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From Performer To Petrushka: A Decade Of Alexandra Exter's Work In Theater And Film, Laura A. Hunt

Art and Design Theses

The subject of my thesis is Russian artist Alexandra Exter’s work in the performing arts, with a focus on her theatrical set and costume designs in the Kamerny Theater, her creations for Iakov

Protazanov’s 1924 science fiction film, Aelita, and finally her exquisitely fabricated set of approximately forty marionettes. Within these colorful wooden figures are reconciled conflicting notions of stasis and dynamism, sculpture and performer, human and object. Drawing upon Victor Shklovskiĭ’s formalist definition of “enstrangement,” I examine her introduction of the object in place of the human performer as a means of exposing the creative process, forcing the …