Títeres &
Actuación
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A scene from Grand Panorama, directed and designed by Theodora Skipitares. Photo: Richard Termine.
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Introducción
Benjamin Gillespie
the ever-expanding world of puppetry presents a rich fabric of cultural in-
fluences encompassing old and new styles that approach nearly every sub-
ject imaginable: from climate change to the performance of ancient texts to
contemporary politics and immigration. The pieces collected here provide a snap-
shot of this artistic field and a plethora of styles, including shadow puppets, mano
puppets, Japanese bunraku-style puppets, rod and arm puppets, marionettes, stick
puppets, and a melding together of puppetry with dance, physical theatre, and opera.
Claudia Orenstein explores the impact of the three-week-long visit of the ten-year-
old Syrian refugee puppet Little Amal to New York City from September to October
2022. Created by the South African Handspring Puppet Company, the U.S. itin-
erary of this performance followed after the gigantic puppet’s 5,000-mile journey
across Turkey, Europa (Francia, Alemania, Suiza, Italia, and Belgium, entre
other countries), and the UK in search of her mother. Walking in NYC across all
five boroughs with the assistance of numerous puppeteers, and followed by large
crowds everywhere she went, the itinerant performance drew together New York’s
many immigrant communities and spread a message of hope and inclusion to
audiences throughout the city.
John Bell revisits the legacy of the radical Bread and Puppet Theater, fundado por
Peter Schumann in 1963, which remains one of the longest-running puppetry com-
panies in the U.S. Just shy of its sixtieth anniversary, the celebrated activist ensemble’s
work continues today under Schumann’s direction as documented in reviews of the
two recent Covid-era productions included here, written by Skye Strauss and Paul
Bedard. The company continues to address contemporary politics head on with the
playfulness and do-it-yourself aesthetic for which they have long been known.
Kate Brehm offers us a snapshot of puppetry in New York City over the Winter 2022
season, covering four puppetry events and a broad range of artists from the U.S.
and abroad. These works include Book of Mountains and Seas, a collaboration be-
tween Basil Twist and Huang Ro at St. Ann’s Warehouse, which also hosted multiple
10 ■ PAJ 133 (2023), páginas. 10–11.
10 ■ https://doi.org/10.1162/pajj_e_00652
© 2023 Performing Arts Journal, Cª.
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productions in the Puppet Lab series also reviewed here; Song of the North by Hamid
Rahmanian at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; and Theodora Skipitares’s Grand
Panorama at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club.
Por último, Robin Frohardt provides an excerpt from her production The Plastic Bag
Store, “a tragicomic ode to the foreverness of plastic,” which premiered in Times
Square in 2020 and has since toured to Los Angeles, chicago, and Austin, Texas.
The Plastic Bag Store is a public art installation that questions the enduring effects of
our single-use plastics. In the piece, shelves are stocked with thousands of original,
hand-sculpted items to mimic store products made from discarded plastics and
packaging. During timed activations, the store transforms into an immersive stage
involving inventive puppetry, shadow play, and intricate handmade sets.
Considered together, these pieces are a testament to some of the most exciting
work happening in the theatre now, and offer new meaning to the power of objects
to speak for the human. As humankind becomes ever-more fragile and divided,
puppets seem to provide a universal language to explore an unknown future.
BeNJAMIN GIlleSPIe is Associate Editor of PAJ. He earned his PhD in
Theatre and Performance from The Graduate Center, CUNY and was
awarded the 2022 Monette-Horwitz Dissertation Prize from CLAGS: Center
for LGBTQ Studies. He is Faculty Lecturer in Communication Studies at
Baruch College, CUNY.
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GIlleSPIe / Introduction ■ 11