Reading the Puppet Stage: Reflections on the Dramaturgy of Performing Objects. By Claudia Orenstein. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2024. 188 pp.27 B/W Illustrations. Hardcover $170.00, Paperback $42.95. In 2011, Handspring Puppet Company began performing I Love You When You’re Breathing, a puppet’s address to critics about the basics of a subtle, complex art. As the protagonist, Puppet, says at the beginning of that performance, “You might know plenty about theatre-theatre, but now you’ve come to hear me talk about what’s different in puppet theatre.” Claudia Orenstein’s Reading the Puppet Stage is likewise a book about the foundations of puppet …
PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Song of the North
Song of the North. Created and directed by Hamid Rahmanian. Music by Ramin Torkian, featuring vocalist Azam Ali. OZ Theatre, Nashville, Tennessee, 20 April, 2024. As battle sounds fill the OZ Theatre in Nashville, shadowy figures of soldiers and weapons materialize on a large screen, shrouded in the fog of war. This dramatic opening sets the stage for Hamid Rahmanian’s innovative shadow puppet theatre production, Song of the North, inspired by Ferdowsi’s tenth-century Persian epic, Shahnameh (Book of Kings)[1]. Song of the North is part of the KINGORAMA project, founded by Hamid Rahmanian and Melissa Hibbard, which produces cultural products …
PERFORMANCE REVIEW: HUMAN
HUMAN. Written and directed by Nehprii Amenii. Music composed by Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby with sound design by Joo Wan Park. Choreography by Amparo “Chigui” Santiago, and lighting, projections, and scenic design by Marie Yokoyama. Puppet design and building by Dan Jones and Nehprii Amenii. A Puppetry NOW featured performance at the Center for Puppetry Arts, Atlanta, Georgia, January 17-28, 2024. Nehprii Amenii’s puppet theatre piece, HUMAN, considers a world where human beings have faded into extinction. Detached from the goodness of their hearts, the once-prosperous human race destroyed itself, and all that remains on Earth are the sea …
BOOK REVIEW: Object Performance in the Black Atlantic: The United States
Object Performance in the Black Atlantic: The United States. By Dr. Paulette Richards. New York: Routledge, 2024. 312 pp., 82 b/w illustrations. Hardcover $153.00, eBook $41.64, Paperback $41.60. In her well-constructed study, Object Performance in the Black Atlantic, researcher and puppet artist Dr. Paulette Richards elaborates several crucial questions into a new and generative format by engaging her topic through lines of inquiry that build on the work of previous theorists while also providing much needed expansions of the culturally charged work accomplished by objects in performance. In addition, Richards asks us to consider the many aspects of lived experience …
CONFERENCE REPORT: Wayang, Ecology and the Sacred Symposium
Wayang, Ecology and the Sacred Symposium. Yale University, Connecticut. November 9, 2024. The article summarizes a single-day symposium on the theme of Wayang, Ecology, and the Sacred organized by Professor Matthew Isaac Cohen with support from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University. Participants from a wide range of disciplines, including Theatre, Visual Arts, Puppetry, Ethnomusicology, and Museum Studies, investigated how wayang puppet traditions are both sacred and related to ecological issues. Rahul Koonathara is currently pursuing graduate studies at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies under the guidance of Professor …
CONFERENCE REPORT: Wonderland Puppet Theater Symposium
Wonderland Puppet Theater Symposium. The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, University of Connecticut, October 25-26, 2024. The article summarizes the presentations of the two-day “Wonderland Puppet Theater Symposium” organized by The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, with support from the University of Connecticut, in October, 2024. This exhibition explored the fifty-year interracial collaboration of two pioneering puppeteers, Alice Swann and Nancy Schmale, in the late twentieth century. The symposium investigates the works, influences, and societal challenges faced by Alice Swann and Nancy Schmale, who lived in the Concord Park community inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of …
Animism and Performing Objects in the Processions of Muharram
Salma Mohseni Ardehali In Iran and in Shia Islam, and in the mourning ceremonies of Ashura, some performative/theatrical rituals have developed. One of the most common and prominent of these is the procession. These processions are classified as mass mourning rituals. However, since the process of “performing” has a relatively specific beginning, middle, and end and a predetermined ritual, and more importantly, a large number of people who watch or accompany these processions, in this article we consider such processions to be a kind of ritual “performance” that has highly figurative theatrical elements. These elements (objects and figures) are expressive …
