This volume, which originally appeared as a special issue of TDR/The
Drama Review, looks at puppets, masks, and other performing objects from
a broad range of perspectives.
Puppets and masks are central to some of the oldest worldwide forms of
art making and performance, as well as some of the newest. In the
twentieth century, French symbolists, Russian futurists and
constructivists, Prague School semioticians, and avant-garde artists
around the world have all explored the experimental, social, and
political value of performing objects. In recent years, puppets, masks,
and objects have been the focus of Broadway musicals, postmodernist
theory, political spectacle, performance art, and new academic programs,
for example, at the California Institute of the Arts.This volume, which
originally appeared as a special issue of TDR/The Drama Review, looks at
puppets, masks, and other performing objects from a broad range of
perspectives. The topics include Stephen Kaplin's new theory of puppet
theater based on distance and ratio, a historical overview of mechanical
and electrical performing objects, a Yiddish puppet theater of the 1920s
and 1930s, an account of the Bread and Puppet Theater's Domestic
Resurrection Circus and a manifesto by its founder, Peter Schumann, and
interviews with director Julie Taymor and Peruvian mask-maker Gustavo
Boada. The book also includes the first English translation of Pyotr
Bogatyrev's influential 1923 essay on Czech and Russian puppet and folk
theaters.
Contributors
John Bell, Pyotr Bogatyrev, Stephen Kaplin, Edward Portnoy, Richard
Schechner, Peter Schumann, Salil Singh, Theodora Skipitares, Mark
Sussman, Steve Tilllis
