Puppetry
Puppetry, perhaps more than other art forms, teaches us how human projects are accommodated in or resisted by the non-human world. While digital technology executes our commands frictionlessly, puppetry reminds us that working with puppet performers is a negotiation with the agendas of other things, in much the same way that construction or environmental management must see human intentions as part of an assemblage of persons, materials and ecologies. Puppetry is an especially developed art at the CHR, which has worked extensively with the renowned Handspring puppet company, sponsors the activities of Ukwanda, a black puppet company housed in the Factory of the Arts, and hosts Jane Taylor, the Mellon Chair of aesthetic Theory and Material Practice.
Activities in Toronto in 2018-2019
- October 2018: Animacy and/or Agency in Artificial Intelligence
- November 2018: Materializing Indigenous Treaties
- January 2019: Prostheses, Physical and Virtual
- February 2019: Puppets, Parades and Protests
- March 2019: New Methods in Puppetry and Material Performance Research (roundtable)
- April 2019: Eurasian Flows and Migrations in Puppetry, Past to Present
Activities in Capetown, 2018-2019
- June 2019 LoKO ten-day workshop with scholars and practitioners of the Handspring Puppet Company
Activities in 2017-2018
- Jane Taylor workshops and master class in Toronto, June 2017
- A “portfolio" on post-apartheid puppetry for the leading journal in the field, Puppetry International
- A reader of puppet theory
- A special working session at the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) on Puppetry and Object Performance
People
- Larry Switzky, English and Drama, UT
- Veronika Ambros, Comparative Literature and Slavic Languages and Literatures, UT
- Jane Taylor, Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance. UWC