Other Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

“Anything Can Have Life”: An Interview With Everett Quinton About Charles Ludlam’S Ridiculous Puppetry, Jungmin Song, John Bell, Everett Quinton

Ballard Institute Publications

This Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry conversation, via Zoom, with

Everett Quinton, Dr. John Bell, and Dr. Jungmin Song was recorded March 21,

2021, and edited by Tom Tuke and John Bell. Everett Quinton (1952-2023) was an

actor, director, and—after the death of his partner Charles Ludlam (1943-1987)—

the leader of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, the landmark ensemble which

helped define queer theater in the late 20th century. While mostly known for his

acting, playwriting, and directing, Charles Ludlam was also an active puppeteer

and ventriloquist. Many of his puppets are now part of the Ballard Institute and

Museum …

Commedia Dell’Arte: The Mechanisms Of Othering, Olly Crick

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

This chapter proposes that the dramaturgic flexibility within historical Commedia dell’Arte was predicated on a performance methodology that demanded a changing pattern of othering, depending on the class, economic strength and region of their audiences.

Always Busy Somewhere: Cooper Crafts An Entrée For The Other, Paulette Richards

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

African American ventriloquist John W . Cooper toured for a time with Richards and Pringle’s Famous Georgia Minstrels, but did not appear in blackface. Instead he used figures to get audiences to recognize the humanity and agency of a Black man.

Characters Of The Other In Slovak Folk Drama And Czech And Slovak Professional Puppet Theater, Ida Hledikova

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

This chapter reflects on and compares depictions of the main heroes in folk theater in Slovakia as well as contemporary Slovak and Czech puppet theater and discusses reasons why the Romany ethnic minority was popular or a focal point of interest.

Matter’S “Dark” Powers: Performing Objects And Racialization In Nineteenth-Century American Spiritualism, Hazel Rickards

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

In this article, I analyze performing objects that were attributed to the agency of Black spirits within the 19th-century American spiritualist movement, exposing how white, female spirit mediums supported and tested a racial metaphysics that assumed white transcendence and Black materiality.

Exhibiting Blackface Puppets From The German Imaginary, William T.F. Condee

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

German puppet collections face the problem of how—and whether—to display their extensive holdings of blackface puppets that are built on grotesquely racist stereotypes, including the Imagined Turk, the Imagined African, the Imagined African American, and the Imagined Multicultural German.

Puppetry For A Total War: French And German Puppet Plays In World War I, Didier Plassard

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

Comparing German, Austrian and French puppet repertoires composed during or in the aftermath of WW1, this paper examines how these productions took part in the “bourrage de cranes” (brainwashing) of public opinions, instilling the hate of other nations in the minds of the youngest.

Sicilian Puppet Theater: Alterity Or Diversity?, Jo Ann Cavallo

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

From the perspective of alterity, the predominant figure of the Other in Sicilian puppet theater is undoubtedly the Saracen (Muslim) aggressor. Yet the Paladins of France cycle, with its over 300 nightly episodes, is replete with stories that eschew an opposition between an “us” and a “them” and instead underscore our common humanity across borders of all kinds. Indeed, camaraderie, friendship, and even romance can readily develop between individuals from the most disparate corners of the globe. My paper focuses on a selection of examples under the guise of both alterity and diversity, the latter achieved especially through heterogamous marriages.

A Real American Wife, A Japanese Object: Puppetry And The Orient In Minghella’S Madam Butterfly, Tobi Poster-Su

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

In Anthony Minghella’s celebrated 2005 production of Madam Butterfly, three white men manipulate the small, fragile body of Sorrow (Cio-Cio-San/Butterfly’s child), and, in a dream sequence, Cio-Cio-San herself–this paper explores how the production uses puppetry to represent the racialized Other, and how this might subvert, reinforce, or make visible Orientalist views of the East within the source text.

The Western Tourist As Exotic Other: Coping With The Aggressive Ways Of The Casual Stranger, John Emigh

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

In the summer of 2004, the author traveled with Prof. Barbara Hatley to see a performance by the Ludruk Karya Budaya troupe of Mojokerto in Eastern Java and while there, the author participated in the performance; this chapter reflects on the minefield of cultural issues involved in their improvised sketch.

Introduction: Puppets Have Always Performed Others, John Bell

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

Puppets and performing objects have always performed alterities, often reflecting biased visions of Others. The papers in this collection about the object performances of Others can help us better understand global histories and cultures.

Alterity In The Arabic And Near Eastern Puppet Theater, Marvin Carlson

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

This essay studies uses of alterity in the medieval plays of Egyptian Ibn Daniyal and selected modern Karagoz plays from Turkey, considering the alterity of the puppet itself and also the social alterities represented by the puppets in these works.

Introduction: Attitudes Toward The Other, Matthew Isaac Cohen

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

The use of puppets, objects, masks and cantastorias in various societies around the globe, to represent and stage the Other.

How To Signify Otherness And Diasporic Bodies Through Puppetry: Two Plays By Kossi Efoui, Francesca Di Fazio

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

French-speaking writer of Togolese origin Kossi Efoui resorts to puppetry as a means of communicating the diaspora of the African people and the condition of Otherness experienced by a portion of humanity throughout history.

Mamulengo As Cultural Resistance, Mayumi Ilari

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

This chapter, using two recent examples from Brazilian puppet masters, briefly presents the origins of Brazilian puppetry and discusses the way Brazilian mamulengo tradition operates as a means of historical and cultural resistance, while enhancing diversity and racial equality through popular culture and theatre.

When Klana And His Mercenaries Sailed To Java: The Expression Of Otherness In Surakarta Court-Style Wayang Gědhog Performance, Rudy Wiratama

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

Wayang gĕdhog was once a popular puppetry in Javanese courts. Besides of its Panji romance themes, it also has political meanings represented by Sabrang and Jawa figures, which enrich the play and giving it a broader context in Javanese culture.

Deities Of The Indigenous Snake People In Religious Marionette Plays, Fan Pen Chen

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

This chapter shows how deities of the indigenes of southeastern China competed with and reacted to the invading mainstream Han culture through six sacred string-puppet plays.

Ralph Chessé And Forman Brown: When Carving The Other Is Carving The Self, Ben Fisler

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

This article examines two “closeted” puppeteers, Forman Brown and Ralph Chessé, who demonstrate alterity’s ability to disrupt itself. Their puppets are both exotic (“different from me”) and incorporated (“like me”), as the artists’ hidden racial and sexual identities blur the boundaries between self and other.

Living Objects Essays: Prologue, John Bell

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

Living Objects: African American Puppetry co-curator John Bell describes the team responsible for the Living Objects exhibition, festival, symposium, and online catalogue.

Embracing Complexity In Performing The Other, Valeska Maria Populoh

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

"Embracing Complexity in Performing the Other" is a personal essay by a white, Baltimore-based cultural organizer, puppeteer and educator, reflecting on three scenarios that have catalyzed her thinking about white people performing Black puppets. The author shares her own experience of navigating the complex, and at times highly combustible, issues about representation, appropriation and racial identity in the realm of puppetry, and concludes with a few questions to stimulate further dialogue in the puppetry community about these issues.

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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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 …