The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance offers a wide-ranging
perspective on how scholars and artists are currently re-evaluating the theoretical, historical,
and theatrical significance of performance that embraces the agency of inanimate objects.
This book proposes a collaborative, responsive model for broader artistic engagement in and
with the material world. Its 28 chapters aim to advance the study of the puppet not only as a
theatrical object but also as a vibrant artistic and scholarly discipline.
This Companion looks at puppetry and material performance from six perspectives: theoretical
approaches to the puppet, perspectives from practitioners, revisiting history, negotiating tradition,
material performances in contemporary theatre, and hybrid forms. Its wide range of topics, which
span 15 countries over five continents, encompasses:
- visual dramaturgy
- theatrical juxtapositions of robots and humans
- contemporary transformations of Indonesian wayang kulit
- Japanese ritual body substitutes
- recent European productions featuring toys, clay, and food.
The book features newly commissioned essays by leading scholars such as Matthew Isaac
Cohen, Kathy Foley, Jane Marie Law, Eleanor Margolies, Cody Poulton, and Jane Taylor.
It also celebrates the vital link between puppetry as a discipline and as a creative practice
with chapters by active practitioners, including Handspring Puppet Company's Basil Jones,
Redmoon's Jim Lasko, and Bread and Puppet's Peter Schumann. Fully illustrated with more
than 60 images, this volume comprises the most expansive English-language collection of
international puppetry scholarship to date.
John Bell is Director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts at the University of Connecticut. An active puppeteer with Great Small Works and Bread & Puppet Theater, as well as a theatre historian, his publications include American Puppet Modernism (2008) and Puppets, Masks, and Performing Objects (2001).
Claudia Orenstein is Associate Professor of Theatre at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at CUNY. Publications include The World of Theatre: Tradition and Innovation, and Festive Revolutions: The Politics of Popular Theatre and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. She is a board member of UNIMA-USA and Associate Editor of Asian Theatre Journal.
Dassia N. Posner is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Northwestern University. A theatre historian, dramaturg, and puppeteer, she is the author of numerous articles and chapters on Russian theatre, the history of directing, and puppetry and is Peer-Review Editor for Puppetry International. Recent dramaturgy includes Three Sisters and Russian Transport at Steppenwolf.
