Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects; Volume I Sacred Roots: Material Entities, Consecrating Acts, Priestly Puppeteers. Edited by Claudia Orenstein and Tim Cusack. New York: Routledge, 2024. 278 pp., 35 b/w illustrations. Hardback $133.00, Paperback $54.99, eBook $49.49. Puppet and Spirit looks at the many ways puppets, as material objects that perform, often maintain a unique connection to the unseen, to the spirit world. The international roster of authors who have contributed to this book includes both scholars and practitioners in many disciplines and at different points within their career. The essays describe practice, history, culture, and theory relating to puppetry. …
Category: Book Review
BOOK REVIEW: In the Beginning Were Puppets: Towards a Poetics of Puppetry
In the Beginning Were Puppets: Towards a Poetics of Puppetry. Edited by Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Lisa Nais. Heidelberg: Universität Verlag Winter, 2023. 240 pp., 37 b/w, 56 color illustrations.1 Hardcover €46,00, Paperback€45,00. In the Beginning Were Puppets: Towards a Poetics of Puppetry is a bilingual collection of fourteen scholarly essays in English and German developed from the first Salzburg Puppet Theatre conference (2020), which was inspired in turn by the Salzburg Marionette Theatre’s 2019 production of Mozart’s opera Bastien and Bastienne, originally mounted by founder Anton Aicher in 1913. UNESCO listed the marionette theatre as Intangible Cultural Heritage for its unique playing technique, and it is one of …
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 …
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 …
BOOK REVIEW: The Sicilian Puppet Theater of Agrippino Manteo (1884-1947): The Paladins of France in America
The Sicilian Puppet Theater of Agrippino Manteo (1884-1947): The Paladins of France in America. By Jo Ann Cavallo. London, New York: Anthem Press, 2023. xxiv, 303 pp., 30 b/w illustrations. Hardcover $110.00, softcover, eBook $27.99. Jo Ann Cavallo, Professor of Italian at Columbia University, has published widely on Italian chivalric epic and its performance traditions in the Mediterranean. Her most recent publication, The Sicilian Puppet Theater of Agrippino Manteo (1884-1947), is based on Sicily’s opera dei pupi marionette tradition, which was classified by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2001. While critical literature has tended to focus on how the …
BOOK REVIEW: A Galaxy of Things: The Power of Puppets and Masks in Star Wars and Beyond
A Galaxy of Things: The Power of Puppets and Masks in Star Wars and Beyond. By Colette Searls. New York: Routledge, 2023. xii, 129 pp., 11 b/w illustrations. Hardcover $136.00, softcover $48.95, eBook $48.95. Star Wars and Lucasfilm have become so celebrated for the pioneering use of digital effects that it is easy to forget how much of their world is made up of material things. Colette Searls is here to remind us of how much puppets and performing objects shape and make the world of Star Wars, and what a fun, fascinating and insightful reminder it is. Her analysis …
