Moderator: Barry Freeman
Location: Room 3110 – Pavilion de la Faculté de l’aménagement – 2940 ch. de la Côte Ste-Catherine – Université de Montréal
(Building 36 on the UdM Map)
In-Person Session
Collaborating Together, Apart: Teaching Devised Puppetry Online
This past summer, I was lucky enough to be able to teach a course related to my dissertation on devised puppetry. I began to draft my syllabus in a flurry of excited keystrokes: “In this course, we will seek to answer one deceptively simple question: Does the focus on the object in puppet theatre restrict the spontaneity and physical freedom that are so central to theatrical devising?” We did indeed begin to come to grips with this question, but there was a new dimension that I had considered only in passing before. No matter how physically close a student might be to their puppet, no matter how rich the semiotic interchange between them might be, this was an online course. Consequently, these students bravely grappled with not only how to channel their creative impulses through an outside object but also how to communicate their ideas through a screen.
Thankfully, everyone was familiar with Zoom by then, so, much as performers must learn to do with puppets more generally, we were able to learn to take advantage of the flexibilities offered by the medium. A greater challenge was to develop devising strategies that left room for potentially constructive conflict (Barton 2008) and did so in a just manner, given that not everyone had the same depth of training and experience or access to the most recent technology. This paper will examine some of these successes and hurdles and outline how they could become increasingly relevant in our new reality.
James Beauregard Ashby
James Beauregard Ashby is a relatively recent PhD graduate from the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto, a puppet artist, a union activist, and a sometime sessional lecturer. Ashby is also the co-founder of Bricoteer Experiments Theatre and a past president of the Ontario Puppetry Association.
Puppet Ecology: Playing With Plastics
Amid the growing (and interconnected) collection of environmental concerns facing humanity, our penchant for overconsumption and excess looms large. Far from an invisible harm, this excess is marked by landfills overflowing with fast-fashion textiles, rapidly-obsolete electronics, and of course, non-biodegradable plastic. The sheer volume of the “stuff” we consume is overwhelming us.
Puppetry is in a unique position vis a vis this proliferation of “stuff.” On one hand, it is an art form that relies on materiality, often making use of the same materials that show up in our landfills. On the other hand, the way in which puppeteers foreground and enliven these materials encourage audiences to look at them differently, perhaps undercutting or interrupting what Jane Bennett calls “the image of dead or thoroughly instrumentalized matter [which] feeds human hubris and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption” (ix). How might puppetry unsettle our relationship to the junk that surrounds us, and to what end?
To tackle this question, I will consider two performances that engage directly with the nonbiodegradable supervillain, plastic. In Compagnie Non Nova’s L’après-midi d’un foehn, disposable plastic bags become air dancers, carried on the wind created by multiple fans to the music of Debussy. In Robin Frohardt’s The Plastic Bag Store, puppet characters playfully reflect on the story our indestructible plastic waste will tell future generations about us, replete with misinterpretations.
In both of these productions, the relationship to plastic is not one of interdiction, but of transformation. Whether the plastic is presented beautifully or comically, the message of these performances does not seem to be a simple command to “use less plastic,” but a more complicated – and perhaps more ecologically hopeful – reorientation of our relationship to stuff.
Dawn Tracey Brandes, Dalhousie University
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.
Revisiting the White Terror: The White Storyteller and Taiwanese Glove Puppetry
How can modern theater engage in the process of retelling difficult knowledge and if possible, in the process of any form of healing? This paper examines how Taiwanese colonial and postcolonial memory is presented in The White Storyteller (2019) by means of traditional glove puppetry. It first traces the history of Taiwanese glove puppetry under colonial rule and explores the ways The White Storyteller represents colonial and postcolonial trauma as well as how such trauma shaped Taiwanese identification. This paper argues that by means of a double theatrical mediation through its collaboration with traditional Taiwanese glove puppetry, the play presents the incommensurability of traumatic past and the incompleteness of historical representation. It explores the theatrical potentials of puppets onstage to portray the paradoxical condition of the White Terror as an open problem.
Tzu-Yu Hung, University of Toronto
Tzu-Yu Hung is a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. Tzu-Yu’s interests revolve around how the concept of dramatic illusion is explored classical Greek tragedy in its language and themes as well as how this concept affects tragedy’s expected spectatorship.