Moderator / Animé par: Carla Orosz
Location: Silver Room, Atlas Hotel

• Dawn Tracey Brandes, “The Beckettian Puppetry of Josh Rice’s Kayfabe”

In many ways, Samuel Beckett’s short 1957 play Act Without Words I is a rumination on action and inaction. A man in a desert is taunted by a mysterious offstage force, and by the play’s end, the man lies motionless on the ground. The meaning of the play depends on how we read the man’s decision not to act in these final moments; that is, whether this inaction is an instance of despair or defiance. In Josh Rice’s 2024 play Kayfabe, Beckett’s play meets two unlikely interlocutors: professional wrestling and puppetry. The puppet protagonist of Kayfabe is Dr. Kiss, a professional wrestler coveting the heavyweight champion belt of Puppet Wrestling Entertainment (this play’s version of WWE). But the joyously goofy antics of this puppet wrestler are explicitly framed by the beats and images of Beckett’s play, lending the piece existential weight. In this paper, I will explore the ways Kayfabe mobilizes the contradictions and tensions present in puppetry and professional wrestling in order to play with various interpretations of Beckettian inaction or futility. If, as Claudia Orenstein writes, “a puppet being…is in some sense always a puppet doing” (22), the puppet becomes an ideal vessel for reflections on the power and danger of inaction. In Rice’s play, the parameters of “action” are expanded in ways that illuminate both Beckett’s original play and puppetry’s foundational principles

• Emilia Fox Hillyer, “Objects & Objectives: Tensions in Transgender Community-Engaged Puppetry”

Puppetry’s transformative potential empowers marginalized groups dealing with selfhood in environments hostile to expressions of identity. These projects do not effectively research what it means to work with transgender participants in an applied theatre setting. My paper addresses this issue by bringing forth a project within which transgender participants explore narratives as co-conspirators with objects, imagine a queer utopia by animating the object inhabitants of that world, and mobilize to create new mutualistic perspectives via the collective creation of artwork. An ensemble of participants from the transgender community construct performing objects and a puppet performance centered around their experiences. We generate content via playmaking and puppetry techniques, culminating in a performance constructed from devised work. I compare our findings to the work of scholars and puppeteers like Aja Marneweck and Peter Schumann, in order to prove transgender populations are some of the most ideal populations for applied puppetry. The negative privilege of puppet theatre and its subversion of monumental history; the successes of puppetry as an accessible community-engaged art form; and the learning outcomes of the often objectified transgender community from the wisdom of objects’ interiority all support my claim further research is necessary. This project, by examining puppetry and participant-led theatre for a transgender population sheds new light on the performance of self, the interiority of objects and transgender people, and the liminal tension between genders, and the animate/inanimate.

• Mai Kanzaki, “Miniaturized Representation of Canada’s Diversity at the Canada Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka”

Expo 2025 Osaka will be held in 2025, 55 years after the previous Osaka Expo. Robert Lepage (1957-), an internationally acclaimed Québécois theatre director, has been appointed the artistic advisor of the Canada Pavilion for the event. Although he has demonstrated his long-term interest in World Fairs through his creations, such as The Seven Streams of the River Ota (1994), Nô (1998) and The Andersen Project (2005), this is his first involvement with the creative team of Canada Pavilion.
     Lepage is fascinated by Expos as they are “miniature worlds” that allow people “to understand things in a very global way in a small space” (Lepage, 2024). In the limited space of the Canada Pavilion, Lepage aims to showcase the vast territory of Canada and its “complex” and “diversified” society. Miniaturization reminds the audience of his masterpiece 887, which premiered in 2015. His technique of miniaturized representation also resonates with the landscape of Japan. Through the Canada Pavilion, Lepage will manipulate “the idea of scale” to capture the expanse of Canada.
     This presentation examines how the Canada Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka will miniaturize Canada’s vast landscape and exteriorize the country’s diverse society for the local Japanese audience.

Biographies

Dawn Tracey Brandes

Dr. Dawn Tracey Brandes is an Instructor in the Fountain School of Performing Arts and an Assistant Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her scholarly work considers the theoretical implications of contemporary puppet performance, particularly in relation to phenomenological concerns. Her work has appeared in publications like The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance and Puppetry International.

Emilia Fox Hillyer

Emilia is a first-generation settler on Treaty 6 territory. She likes puppets, playing the trumpet and trying to get her MFA at the University of Alberta. She is a proud founding member of Fork & Shoe Theatre Cooperative, pUbeRtykiDs, and The Goddamn Brass Band.

Mai Kanzaki

Mai Kanzaki is an associate professor of the Faculty of Global and Regional Studies at Doshisha University. She holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from Osaka University. Her research interests include contemporary Canadian theatre with a particular emphasis on Robert Lepage and theatre festivals.