INTRODUCTION Alissa Mello and Claudia Orenstein | Puppetry, perhaps one of the world’ oldest art forms, which appears in neatly every culture worldwide, often occupies “an ambivalent position in traditional ‘and modern performance cultures,” (Cohen 2007: 123) both in terms of its prac- " tice and as a field of scholarly inquiry. As an art form, it has been a medium for adult entertainment and sacred worship and many traditional puppetry forms have been bulwarks of much local popular entertainment. In multiple cultural contexts, including African, Asian, and Middle Eastern, puppetry has historically been cultur- ally embedded, not only as a form of entertainment but also revered as a high or ‘even sacred art. The importance of traditional puppetry, however, has been dwin- dling, particularly over the last century. The introduction of modern technologies— digital media, television, and film—as dominant means for communication and “entertainment and the emergence of globalized and corporate economies make it “Jess viable as a profitable enterprise and lowers the status of puppetry. Within the "Australian, European, and North and South American contexts, puppetry seems to in and out of fashion, dipping into obscurity only to reemerge periodically as a ‘rediscovered” well of theatrical vitality, as happened in the early modernist period, ‘at the turn of this century, and now. In spite of the form persistently taking on “sophisticated themes and employing complex aesthetic approaches, both through- ‘out its history and also in contemporary work, in Western popular imagination uppetry continues to be widely recognized primarily as a form of children’s fare. Even when puppets are poised to be taken seriously, as they have been again over tthe last two decades, they can remain misunderstood and at the mercy of fluctuat- g cultural and academic capital. ‘Scholarly discourse on puppetry has also struggled to find its footing. In the past, tical work on puppetry emerged within an array of disciplines, such as anthro- ology, psychology, linguistics, or education, to name but a few. Publications such as jorphoses: La Marionette au XXe Siecle (Metamorphosis: The Puppet in the Twentieth2. Alissa Mello and Claudia Orenstein a by Henryk Jurkowski, Les Mains de Lum a ») and Aspects of Puppet Theatre by ea Cant me “ds a sur L’Art de la Marionnette (Hands of Light: Anthology of Writing Anthologie des ) edited by Didier Plassard, The Routledge Companion to Pp. the Art of the Puppet : a and Material Performance edited by Dassia Posner, Claudia Orenstein, and ‘Icha Ba the journal PUCK published by L'Institut Internationale de la Marionette, and publications by Association Nationale des Théatres de icone = et Arts Associés (THEMAA) including their periodical Manip, a ot ee work i to bring these various discourses on puppetry together and assert a re; of critical discussion that places puppetry squarely at its center. , 4 Given puppetry’s struggle to be taken seriously as an art form receive the critical attention it deserves, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that an in-depth discussion of women’s roles within the field and an application of feminist criti cal lenses to puppetry analysis have remained underexplored. Despite the tise of feminism and feminist theory as a strong critical force in theatre studies since the 1988 publication of Sue-Ellen Case’s Feminism and Theatre, marking the beginning of women receiving serious attention as a distinct subject within theatre studies, puppet-theatre scholarship, where it exists, has until recently primarily focused on analyzing the puppet’s power in contrast to the human actor and its ontology as a semiotically charged performing object. In that questioning, scholarship has taken up a general idea of “puppet” that does not often delve into the gender, class, and race issues that engage with it. Additionally, rising intercultural and global aspects nal puppetry festivals and of puppetry resulting from a proliferation of internatio: the creation of works for these festivals can risk obscuring puppetry’s deep local roots and connections and, importantly, the particular historical and social contexts within which puppet forms have developed and continue to exist." Asa profession and in its mythologizing, puppetry has a particular and ongoing romance with the notion of the solo genius: from the lone artist who does it all— writes, builds and performs their show—to the brilliant director with their osten- sibly singular, totalizing vision that establishes aesthetic and technological standards. In terms of individual artists, it has focused mostly on high-profile directors and practitioners, who are predominately male,’ with little attention paid to the traces, marginalization, and contributions of women throughout its history. Interestingly, Julie Taymor, perhaps the most prominent female artist to receive recognition for her singular artistic vision, and a figure who has been enormously inspiring for puppeteers, chooses to identify her work more closely with that done by a director in theatre, film, or opera than as a puppet-theatre director/designer. This is despite the considerable puppetry content in her oeuvre in shows such as Disney's The Lion King, which premiered on Broadway in 1998 and as of August 2018 was still running, that garnered her both fame and economic security. Possibly this is due to the higher status of the live theatre establishment, particularly the large-scale com- mercial American and British musicals with their wider reception internationally. Some recent publications and events, such as a symposium on women and pup- petry at the 2013 Suspense Festival London organized by Cariad Astles; a panel on gender issues presented as part of the first Critical Exchange at the 2015 NationalIntroduction 3 Puppetry Festival in the US chaired by Alissa Mello; uppet and animation filmmakers presented in the UK i v1 (2017), Manipulate Festival (2018), and Exeter oes i og Women of The Muppets” (2018) lecture hosted at The Center for Puppetry ne Atlanta, Georgia, have begun to shift this focus, offering more insight into the icc tant contributions women have made to the art, new ways of understanding their work, and views of! how they have been written out of, Puppetry’s history. For exam- ple, although Balinese shadow puppetry, wayang kulit, has received substantial critical attention, Jennifer Goodlander’s Women in the Shadows: Gender, Puppets, and the Power of Tradition in Bali is the first major study of women practitioners and reveals the social pressures that keep women from following this path, Likewise, Claudia Orenstein’s “Women in Indian Puppetry: Negotiating Traditional Roles and New Possibilities” in Asian Theatre Journal and “Women in Indian Puppetry: Artists, Educators, Activists” in Gender, Space and Resistance: Women and Theatre in India edited by Anita Singh look specifically at the contributions of women to puppetry in India and how they are creating new opportunities for themselves both within traditional and contempo- rary models as India undergoes rapid economic and social transformation. While the Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance (2014) does not centralize a feminist approach, two important essays in that collection offer significant insights. Dassia N. Posner's “Life-Death and Disobedient Obedience: Russian Modernist Redefinitions of the Puppet” resurrects the largely ignored early twentieth-century practical and theoretical works of Russian puppeteer-theorists Nina Simonovich- Efimova and lulia Slonimskaia. Although Posner writes that, even though Nina Simonovich-Efimova and her husband “founded what grew into a thriving, estab- lished Soviet puppetry tradition” (137) and they were Sergei Obraztsov’s first teach- ers, it is Obraztsov who is considered by some to have established puppetry in Russia. While Vsevolod Meyerhold, who made Slonimskaia’s 1916 essay on the marionette required reading for his directing students, and other male directors used puppetry as a metaphor for the actor's theatre, these women’s work with actual puppets gave them deeper insights into the art of puppetry itself. Their writings, which offered counter theories to those put forth by Edward Gordon Craig and Heinrich von Kleist,’ ought to be as foundational to the field as those of Craig and Kleist but have instead lingered in relative obscurity. Amber West's “Making a Troublemaker: Charlotte Charke’s Proto-Feminist Punch” in the same volume offers a feminist revisionist analysis of the work and contributions of eighteenth-century English actor, writer, and puppeteer Charlotte Charke,* who used the symbolism of the then-prevalent folk puppet theatre, par- ticularly Punch and Judy, as a tool for performing social critique. Alissa Mello’s own publications, “Body Material, Material Bodies” in Undisciplining Dance in 9 Movements and 8 Stumbles, edited by Carol Brown and Alys Longley, and ““Com- pagnie Philippe Genty: On Directing and Collaboration” in Puppetry International seek to dispel a contemporary myth of the solo genius and challenge assumptions about the origins of the Genty company’s famed aesthetic via an analysis of the indispensable contributions of Mary Underwood, its cofounder and choreographer. a panel focused on female4 Alissa Mello and Claudia Orenstein oretical analysis are the writings of Aja Marneweck and Sq h Johnson. Marneweck interrogates feminine semiotics and gender in puppetry in i University of Cape Town doctoral thesis Plot 99 Towards a Feminine Semiotie: Spi e and Sexual E nice(y) in Women’s Puppetry and Visual Performance, her 2016 conte” ence presentation at Oxford “The Feminine Semiotic: Syncretism, Identity and fe Emergent Third in South African Women’s Puppetry and Animism,” and antic exual and Spiritual R-Evolution through Animism: The Feminine Semiotics Puppetry” in the Journal of Resistance Studies. Meanwhile, Johnson examines the disruptive signifying power of puppetry and the potentially positive representation in female puppet bodies at the fairgrounds and onstage in Staging Women and the Soul-Body Dynamic in Early Modern England. Although there is increasing publication on these topics, the full potential of for scholarship on women and female-identifying practi- |, race, sexuality, class, and identity is just emerg- ing. Regardless of how artists might respond to international styles or opportunities for performance, puppetecrs, their practices, and their audiences are embedded in e cultures and subject to local conditions. Gender roles and gendered Within more the: erge! puppet theatre as a site tioners, representation, gender(ing) their hom: FIGURI easuire, IGURE 00.A Modes of Pleasure, 2012. Rehearsal pictured from left to right Candan Seda Balaban (operating Ms. Knitter), Giilhan Kadim (operating Ms. Maca- roni), Seda Ozen Yiiriik (operating Ms, Little Hand Tools), Sinem Ocal (operating Ms. Painter). Photo: Ceren Yildiz Burgak.; | | | | | ; | Introduction 5 associations that prevail locally become inscribed in these arts and can di how or whether women find their place within them, Additionally, oct an art that provides for the construction of gendet onstage the material—offers a rich field for further exploration of representation issues, both in production and within critical analysis. The time is ripe investigation as more women enter the field of puppetry. While the histories of puppetry are commonly dated to ancient pasts,® the inclu- sion of women as practitioners, theoreticians, and advocates who further the profes- sion and scholarship, as well as critical analyses of female figures, are not surprisingly scarce. Advocates often serve the profession in numerous capacities through their artistic endeavors, scholarship, mentorship, and diverse activities, including promo- tion, advancing the profession through training others, festival production, and, in some cases, financial support. For example, theatre director and founding director of Linstitut International de la Marionnette, the world’s leading institution for train- ing in puppetry arts, Margareta Niculescu, was a major force in puppetry, yet is little known outside of puppetry circles. Niculsecu was not alone in her efforts, however; the list of individuals is long. Notable individuals in recent history include women such as Anamaria Amaral (Brazil), Meher Rustom Contractor (India), Penny Francis (United Kingdom), Amelia Lapefia-Bonifacio (the Philippines), Margaret Williams (Australia), and Allelu Kurten, Jane Henson, and Nancy Lohman Staub (United States). These women and others have been celebrated as pioneers in the art. Nonetheless—although a sweeping claim that does not account for each specific cultural context—it can be said that puppet theatre, as a codified profession regard- less of its social role as a sacred or secular art form, has had a consistently strong ten dency to become a male-centric profession. Or put differently:At historic moments when puppetry has held high value within a given culture, women are generally implicitly or explicitly excluded or marginalized. Noted historian Didier Plassard writes in his entry for Le Dictionnaire Universel des Créatrices that “traditional puppet theatres, long in the hands of men, have been subject to the same rules as actor's theatre, and therefore, in certain cultures or at certain times, women have been prohibited from going on the stage” (2013). He goes on, however, to postulate that works by women were presented in private or semiprivate settings and sug- gests that in the European context it is not until the emergence of itinerant family traveling shows in the second half of the nineteenth century that women begin to find employment. These prohibitions against women, because of prevailing cultural dogmas, structures, or habits and the postulated private nature of women’s engage- ment with puppets and performing objects, translate into an absence in dominant recorded histories and have kept women from exercising a public voice and wield- ing spiritual and public influence. Although evidence of female puppeteers in early Western Europe is scarce, the connection of “female” with the images of dolls and puppets has a strong history, which is reflected etymologically. The French term, marionnette, evolved in the sev- enteenth century, some argue, as a diminutive of the name Marie, thought to refer to representations of Mary in sacred traveling plays. The term later developed the Puppetry— h inanimate and gender for further6 Alissa Mello and Claudia Orenstein notations of an individual who is easily manipulated. The Word ved from the Latin term pupa for girl or doll, was by the sitter Sarah E. Johnson, “much more gendered” (Johnson, 201 6:2 negative CO! pet,” which evo! century, according to than it is today, She writes: The early modern habits of thought that view puppets as feminine a women as more likely than men to be puppet-like are inescapably soy, ynistic. .. . Apart from its denotative meaning, by the late sixteenth oe tury the word “puppet” held the derogatory connotation of “a person, ' a woman, whose (esp. gaudy) dress or manner 1s thought to suggest a lack of substance or individuality” . . . its superficiality fit well with women’s re. scribed subordinate position to men in the patriarchal society of seventeenth. century England. (Johnson 2016: 31-32 [italics in original) Scott Cutler Shershow argues that at this time, whether as performing object or linguistic trope, the puppet figure “embodies ... a hierarchical vision of author. ship and the corresponding social hierarchies of gender and class ... [and that] the puppet is figurally linked to a range of social and sexual subordination-the woman, the child, the servant, the ‘upstart’” (Shershow, 1995: 68). This subordination and diminution of the female is etymologically manifest not only through associations rooted in the originating Latin that blurs the female with dolls and children but also “in a historical series of hierarchical meanings” (Shershow, 1995: 69) that evokes: a descending hierarchy of generation and incarnation: the woman’s pro- creative body; the child that body bears and sustains; the child’s plaything; and, taking its place at both the top and the bottom of that hierarchy, so to speak, Woman conceptualized and reified as herself an object (or plaything) of male desire. (Shershow, 1995: 71) As recent scholarship in cognitive and linguistic studies shows, language not only has much more power to shape perception than previously considered but also reflects views and practices. While these specific gender biases and connotations do not translate to all cultural contexts, they seem to be indicative of a connected and intertwined history of marginalization and subordination of women and puppetry: In contrast to puppetry’s historically ambivalent status in Western Europe and its association with all things subordinate, which its etymology suggests, within many cultures in Central and South America, Asia, and Aftica, puppets have occupied 4 high-status position, connected to divine forces or courtly power. These associa- Hons grant a level of cultural cachet to those who perform with puppets and have, in the past, offered them economically viable professions. In these contexts, women have, in many instances, been displaced from puppetry work, sometimes through Practices and taboos that keep them from being close to the sacred or politicalIntroduction 7 powers puppets embody or represent. In Thailand, for example, the nang yai large shadow puppets were historically performed by all-male troupes at court celebra- tions and the performances consecrated at wai kiru ritual ceremonies,¢ an ancient rite that continues to have high social and cultural value during which students pay respects to and honor their teachers and the deities who patronize each of their arts Even when nang yai performances moved from the court world to centers in rural communities, there continued to be prohibitions on women even touching the puppets, which today are housed in Buddhist temples. Similar prohibitions existed in India’s tholpavakoothu shadow-puppet tradition, performed at Hindu temples in Kerala for the goddess Bhadrakhali as the primary, honored spectator. In parts of the Middle East, however, as Salma Mohseni Ardehali writes in Chapter 7, puppets used in some rural ritual practices may have been the only public form of engagement by women, in part because of prohibitions on their appearances in public and in mixed company. In Turkey, women were shunned from all aspects of public life until the feminist movement began in the late nineteenth century, continuing during the period of final decline of the Ottoman Empire (1908-1922). Although women did begin to appear onstage, they were typically of either Armenian or Greek descent. Puppetry, however, continued as a working-class male profession until very recently. For several societies throughout the Americas, puppetry was introduced via colonization between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. However, there is evidence of ritual and entertainment practices among the pre-Columbian indig- enous peoples of the Americas and pre-Hispanic cultures, such as the ancient cul- ture of the Anoraks that pre-dates the Inca, the Maya, and K’iche’. A monolith known as “Monument 21” in Guatemala depicts a man in a large headdress holding puppets (Medina, 2012) and articulated clay figures have been found in sites cor- responding to the Totonac, Cholultec, Toltec, and Aztec cultures (Allendes, 2013). It is believed that “shamans used masks and puppets to aid their role as liaisons to the spirit world, to influence the spirits, or to convey an illusion of magical pow- ers” (Lohman Staub, 2012: 2). Whether or not women had a place and what their roles may have been in these particular practices is less understood. Although 7 complete history of puppetry throughout much of the Aftican continent is difficult because of a scarcity of physical textual documentation, most scholars agree, based on archeological evidence, testimony—often in the form of travel memoirs—and extensive oral histories, that puppetry is indigenous and existed as a practice long before the arrival of European colonists. While connected to numerous functions, including entertainment and education, its most foundational and traditional use was as an aspect of ritual from which women were prohibited. For example, in Sogo 60, form found in Mali and performed by four different ethnic groups, women were only allowed to sing, and they could neither create nor touch the puppets or Play the drums. As societies become increasingly globalized, and in some cases more secular, puppetry traditions and their corresponding ritual functions are less valued in pop- ular culture. Yet, when these traditional forms lose their cultural cachet or the pos- sibility of offering an economically viable profession, men tend to disband, opening8 Alissa Mello and Claudia Orenstein up new opportunities for women within them, Today’s tholpavakoothu pertoy for example, recently offered workshops to women in puppet carving and tities: woman perform in their new shows outside the temple grounds, even ase letg «till forbidden from taking part in performances within, and in Thailand at leas ate hang yai company has allowed young women on a college campus to flee one anipulating the large shadow puppets, even as some other troupes hold — 0 with m: as part of preservation of tradition. Likewise, in West Africa y, Yaya the proscriptions Coulibaly, a seventh-generation puppeteer and founder of Sogolon Puppet Tro, Upe, has broken with tradition and now trains and includes female puppet perform in his company. Ironically, many women puppeteers are today finding possibile to flourish precisely because of the economic and social transformations that h; . put traditional forms in peril. Their interventions can and—as several ae Parts I and II show—do breathe new life into these arts. In her contribution to P, : IIT, Maria (Ria) Tri Sulistyani, founder of Papermoon Puppet Theatre in Indon . also reveals, in her opening story, how in some contexts women from oe particular national locale have had more leeway or recognized more possibilities f : breaking through regional cultural practices that exclude women in pu nl their local counterparts. perl ' As scholars we need to not only reexamine the histories and myths about tive labor and naturalized assumptions about women’s abilities as artists casIntroduction 9 critically examine the ways the female figure is employed onstage and what it reveals and conceals about notions of gender and anxiety about the “female” in particular social contexts. In other words, what work does gender representation and gendering onstage do? In what ways does any given performance reenforce patriarchal ideologies and gender norms? What are the many potential radical ways these can be disrupted, satirized, or lampooned in puppet and material theatre? ‘What are the relationships and potentialities of gender representation within a form where a performer can “be” anything onstage? Although our focus in this book is women, we are conscious of problems with the very notion of “women’ as an essentialist category. In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler identifies a foundational problem in “the assumption that the term woman denotes a common identity” (Butler, 2006: 4 [italics in original]. Throughout our book, we strive to understand and invoke the term “woman” in all its potential pluralties of race, clas, ethnicity, gender identity and culture, locating each female- identifying person within their specific historical, social, and cultural context, We have chosen to limit the subjects and contributors of this particular book to bio- logically female bodies, including the authors, the artists who are the producers of the cultural products discussed herein, and the human presences onstage regarded as sites of critical investigation. Although on the one hand this can be read as exclu- sionary, it also points to the need for ongoing exploration of the full spectrum of female and female-identifying production and representation within the field, as well as feminist and queer critical, cultural, and historical analyses that include race, class, and the full spectrum of gender presentation. The specificity of cultural context is a recurrent theme in many of the chapters. ‘Although the word is singular, we understand culture as defined by Stuart Hall as: both the meanings and values which arise amongst distinctive social groups and classes, on the basis of their given historical conditions and relationships, through which they “handle” and respond to the conditions of existence; and 1s the lived traditions and practices through which those “understandings” are expressed and in which they are embodied. (Hall, 1986: 39 [italics in original}) Threaded throughout cultural specificity, however, are some commonalities that lead to the oppression of women and ongoing gender biases. Butler cautions, how- ever, by saying: “The political assumption that there must be a universal basis for feminism . . . often accompanies the notion that the oppression of women has some singular form discernible in the universal or hegemonic structure of patriarchy or masculine domination” (Butler, 2006: 5). While we do not assume that there is a “monolithic masculinist economy” (Butler, 2006: 18) or that dominant cul- tures that “mark axis of social power and ideological control” (Dolan, 2012: xx) are solely at play in the historical erasure and/or exclusion of women in puppetry, they have played a significant role, Furthermore, across many cultures, patriarchal social norms led to particular ideological representations of the female onstage and myths10 Alissa Mello and Claudia Orenstein their abilities as creative producers. Puppetry’s ambivalent »_ its fluctuating cultural capital have also led to opp: ig dership roles in the profession at those historic moments about women and tion coupled with women to take lea the form has been sidelined. eh No single book can attend to the bulk of historical and critical work a 0 be done in this area of research. However, as a provocation, we aim to begin , define a new space for research and analysis and invite the reader to reflect on the chapters, as well as consider what is yet to be investigated. Our book is divide 4 into three sections: critical investigations, local perspectives, and artists speaking fo, themselves. In each, specific historical moments, cultural contexts, and notions of S for When “oman” are examined. Part I, “Critical Perspectives on Women in Puppet Theatre,” edited by Aliss, Mello, includes historical and contemporary analyses of women’s roles in Society, gender anxiety revealed through the unmarked puppet body, and sexual expression within oppressive social contexts. The chapters employ methodological approaches and theoretical models that facilitate the analysis of puppet theatre and women’ place in that work. In her chapter,““The Monster and the Corpse: Puppetry and the Uncanniness of Gender Performance,” Laura Purcell-Gates challenges the notion of the neutral body through a feminist analysis of what it means to construct and read the female body onstage. Judith Butler argued the now widely accepted notion that gender is socially constructed and recognized via the performance of sedimented habits taught through repetitive cultural indoctrination (Butler, 2006). Puppet performances have historically made wide use of these socially constructed norms in the presentation of characters on stage. Purcell-Gates argues that the neutral body is a myth and that male subject position is the norm; representation of the female requires additions of physical and performative aspects that read as such. Although puppet and material performance offer numerous possibilities for troubling or disrupting gender and gender construction, most work created and the analysis of works rarely investigates this territory. She uses a practice-based approach to analyze two productions (one she directed by her company Wattle and Daub, the other by Liz Walker's company Invisible Thread) and her experience teaching pup- petry, exposing cultural power norms and anxiety related to readability of gender. __ In “Modes of Pleasure: Contemporary Feminist Erotic Puppet Theatre from Istanbul with Love,” Deniz Basar analyzes a puppet theatre piece as a productive space to address female sexuality within an oppressive culture. She documents aspects of the creative process alongside her production analysis to situate the work within the Turkish cultural and art scenes just prior to and during its making. In so doing, she lays bare the potential risks artists faced, that were mitigated by their use pepe: Basar analyzes the production and its ability to circumvent risk using apelpranil s esha ore theory of situational irony and affirms how humor oor Een tne : oa ioe peer: Sie a "Kkokdu Gaksi Geori’ (or the ee a aptens tee Marriage, arid Femininities: Kkol 2 offers a model of how le reba ene) os the Korean Traditional Puppet Bay c analysis of a traditional form can reveal the livesIntroduction 11 women typically underrepresented in history ai : sented onstage. She uses traditional ee a women are Fepre- sshich to investigate the roles and challenges faced by nonariston a Tens through the Joseon period. As she notes, there is little documentation ions ise: upper class, yet puppetry offers us a window into aspects of these ee Her analysis via a historical materialist approach compares two diff ee : ferent perfor- mances of one pivotal scene and serves as the platform to reveal how social and | changes affected women’s marriage status and place in the broader society. She a saad interrogate how the work not only gives insight into pas lives and conditions ‘of women but she also connects it to contemporary notions about marriage and beauty culture. Jennifer Goodlander’ chapter, “Erasure, Intervention, and Reconstruction: Imagining Women Puppeteers in Myanmar,” concludes this section. In it, she thinks about women within the historical and social context of Myanmar (Burma) and its puppet-theatre tradition. Using Arya Madhaven’s proposal for a culturally specific framework for analyzing women in Asian performance that focuses on processes of erasure, intervention, and reconstruction, Goodlander draws on limited historical resources to develop an understanding of historical traces and contemporary places of women puppeteers within the Burmese cultural context. Many of the authors in this volume, while not directly referencing Madhaven’s work, appeal to her model in their attempts to trace the histories of female practitioners, even with little or no existing historical documentation and to better situate the ways that women are intervening and reconstructing traditional practices today. Part Il, “Local Contexts: Challenges and Transformations,” edited by Claudia Orenstein, investigates the work of female practitioners within specific cultural contexts, illuminating how women are intervening in traditionally male spaces. Each chapter offers brief accounts of specific social histories, barriers, and gender biases that women have faced and the opportunities afforded female creative lead- ers to appropriate, revive, and transform performance traditions. Looking closely at local contexts sheds light on the diverse challenges women puppeteers face around the globe, the invention and perseverance they demonstrate, and the dis- tinct contributions they make when they are finally able to assert their presence. In her chapter," Werewere Liking, Vicky Tsikplonou, and Adama Bacco: Female Artists Appropriating Puppetry to Empower Women in West Africa,” Heather Jeanne Denyer looks at the histories and work of three groundbreaking artists. She maps out the challenges that each faced to get adequate training, overcoming social and gender obstacles, and their individual paths toward developing personal aesthetics and companies that play significant parts in Theatre for Development and educa- tion for social change. In Africa, as in many traditional contexts where puppetry is connected to spiritual practices, women must transgress strong taboos in taking up the art, In “Class, Gender, and Ritual Puppetry: Negotiating Revival for the Hakomawashi Puppeteers of Tokushima, Japan” Orenstein reminds us that there is more pup- Petry in Japan than just the oft-referenced bunraku through her investigation12 Alissa Mello and Claudia Orenstein washi puppetry tradition revival begun in the mid-1999s, She hakomat ocial history of discrimination and marginalization aimed , je St s burakumin (“village people”), which included puppeteers, ing a s in the ritual tradition and as collaborators in of the interrogates th assed groups ¢ ' women’s little-documented role: e revival efforts. a Women, Shouting Puppets: Women and Puppetry in Iran» in Salma Mohseni ‘Ardehali maps out the history of Iranian pers: arts, includ. ing puppet and object performance, and the —- oo of women premised on social prohibitions. She traces the ae — ee dram, (bazi-ha-ye namayeshi), performed by and for small, all-fem: i gatherings, which .d object manipulation, and the emergence Of Puppetry inhome. based play sessions that used dolls for storytelling, as well as women’s roles in rity. als employing puppets and objects. She then shows now puppetry was introdu ce d asa field of training and study within the academy in the 1970s because [dJuring the Pahlavi dynasty (1925-1979), a new interest emerged in novel art forms” (page 116). Despite emerging interest in new forms, puppetry continued to be marginalized, yet its lower status created opportunities for women to take leader. ship roles, including as practitioners and scholars. They have Particularly shined a5 puppetry directors, where they encounter fewer social and familial obstacles than may have include in theatre. Naomi Paxton’s chapter, “Suffragette Judy: Punch and Judy at Suffrage Fairs and Exhibitions in Edwardian London” seeks to illuminate a little-studied moment in the long history of Punch and Judy. Although there is a scarcity of documentation, Paxton draws on Jacky Bratton’s concept of intertheatricality and her intertheatri- cal model of creativity to imagine how suffragettes may have wielded a historically misogynist, traditional hand puppet show in the service of the movement for the right to vote for women. She offers an overview of the suffrage movement in Brit- ain with a detailed account and analysis of how performance and performativity were used to entice and educate supporters. Using the many types of performance that we do have documentation on as models, in concert with the limited archival evidence about suffragette Punch and Judy shows, she puts forward an argument of how a show that is typically problematic for women may have been adapted to confront issues close to the women’s movement, such as sexual assault and domestic violence, as well as creating space in which to give Judy a voice. In transforming this well-known and popular form of entertainment to support women and women’ power, the activists of the early twentieth century also transformed popular culture and its associations with women. Paxton reveals a gap between the radical adap- tations of Punch and Judy by the British suffrage movement and contemporary adherence to its tradition and ongoing controversy about portrayals of domestic es while arguing that the early twentieth-century suffragette shows may have en more radical and activist then their counterparts in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, ee Practitioners Speak,” edited by Cariad Astles, we invited Puppet-theatre artists to reflect on their experiencesIntroduction 13 nale practitioners within the art form. Al fer a specific view into the work of women in particular Sige, aa personal account of what they have accomplished, obstacles they have faced, and if or how being a woman has influenced their career, their process, or the reception of their work. ‘Ana Alvarado is a director, performer, teacher, writer, and founding member of ElPeriffrico de Objetos based in Argentina, In her chapter “Women and Objects,” ‘Alvarado reflects on the development of her aesthetic as an active choice to carve ut and occupy space within a then male-dominated art world and how being female may have affected her work in conscious and less conscious ways. Not- wegian director and performer Yngvild Aspeli, founder of La Compagnie Plexus Polaire based in France, interrogates her motivations for working with puppets as a dramaturgical tool to reveal the human condition through an analysis of her pro- ductions and artistic process. Chia-yin Cheng, founder and director of Puppet and Its Double Theater, based in Taiwan, situates her reflection on her work and prac- tice within the historical context and development of modern puppetry. She notes that, although men dominated traditional puppetry, there was space for women to create work as leaders in children’s theatre, providing a training ground and opening doors to new forms of expression. ‘Theodora Skipitares, founder and director of Skysaver Productions, based in the United States, responds self-reflexively, connecting the threads of her early devel- opment as an artist—while navigating a conservative home life—with her subse- quent move to the fertile avant-garde theatre and performance scene in the New York City of the 1970s and the influence of second-wave feminism. This thread, Skipitares writes, “begins with my own female body and connects to handmade objects, which develops into the use of surrogate bodies (puppets) to tell large- scale stories” (page 172). Parmeres (Veronica) Silanka, who works with Project HAND UP (Healthy Africa: a New Directive Using Puppets!) and the Kenya Institute of Puppet Theatre, discusses cultural obstacles encountered by women and girls in Kenya. She touches on the history of puppetry used in the region as 4a means for community engagement and education, particularly within the land- scape of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and reveals how she, along with a small group of women, are working to challenge cultural norms and create new spaces for women and girls to imagine and realize alternative futures. Director and writer, Maria (Ria) Tri Sulistyani, cofounder along with her husband of Papermoon Pup- pet Theatre based in Indonesia, takes us on a journey through her discovery of puppetry, the founding of her company, and her aesthetic choices. She situates her emotionally driven yet politically relevant work against a backdrop of the widely known puppet traditions of Indonesia and shows how her work is informed by the Janavese concept of rasa and a quest for new visual poetics to connect and com- municate with new audiences. This section and the book concludes with Janni Younge, founder and director of Jani Younge Productions in South Africa, who interrogates her own practice: in 14. Alissa Mello and Claudia Orenste! thic notion of womanhood but in the specificity oe not in terms of a ae aspect is being female. Although she does not Mei et own identity, of w A the context of a male/female binary, Younge congj, Fs 0 : Je may indeed affect her creative process and the ways that uncon being female ” a s of identity, fear, and vulnerability, if left unconsidered, i cultural ee ica and frame gender, race, society and, therefore, the hy le — Threaded throughout their personal SEL and developmen, as artists, each artist reflects philosophically on and shares their understanding, the power of puppetry as an art form to move people and express aspects of ie be understood withi rience. oe eis book evolved from a small but growing group of individuals whose ing i ests are in puppetry scholarship as a site to investigate the production of, Meaning iy performance within specific social and political contexts and the ways its histories have been constructed to support dominant hegemonic cultures. In other Words, we are less interested in a focus on broad classifications of puppetry forms or glo. balizing semiotic framings of types or ontologies of puppets and more interested jn the meanings puppets create onstage within specific cultures at particular times ang by particular female practitioners. In this volume, we seek to reexamine histories and practices from the perspective of inclusion and exclusion of women and pup. petry as a site that reveals and conceals cultural anxieties and aspirations through the presence and (re)presentation of female bodies in front of and behind the meta- phorical curtain.As such, we hope that this book is a provocation to further critical and historical scholarship; a beginning not an end. Notes 1 Aconcern with the erasure of national identity and forms through “festivalization” is nota new question in puppetry. In his 1967 essay “Tradition and the Present Day,” published in UNIMA’s The Puppet Theatre of the Modern World. An International Presentation in Word and Picture, Jan Malik writes that, while festivals are marketplaces that allow audiences to see more variety than would likely be possible in any other way, “certain theatres perform not typical examples of their everyday work, but special productions devised for these great occasions . . . aimed, almost invariably, at a festival public and jury” (Malik 1967: 13). 2 Given the prohibitions against women practicing puppetry in many contexts, coupled with gender bias made manifest in documented history, it is not surprising that women practitioners represented within historical records are rare. Although there are increasing numbers of women in contemporary practice, the pantheon of great puppetry artist revolves around men like Bil Baird, Jim Henson, and Peter Schuman (United States), Alfred Jarry and Philippe Genty (France), Michael Meschke (Sweden), Sergei Obraztsov (Russia), Dadi Pudumjee (India), Albrect Roser (Germany), Jiti Trnka (Czechoslovakia), and Tamao Yoshida (Japan) to name just a few, Some reputations are at the expanse of theit female creative collaborators, some of whom were also life partners, whose contributions are often elided, 3 Von Kleist’ essay,““On The Marionette Theatre,” written in 1810 and described by literary critic John Rockwell as “the mother of all puppet essays” (2011), is often used in puppeny scholarship to either demonstrate the advantages of the puppet as a perfect performer because it is mechanical and without consciousness, in comparison to the live hum? actor who is positioned as imperfect because of self-awareness (Kleist, 1810: 26; FrancIntroduction 15 2012: 121; Segel, 1995: 6), oF, less frequently, as oe pon of low’ or'popular culture toa reanimation of Nigh oe seattle contribu fe fallowed in the early twentieth century with the critnis crete cee eaeY i ij his many publications, including his journal The Mask aed parce pore ook article that appeared in is The Actor and the ber-Marionete nn ifiuential Despite her work, Charke’s place in the history of is Jer Shershow (1995) appreciates her “keen oe Pee rcuuemene realeiply hierarchical system of literary, class and gender distincton” (144) ter he ald mate discredits her “as both a puppeteer and proto-feminist' (West, 2014: aac aes Henryk Jarkowski, writing just three years after Shershow, offers a more generous anslyis ee Clarke but tempers his acknowledgments of her contributions to theate, such as bemng cone of the first 0 introduce personally directed satire” (1998: 186) and her uses and adaptations of puppetry and the character Mr. Punch in more literary pieces, with equall aePrred reproaches. Fle ultimately concludes that her failure was due in pat tothe fact that che was a woman transgressing in a man’s world, For example, when pondering the reasons why her theatre closed after a short eight-week season, he writes: “Perhaps she took too great a burden on her shoulders, and found that she was a lone woman lost in the greater power of the other sex” (188). There are numerous world and geographically specific histories of puppetry available. Though not a definitive lst, for general world histories see Eileen Blumenthal 2005 Puppery: A World History, Bil Baird’s 1973 The Art of The Puppet, and John Bells 2002 Strings Hands, Shadows: A Modern Puppet History 6 The ai kin ceremony is believed to have originated in ancient animistic belie, influ- enced by the spread of Brahmanism from India. » a References ‘Allendes, A. M. (2013) Latin America. Trans. A. Cloarec. World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts (WEPA). Available at: heeps://wepa.unima.org/en/latin-america [Accessed August 20, 2018). Butler, J. (2006) Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. Case, S-E. (1988) Feminism and Theatre- New York: Routledge. Cohen, M. (2007) The destruction of the object. Peformance Research. 12(4), 123-131. Craig, E. G. (1908) The actor and the Uber-marionette. Mask. 1(2), 3-15. Dolan, J. (2012) Introduction. The Feminist Spectator as Critic. 2nd ed. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, xiii—xliv. Francis, P. (2012) Puppetry: A Reader in Theatre Practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hall, S. (1986) Cultural studies: two paradigms. In Collins, R., Curran J., Garnham, N., Scannell, P, Schlesinger, P, and Sparks, C. (eds.) Media, Culture, and Society: A Critical Reader. Beverly Hillls, CA: Sage, 33-48. Johnson, $.E. (2016) Staging Women and the Soul-Body Dynamic in Early Modern and New York: Routledge. Jurkowski, H. (1998) A History of European Puppetry, vol. 2,The Twentieth Century. Lewiston, NY, and Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen Press. Lohman Staub, N, (2012) Native American puppetry. WEPA. Available at: hetps://wepa. unima.org/en/native-american-puppetry [Accessed August 19, 2018]. Malik, J. (1967) Tradition and the present day. In Niculescu, M. (ed.) The Puppet Theatre of the ‘Modem World. London, Toronto, Wellington, and Sydney: George G. Harrap, 7-14. Marneweck, A. (2012) Plot 99 Towards a Feminine Semiotic: Spiritual and Sexual Emergence(y) in Women's Puppetry and Visual Performance, doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, South Africa. England. Londona Mello and Claudia Orenstein 16 Aliss A. 2016a) The Feminine Semiotic: syncretism, identity and the eme; A, Marneweck, Aan women’s puppetry and animism, conference presentation, Intra in South Aft , Mansfield College, Oxford, UK. ra e sand Identities, ; ing cs re (2016) Sexual and spiritual r-evolution through animism: the fem; Marneweck, ‘A. (=! , q Wy Ini semiotics of puppetry. Journal of Resistance Studies: Special Issue on Feminized Resiay 22 -166. , ‘ re Ae (2012) Guatemala. Trans. A. Nguyen. WEPA. Available at: https:// WePa.tnin, ccessed August 19, 2018]. , arg/en/ guatemala [Ancesee 4 directing and collaboratj Mello, A. (2013) Compagnie Philippe Genty: on directing CHEN. Pappy, emnational. 34, 4-7. ena isos Body material, material bodies. In Brown, C., Longley Ay and Wood B, Undisciplining Dance in 9 Movements and 8 Stumbles. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Fe oo Indi try: artists, educators, activists. In § nstein, C. (2013) Women in Indian puppetry: ; ' - In Singh a a pe and Resistance: Women and Theatre in India. New Delhi: DK ie 245-272. Orenstein, C. (2015) Women in Indian puppetry: negotiating traditional roles and new, os. sibilities. Asian Theatre Journal, 32(2), 493-517. Plassard, D. (2013) Marionnetistes. Le Dictionnaire Universel des Créatrices Wwwadictionnaire. creatrices.com/fiche-marionnettistes?qg=MARIONNETTISTES [Accessed July 13, 2018). Posner, 0. N. (2014) Life-death and disobedient obedience: Russian Modernist tedefinitions of the puppet. In Posner, D. N., Orenstein, C., and Bell, J. (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Puppet and Material Performance. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 130-142. Rockwell, J. (2011) Pinocchio’s tribe. The New York Times Sunday Book Review. Available at www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/books/review/, Puppet-an-essay-on-uncanny-life-by- kenneth-gross-book-review.html [Accessed June 26, 2018]. Segel, H. B. (1995) Pinocchio’s Progeny: Puppets, Marionettes, Automatons and Robots in Modemia and Avant-Garde Drama. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Shershow, S. C. (1995) Puppets and “Popular” Culture. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornel University Press. (ea) Versity von Kleist, H. (1972) [1810] On the marionette theatre. Trans, 'T. G. Neumiller. TDR: The Drama Review. 16(3), 22-26. ‘West,A. (2014) Making a troublemaker: Charlotte Charke’s proto-feminist Punch. In Posner, D.N., Orenstein, C., and Bell, J. (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Puppet and Mater Performance. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 116-129.PART | Critical Perspectives on Women in Puppet Theatre Edited by Alissa Mello FIGURE 00.1 Invisible Thread, Plicked — a true fairy tale, 2011, created by Liz Walker. Pictured: female protagonist. Photo: John Coombes.1 THE MONSTER AND THE CORPSE: PUPPETRY AND THE UNCANNINESS OF GENDER PERFORMANCE Laura Purcell-Gates As artists and audience mingled in the Bristol Old Vic theatre bar for informal feedback over drinks following a work-in-progress performance of Wattle and Daub’s chamber opera for puppets The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak,’ one male audience member expressed his annoyance at the design of the only female puppets in the piece, conjoined twins Marie and Celeste (Figure 1.1):“You need to make their lips and cheeks red, and give them long hair,” he explained to our pup- peteer Aya Nakamura, “otherwise we can't tell that they’re women.” This ambiguity is telling; no one complained that the male puppets’ genders had been confusing. Much more labor must go into representing a puppet as female, illustrating Judith Butler's claim that woman is a “term in process” (1990: 33) and revealing the myth of neutrality—the neutral body is read as male. What happens, then, when a “neutral” puppet, one without clear gender markers, insists on being female? Why might this be such an unsettling experience? My company Wattle and Daub, for which I am co-artistic director, seeks to explore ways in which puppetry can engage in interesting and often unsettling ‘ways with social constructions of bodies. My design of Marie and Celeste in Tarrare, with the help of Wattle and Daub co-artistic director Tobi Poster and puppet builder Emma Powell, intentionally resisted feminine tropes. I wanted this puppet to inhabit a similar aesthetic framework as the other, male, puppets in the piece. These puppets, apart from the character of the doctor who tells the story using the “bodies” in his autopsy room, were all designed around the idea of the corpse with sunken eye sockets, “decaying” skin, and partial bodies. It is important to note that the male puppets were not given any stereotypically masculine attributes, yet they easily read as male, Only Marie and Celeste provoked unsettled reactions from audience members, This experience led me to reflect on expectations of gendered bodies, and reac- tions to bodies that resist these expectations. Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud’s|-Gates 20. Laura Purcel FIGURE 1.1 Puppeteer Aya Nakamura performing Marie and Celeste in work-in- Progress performance of The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak. Puppet design: Laura Purcell-Gates. Puppet build: Laura Purcell-Gates, Tobi Poster and Aya Nakamura. Photo: Toby Farrow. respective deployments of unheimlich (1906; 1919) and Masahiro Mori’s ae valley” effect (1970) link the uncanny with ambiguity; as dead-yet-animated oe Fi Puppets therefore find an easy home within this designation. A closer look reve* intersectional issues at play: Leigh Johnson, for instance, has linked the uncanny ck ley effect with racial ambiguity (2009), and John Bell suggests that by “cugging b**Puppetry and gender performance 21 on Modernism” the uncanniness of pup eo 7 “? — unsettles our assumed _ Taking the material world to include gender-constructed bodies, I extend this link by examining the uncanniness of the apparently neutral puppet body—a pet lacking clear female markers such as long hair, breasts, red cheeks, or ie performing as female. Connecting the construction of neutrality (the sterile bod ofthe corpse unmarked by nonnormative identity signifiers) to anxieties surround), ing contamination, I link this contamination to the monstrous body of the ambigu- ously female, overflowing in signification. I suggest that, while puppetry is a site for gender bias via the myth of neutrality, it also represents a subversive site with the potential to trouble and reveal such identity constructions through a productive uncanniness that asks us not just to experience but to linger within the ambiguity of the monstrous body. Myth of neutrality The labor that must go into representing the puppet body as female is one that I have witnessed countless times in my company’s beginning puppetry classes and workshops, run by Tobi Poster and me, when small groups of participants in univer- sity and theatre settings work together to build simple newspaper and tape puppets. We begin with a basic demonstration of how to create a human body with head, neck, torso, arms, and legs using newspaper and tape. No other instructions are given; we invite the participants to allow different types of puppet bodies to emerge within the limitations of this relatively simple model of constructing a human form. In groups of three the participants undertake their own versions of this style of puppet. The room is soon filled with simple puppets carrying no clear markers of gender; as we walk among the groups admiring their creations, the pronoun we consistently hear for these apparently neutral puppets is “he.” Usually one or two" groups, having created their initial “neutral” puppet, decide to make a female pup- pet, designating femaleness through the addition of breasts, long hair, a dress—or, more often than not, all three. Femaleness in this context is both an afterthought and an addition. ‘When the puppets perform, they are puppeteered in a style adapted from bun- raku by three participants per puppet (one on the head and arm, one on the other arm, one on the legs). The neutral/male puppets are either puppeteered with male- gendered performance markers (such as beating their chests or flexing arm mus- cles), which reinforce the puppet’s gender as male, or puppeteered in a relatively “neutral” style.‘Neutral” is a tricky term; in this case it refers to the participants not making the puppet “do” anything that would read as stereotypical of a particular gender. Either way, the puppet is assumed by almost everyone in the room to be male. The “female” puppets—the ones with breasts, long hair, and/or a dress—are nearly always puppeteered using stereotypically female movements, such as swish- ing back the hair with an arm, giggling with hands over mouth, and bending at lots of joints; head tilted, hips jutted to the side, etc. While an entire study could be devoted to the gender performance of puppets in these sites, what is relevant