Early European Puppetry Studies Conference. Yale University, Connecticut. October 13-14, 2023. The article summarizes the offerings at the two days of presentations at the Early European Puppetry Studies conference organized by Michelle Oing and Nicole Sheriko at Yale University in October of 2023. Participants from a wide range of disciplines, including Medieval Studies, Art History, and English, investigated how using puppetry studies as a lens could help shed new light on a variety of performative events from early Europe. In so doing, the event demonstrated the promise this research area holds as a new field of study. Claudia Orenstein, Theatre Professor at …
Category: Summer 2024
Anamorphosis: Puppetry, Animation, and Automation in William Kentridge
Mark Sanders Among contemporary artists, William Kentridge is notable for having worked across multiple media. Of particular note are the ways in which the techniques of his animated films intersect with elements from his collaborations in puppet theatre with Handspring Puppet Company, and how his ideas about automaticity reveal puppetry as a condition of possibility both for filmmaking and for the drawing that, in Kentridge’s filmic work, underpins his Drawings for Projection (1989-2020). Tracing these intersections and ideas, this essay asserts the relevance of anamorphosis as an explanatory concept. Mark Sanders is Professor of Comparative Literature and English at New …
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 …
From the Editor
Welcome to the second issue of Puppetry International Research. While still relatively new, PIR is already experiencing some shifts and new growth. We initially intended to be a fall/spring publication. However, UNIMA-USA has asked us to move to a summer/winter schedule in order to stagger with the publication calendar of its long-established magazine, Puppetry International. This change accounts for the delay in the launch of our second issue. With the current edition, PIR is also welcoming several new members to the team: Skye Strauss as Book Review Editor, Colette Searls as Performance Review Editor, and Jungmin Song as Exhibition Review …
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 …
PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Wakka Wakka’s Animalia Trilogy
Wakka Wakka’s Animalia Trilogy: Animal R.I.O.T., The Immortal Jellyfish Girl, and Dead as a Dodo. By Gwendolyn Warnock and Kirjan Waage. Directed by Gwendolyn Warnock and Kirjan Waage. Jellyfish and Dodo also written with help from the ensemble. Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, Chicago, Illinois, January 18-28, 2024. Wakka Wakka’s completed Animalia Trilogy was performed in full for the first time at the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival in January 2024, uniting three distinct but thematically linked productions: Animal R.I.O.T. and The Immortal Jellyfish Girl (both of which had already premiered elsewhere) and Dead as a Dodo, which premiered at …
PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Psychic Self Defense
Psychic Self Defense. Created, Written, Directed, and Designed by Normandy Sherwood. Dream Music Puppetry Program. HERE Arts Center, New York, NY. September 12-30, 2023. On a crisp September night in New York, I stand outside the HERE Arts Center by the backstage entrance waiting to see Psychic Self Defense, the fall production of HERE’s Dream Music Puppetry program. It feels like the show has already begun when the usher escorts the audience in small groups from the lobby, where everyone has been congregating, back to the street toward the backstage entrance. A creature in a tall headdress with a …
Women and Masks: Reflections on a Conference, a Project, and a Field
Felice Amato During 2021-22, we held a year-long virtual conference entitled “Women and Masks: A Transdisciplinary Arts-Research Conference” through Boston University. This report provides insights into the four weekends of virtual events, which featured presenters from around the world who offered a diverse range of content and experiential opportunities. The conference was inspired by the organizers’ interest in women’s complex experiences with mask practices. It highlighted the paradoxical potential of masks, often revealing the political and cultural narratives surrounding women. The intersection of these two themes exposed both exclusions and acts of agency while illuminating the complex phenomena related to …
PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Adrift: A Medieval Wayward Folly
Adrift: A Medieval Wayward Folly. By Happenstance Theater. Co-Directed by Mark Jaster and Sabrina Mandell. 59E59 Theaters, New York, New York, November 29 to December 24, 2023. Upon arriving on the third floor of the 59E59 theatre complex in New York City to attend a performance of Adrift in December 2023, audience members are greeted by the costumed artistic co-director of Happenstance Theater, Mark Linden Jaster. Jaster’s company is an ensemble-driven troupe from the DC/Baltimore metropolitan area that creates original theatrical pieces rooted in physical comedy and clown technique that in his words “tend to go nostalgic … look retro” …
EXHIBITION REVIEW: The Calling: The Transformative Power of African American Doll and Puppet Making.
Kathy Foley The Calling: The Transformative Power of African American Doll and Puppet Making. Camila Bryce Laporte, curator, and Phyllis May-Machunda, curatorial consultant. City Lore Gallery. New York, NY. October 6, 2023 to March 3, 2024. This exhibit in a one-room space in New York’s East Village seems simple—dolls, soft sculpture figures, assemblage, quilts, and puppets by twenty-six contemporary Black artists juxtaposed in the gallery. Figures are arranged 1) to evoke the chronology of the African American diasporic experience and 2) to create dialogue about loss, trauma, and resilience. Doll making heals the spirit and builds community for these otherwise …
