Tom Fish The Doll’s Head Trail is a grassroots, low-art installation nestled within a Southeast Atlanta wildlife preserve. Constructed by volunteers and visitors from decades of environmental debris, the trail converts waste into folk art-inspired “junk” displays. The creative upcycling ranges from a miniscule shrine to “Toxic Masculinity” to a stark shoe pile commemorating child gun violence. This article details how queer theory’s “temporal turn” provides insights into material performance as collaborative regeneration. The curious vignettes playfully invert hierarchies, revealing the merits of small-time memorialization. Through these defiantly unofficial grassroot performances, the Doll’s Head Trail both remembers and restores community …
Category: Current Issue
REPORT: Interdisciplinary Dialogue Between Puppeteer and Researchers: Reflections on the 2025 Symposium of the Society for Arts and Anthropology
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 …
Le Médecin malgré lui in the Context of Karagöz and Karagiozis
Peri Efe The influence of Molière, whose plays were translated and performed in different languages spoken in the Ottoman Empire, extends to shadow theatre. The focus of this article is on the plays inspired by Molière’s Le Médecin malgré lui (The Doctor in Spite of Himself), which are included in the karagöz repertoire under the title Hekimlik (Doctor) and in the karagiozis repertoire under the title Ο Καραγκιόζης γιατρός (Karagiozis Doctor). Despite the existence of other Molière-inspired shadow theatre plays being documented, Le Médecin malgré lui is the sole common play in the repertoires of karagöz and karagiozis. This article …
FOUNDERS OF THE FIELD: Jane Taylor
Lawrence Switzky This article surveys the art and thought of Jane Taylor, one of the most adventurous and virtuosic minds in the study and creation of puppetry. The first section considers Jane’s scripts for puppets and actors: Ubu and the Truth Commission (1996) and Zeno at 4am/Zeno Confessions of Zeno (2002), both collaborations with Handspring Puppet Company and William Kentridge, as well as After Cardenio (2011) and PAN: A Performance Lecture (2018/19). The second section turns to Jane’s wide-ranging theoretical writing on puppetry, particularly her investigations of how puppetry manifests the formation of subjectivity, acts of projection and recognition, the multiplicity of agency and identity, and the body …
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 …
REFLECTION: The Topic of the Holocaust and Puppetry in the Ukrainian Context: Discussion of Kaddish Memorial Prayer, February 2023
This short reflection explores the theme of the Jewish Holocaust in puppet theatre. The puppet theatre in Odesa recently (2023) has presented the Jewish Holocaust and this article looks at a recent production, titled Kaddish Memorial Prayer, performed in Odesa during the war in Ukraine in 2023. This article looks at the appearance of this performance as an unusual choice because of the trauma in the narrative in a production within the context of a war zone. Considering the events of the Holocaust in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine could seem emotionally inappropriate given the people attending these …
Ukrainian Resistance Through the Nativity Puppet Theatre Vertep: Exposure of Russian Aggression in the Images of Moskal and Herod
Tetiana Zinovieva This article delves into the historical and cultural significance of vertep, a traditional Ukrainian portable Christmas puppet theatre, specifically focusing on a character known as Moskal. Vertep, with its multi-tiered structure, showcases both sacred and profane characters, embodying societal and cultural archetypes and stereotypes. Representing a national-ethnic identity, Moskal has a dynamic, often shifting, role within the performance, determined by contextual associations. The following discussion traces the evolution of the Moskal character in traditional Nativity plays, highlighting changing perceptions in light of modern events in Ukraine, particularly the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war since 2014. The focus of the research is on …
Note from the Editors: Puppetry and War – Contemporary Perspectives from Ukraine
Matt Smith and Nataliia Borodina The reports, reviews, and articles in this edition of PIR discussing the Ukraine are the results of a collaboration between University of Portsmouth and Odesa[1] Polytechnic. The background to this collaboration was the War in the Ukraine, which is ongoing at the time of writing. Initially, the seed was sown by Polish puppet authority Kamil Kopania during an online networking event in 2022, when he challenged the international community to respond to the war. One clear finding from the collaboration is that puppetry is alive, resilient, and vital to the culture of Ukrainian people. As a young nation …
Women Karagöz Puppeteers in Turkey: Ambiguous Alliances within a Patriarchal Playing Field
Deniz Başar With karagöz puppetry categorized as a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage in 2009, The Ministry of Culture became the only official accreditation for any or all karagöz artists in Turkey. While this has opened a new door for female karagöz artists to earn certificates of proficiency, juries made up mostly of men have made it difficult, if not impossible, for Turkish women to get accredited. This article analyzes the cultural and institutional barriers that women karagöz practitioners face—including precarious encounters with male shadow masters who are determined to keep women out of the field—while highlighting understudied aspects of their points of entry into the profession. As many women continue to challenge the gender-based gatekeeping …
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 …
