Opalanietet In this article, I focus on how the specificity of materiality in Ty Defoe’s Skeleton Canoe Indigenizes the puppets and enhances the anthropomorphization of the characters, thus forming a cornerstone of contemporary Native puppet theatre. I will explore this Indigenizing materiality through three distinct characters in the play whose function and movement directly relate to the essence of life that is water: Rainbow Trout, Turtle Activist Grandma, and the River itself. Water assists in crystallizing the reciprocal relationship between human and non-human that is intrinsic to Anishinaabe and Algonquin values. If we are good stewards to the animal, plant, and …

Katherine McNamara “A puppet, it’s a dead object that comes alive,” Yngvild Aspeli says. “[It’s] like a medium that connects to the other side …. I think that using puppets on stage in this way allows us to visualize something that we can feel but not necessarily explain.” I’m interested in this “something” and how Aspeli depicts it. In Aspeli’s production, Dracula: Lucy’s Dream, her Dracula moves at the edges, while her vampiric Lucy is embodied as both living and not-alive, as actor and life-sized puppet. Aspeli upends the myth. In this analysis of the show, I consider human-animal transformations. In …

Théâtre de l’Entrouvert’s Anywhere as Lived Experience and Classical Adaptation Skye Strauss Théâtre de l’Entrouvert’s Anywhere revisits the story of Oedipus and Antigone through materials that are constantly changing state on stage as ice melts, water flows, and mist rises. Throughout, the contrast between the small, ice-marionette Oedipus and the living human body of the actress playing Antigone is striking. The production is wordless, driven instead by a rich visual and material dramaturgy, as theorized by practitioners like Eric Bass and scholars like Claudia Orenstein and Dassia N. Posner. As the narrative of those materials unfolds in real time, the …

Jesse Njus The Cabinet, created by Frank Maugeri, is a puppet adaptation of the 1920 German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The film is rooted in an Expressionist Horror inspired by Grand Guignol, the French Horror theatre that was surprisingly named for the main character of guignol puppet theatre. By analyzing the complex relationship between the film and The Cabinet’s multifaceted adaptation, this article argues that the puppet production illuminates the uncanny nature of the connection between guignol puppetry and Grand Guignol. The Cabinet unites Expressionism and Theatre of Cruelty in a uniquely innovative “petit” Grand Guignol adaptation …