The Alchemy of Puppet Theater at the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival
Ana Díaz Barriga
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ANA DÍAZ BARRIGA is a puppetry practitioner and scholar, and a doctoral candidate in the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama at Northwestern University. She is the recipient of a Cognitive Science Advanced Research Fellowship and a Mellon Cluster Fellowship in Science Studies. Ana has an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. As a theatre practitioner, she has performed in festivals including the Edinburgh Free Fringe (UK) and Sprint Festival (UK). She has trained in puppetry with PIP (CZ), Yael Rasooly (IL), Improbable (UK), and Gyre & Gymble (UK), among others. She was a co-founder of Beyond the Wall, for which she built giant puppets at the US/Mexico border and the Prague Quadrennial 2019. Her research investigates what the minds and bodies of puppetry audiences can tell us about the ways we make meaning of contemporary puppet performance using methods from both cognitive science and theatre studies.
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Abstract
The Third Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival took place on January 17-27, 2019, attracting thousands of audience members to the twenty-two venues in Chicago where puppet shows took place. This article analyses three performances presented at the festival: Scweinehund by Andy Gaukel, Sam Lewis’s act with Jus Hambone, and Tom Lee and Koryū Nishikawa V’s Shank’s Mare. This analysis extends a metaphor provided by Blair Thomas, the festival’s artistic director, who proposes that puppeteers create by combining pre-existing materials in their studios. I examine how contemporary puppeteers make use of a specific mastery of the practices of puppetry when repurposing existing histories and objects, integrating new technologies, and highlighting puppetry’s connections to life and death, to invite both puppeteers and audiences to challenge their understanding of what puppet theatre is and can be. The puppeteers’ strong appreciation and knowledge of the history and conventions of puppetry facilitates a connection with the legacy of this performance form and allows them to create work that broadens our vision of the multiple possible futures of puppet theater.
The Third Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival took place on January 17-27, 2019, attracting thousands of audience members to the twenty-two venues in Chicago where puppet shows took place. This article analyses three performances presented at the festival: Scweinehund by Andy Gaukel, Sam Lewis’s act with Jus Hambone, and Tom Lee and Koryū Nishikawa V’s Shank’s Mare. This analysis extends a metaphor provided by Blair Thomas, the festival’s artistic director, who proposes that puppeteers create by combining pre-existing materials in their studios. I examine how contemporary puppeteers make use of a specific mastery of the practices of puppetry when repurposing existing histories and objects, integrating new technologies, and highlighting puppetry’s connections to life and death, to invite both puppeteers and audiences to challenge their understanding of what puppet theatre is and can be. The puppeteers’ strong appreciation and knowledge of the history and conventions of puppetry facilitates a connection with the legacy of this performance form and allows them to create work that broadens our vision of the multiple possible futures of puppet theater.
| etudesdec2021barriga.pdf |
