Race And Representation: Creating A Puppet Production For The Smithsonian Institution,
2019
University of Connecticut
Race And Representation: Creating A Puppet Production For The Smithsonian Institution, Brad Brewer
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
The Brewery Puppet Troupe was commissioned by the Smithsonian Museum’s Lemelson Center to undertake new creative challenge: a show featuring African American scientist Lewis Latimer, the nineteenth-century inventor instrumental in creating the electric light bulb. Brad Brewer was committed to showing how Latimer’s life was affected by America’s struggle with slavery and racial inequality, issues he considered equally important to Latimer's scientific achievements. Staff historians read and commented on all the drafts of the script, but the production still included comedic elements typical of a Brewery Troupe production. The project allowed the author to explore some of the hard realities …
An Email Interview With Alva Rogers,
2019
University of Connecticut
An Email Interview With Alva Rogers, Paulette Richards
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
Actor, writer, and puppeteer Alva Rogers recounts her long-standing interests in theater, and her early performances combining dolls with texts by Zora Neale Hurston and others. Her work as a performance artist led to her role as Eula in the film Daughters of the Dust. She then studied playwriting, musical theater, and history at Brown University, NYU, and Bard College respectively. Rogers’s influences include surrealist painters, magic realism, such writers as Adrienne Kennedy, Ralph Ellison, and Federico Garcia Lorca, and the Gullah/Geechee culture of the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. She uses both dolls and puppets in …
Servance Dancers,
2019
University of Connecticut
Servance Dancers, Paulette Richards
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
How many African American folk artists have created performing objects outside the purview of formal theater? Master woodcarver George Servance is one such 20th-century artist who used his skills to counter minstrel stereotypes and present African Americans as elegant and accomplished entertainers.
Raceless Racism: Blackface Minstrelsy In American Puppetry,
2019
University of Connecticut
Raceless Racism: Blackface Minstrelsy In American Puppetry, Amber West
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
Blackface minstrelsy has long been recognized as one of the major elements of 19th and early 20th-century popular performance in the U.S., but its central role in U.S. puppetry has not been explored. West debunks the idea that puppets are “raceless”, examining the origins of blackface minstrelsy in American puppetry, including traditional Punch and Judy performances, William John Bullock’s 19th-century puppet minstrel shows, the creation of “realistic” Black puppets by white puppeteers in the early 20th century, and contemporary examples of exaggerated Black puppet characters, for example in a music video directed by Black artist Boots Riley. West points out …
Storytelling And Puppetry,
2019
University of Connecticut
Storytelling And Puppetry, Susan Fulcher
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
Librarian Susan Fulcher recounts the creation of a storytelling with puppets program she developed with puppeteer Dave Herzog, in which kids create their own puppet characters to be incorporated into existing stories such as Stone Soup.
“It’S Not Easy Bein’ Green”: Greenface And The Jazzy Frog Trope,
2019
University of Connecticut
“It’S Not Easy Bein’ Green”: Greenface And The Jazzy Frog Trope, Paulette Richards
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
One element of blackface minstrelsy was the representation of Black people as swamp characters, especially frogs. In her examination of the development of the “jazzy frog” as a transposition of greenface onto blackface, Richards traces the growth of the trope in popular film and cartoons of the early 20th century. She then considers Jim Henson’s creation of the popular puppet character Kermit as a variation on this trope, but with a different purpose: to represent Henson’s “vision of tolerance for difference and creative collaboration.” The “re-humanization” of the jazzy frog includes the 1967 hit song “I’m in Love with a …
Wear The Story Like A Jacket: Akbar Imhotep,
2019
University of Connecticut
Wear The Story Like A Jacket: Akbar Imhotep, Paulette Richards
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
This profile of Akbar Imhotep’s work as a puppeteer and storyteller in Atlanta in the late 20th century describes his connections to the Center for Puppetry Arts, the folk-art roots of his approach to puppetry, the unique puppet stage he made from old suitcases, and the process he uses to prepare for performances.
Black: :Body: :Gesture: From Puppetry To Performance & Design,
2019
University of Connecticut
Black: :Body: :Gesture: From Puppetry To Performance & Design, Gabrielle Civil, Kelly Walters
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
In this visual document, Gabrielle Civil and Kelly Walters distill and recreate key aspects of their live dialogue on African-American puppetry, black performance art, material and digital design. What are examples of African American living objects in the 21st century? What does it mean to animate objects when, as a people, we were once considered to be living objects ourselves? Drawing on their own practice, these artists engaged these questions, activated audience discussion, and transformed the results into a new source text for further activation.
Black And Blackface In The Performing Object: Bullock, Chessé, Paris, The Jubilee Singers, And The Burdens Of … Everything,
2019
University of Connecticut
Black And Blackface In The Performing Object: Bullock, Chessé, Paris, The Jubilee Singers, And The Burdens Of … Everything, Ben Fisler
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
The representation of Black identity through puppetry ranges from “grotesque exaggeration to near pictorial realism,” and engagement not only with racial stereotyping, but also the possibility of positive racial representation. Fisler details the extensive degree to which puppeteers in the early 20th century depended upon Black and blackface characters for their livelihood, and points out the complexities of such representations involving Black puppeteers of Federal Theater Project puppet companies, and the work of Creole puppet artist Ralph Chessé. Fisler argues that some white puppeteers, including Frank Paris, sought to portray such Black characters as Josephine Baker in a “potentially more …
Tar Baby: The Performance Of Object,
2019
University of Connecticut
Tar Baby: The Performance Of Object, Ra Malika Imhotep
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
This essay engages the figure of the “Tar Baby” as a guide through the theoretical terrain of Afro-Diasporic storytelling culture. Thinking about the role of gesture and voice in the repertoire of global Black performance, this presentation sets out to offer a nuanced Black feminist analysis of the sticky character and the impact of her diasporic flight. Calling in both theoretical work on Black performance and personal reflections on an engagement with the Tar Baby through storyteller and puppeteer Akbar Imhotep’s rendition of the story performed at the Wren’s Nest in Atlanta Georgia, the essay explores the ways Afro-Diasporic storytelling …
The Appropriation Of Blackness,
2019
University of Connecticut
The Appropriation Of Blackness, Nehprii Amenii
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
The continuing appropriation of Black culture in the U.S. is closely tied to the trauma and injustice of the African diaspora and the history of slavery. Black people, Amenii argues, need to re-appropriate themselves, through the “excavating and re-articulating of our intellectual heritage and knowledge systems.” Citing Ahmad Azzahir’s description of African modes of thinking as “based on spirituality, symbol, mythos, and harmonium,” she sees her own work as “creative anthropology” that draws on storytelling and image-making to create self-study. Her production Food for the Gods, “a multi-media performance installation created in response to the killings of Black Men by …
African Puppetry And Brazilian Mamulengo: Possible Links Between Symbolic And Material Representations,
2019
University of Connecticut
African Puppetry And Brazilian Mamulengo: Possible Links Between Symbolic And Material Representations, Izabela Brochado
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
Although Brazil’s popular Mamulengo hand-puppet tradition is often considered to have primarily European roots, Brochado argues that “the primary source of the Mamulengo lies with African slaves.” Citing sources including puppeteers and folklorists explaining the origins of Mamulengo in northeast Brazil, Brochado argues for the African roots of the form, citing the relation of Mamulengo performance to Afro-Brazilian cult rituals; the commonality of often-comic sexual content in Mamulengo and in Yoruba puppetry of Nigeria and Benin; as well as the similar mechanics of puppets from both traditions which display work activities. She concludes that “even if African puppets were not …
Théâtre, Création Et Psychanalyse : Autour D’Une Mise En Scène De Premier Amour De Beckett,
2019
Chapman University
Théâtre, Création Et Psychanalyse : Autour D’Une Mise En Scène De Premier Amour De Beckett, Ivan Magrin-Chagnolleau
Presidential Fellows Articles and Research
Je ne suis pas vraiment clinicien, mais ce qui m’intéresse dans ce lien entre art et clinique, c’est en lien avec une mise en scène que j’ai faite en juin dernier d’un texte de Beckett, qui n’est pas à proprement parler une pièce de théâtre, qui s’appelle Premier Amour. Et en réfléchissant à ce que j’allais pouvoir vous dire, je me suis rendu compte qu’il y avait plein de ponts entre création et thérapie. Donc je vais vous inviter à un petit voyage. Ce que j’essaie généralement de faire dans ma recherche, c’est de me promener dans plein d’endroits …
Kinship And Twinship In Jacob And Esau,
2019
Chapman University
Kinship And Twinship In Jacob And Esau, Kent R. Lehnhof
English Faculty Articles and Research
"The implications of these early stage directions are upheld and amplified elsewhere in the play. In what follows, I demonstrate this to be the case by reviewing some of the ways the interlude seeks to justify Jacob’s usurpation, most interestingly in its systematic and strategic deployment of kinship ties and familial terms. After explaining how the play leverages family relations to elevate Jacob and overthrow Esau, I concentrate on one family relation in particular: namely, the complicated bond between twin brothers. As I will make clear, the interlude’s treatment of twinship raises pressing questions about the way wealth, affection, and …
How Can We Know The Dance From The Dance?: Exploring The Complexity Of Staging Dance Legacy Works,
2019
Montclair State University
How Can We Know The Dance From The Dance?: Exploring The Complexity Of Staging Dance Legacy Works, Elizabeth Mcpherson
Department of Theatre and Dance Scholarship and Creative Works
Staging works from our rich concert dance heritage relies on determining what the “real” dance is, particularly when the work is no longer currently performed. Because choreographers frequently alter their choreography, creating multiple versions of a dance, identification of a definitive version can be a complex process. Adding to the complexity, there is the involvement of the stager, performers, and the audience who are each active or passive participants in the ultimate performance of a work. Through conversations with prominent stagers, scholarly discourse, and personal experience, the author investigates some of the key concerns and questions regarding staging dance legacy …
In Defense Of Grass Grows: A Play About Mental Illness,
2019
Rollins College
In Defense Of Grass Grows: A Play About Mental Illness, Amanda Grace Hughes
Honors Program Theses
My mission as a mentally ill theatre artist is to challenge the commonly-perpetuated fictions that restrict public perception of mentally ill persons [MIPs]. A meta-analysis of plays from the Greek, Medieval, Victorian, Melodramatic, Naturalist, and Post- Naturalist eras reflected just how little progress has been made at exposing and eliminating popular myths about mental illness. While the theatrical canon offers evidence for the inadequacy of current representations of MIPs, the psychological literature offers steps forward for the artists telling these stories. Efforts to improve artist sensitivity to the complex realities of mental illness fail to educate with fact alone (Dale, …
Power Puppets In Portable Pulpits: A Personal Account Of Puppet Ministry In The African American Community,
2019
University of Connecticut
Power Puppets In Portable Pulpits: A Personal Account Of Puppet Ministry In The African American Community, Yolanda Sampson
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
Yolanda Sampson relates the history of her path into puppet ministry and her PuppeTainment Productions company, which presents Christian stories in a “hip, entertaining way,” bringing “biblical principles to life for twenty-first century children.” She recounts her initiation in puppet ministry at the age of twelve, and her development of stories about the dangers of drug culture in the Washington, D.C. area, as well as her use of puppetry in beauty pageant competitions, and her ventures into puppet video productions such as What Time is It? and Tell It Like It Is. Sampson took a three-year hiatus to earn her …
Schroeder Cherry And His Puppets: Playing With Puppets, From Childhood To Adulthood,
2019
University of Connecticut
Schroeder Cherry And His Puppets: Playing With Puppets, From Childhood To Adulthood, Schroeder Cherry
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
Schroeder Cherry relates his path into puppetry, from childhood television shows to his exposure to European puppetry in Switzerland; and later an apprenticeship with Chicago puppeteer Gary Jones. After earning a master’s degree in museum education at George Washington University, Cherry began developing puppet performances for the Smithsonian Institution and other museums. Travels in Africa furthered his appreciation of that continent’s puppetry, and influenced his creation of such shows as How the Sun Came to the Sky. Cherry has developed an array of rod-puppet characters (including DiAndre, Ms. Lily, and Tevin) which he incorporates into museum performances and such …
Egg Whites: A Short Puppet Film Script,
2019
University of Connecticut
Egg Whites: A Short Puppet Film Script, Alva Rogers
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
Alva Rogers’ script for a short puppet film is a magical realist treatment of a mother’s efforts to help her young daughter, an unnamed African American girl, fall asleep in their New York apartment. The mother explains straightforwardly how she will make muffins for the girl’s breakfast, but the film then shifts into a surreal territory where the girl travels on a moonbeam to the sun, and then appears in a rowboat in a vast ocean, where she wants to plant a flower—all while the mother is baking in the kitchen. The sea explains that the girl’s flower will not …
Living Objects: Introduction,
2019
University of Connecticut
Living Objects: Introduction, Paulette Richards
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays
In her introduction to this collection of Living Objects: African American Puppetry online texts, co-curator Paulette Richards gives an overview of “the power of performing objects to disrupt dehumanizing views of blackness,” and the continuing history of African American object performance in relation to other aspects of popular culture and writing, despite the suppression of African figurative sculpture and object performance, and the persistence of racist stereotypes born of blackface minstrelsy. Relating W. E. B. DuBois’s sense of African American “double consciousness” to the inherent “double vision” of puppet and object performance, Richards proposes a “distinct lineage of African American …
