Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

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Introduction: Puppets Have Always Performed Others

John Bell

Puppets and performing objects have always performed alterities, often reflecting biased visions of Others. The papers in this collection about the object performances of Others can help us better understand global histories and cultures.
Alterity in the Arabic and Near Eastern Puppet Theater

Marvin Carlson

This essay studies uses of alterity in the medieval plays of Egyptian Ibn Daniyal and selected modern Karagoz plays from Turkey, considering the alterity of the puppet itself and also the social alterities represented by the puppets in these works.
Sicilian Puppet Theater: Alterity or Diversity?

Jo Ann Cavallo

From the perspective of alterity, the predominant figure of the Other in Sicilian puppet theater is undoubtedly the Saracen (Muslim) aggressor. Yet the Paladins of France cycle, with its over 300 nightly episodes, is replete with stories that eschew an opposition between an “us” and a “them” and instead underscore our common humanity across borders of all kinds. Indeed, camaraderie, friendship, and even romance can readily develop between individuals from the most disparate corners of the globe. My paper focuses on a selection of examples under the guise of both alterity and diversity, the latter achieved especially through heterogamous marriages.
Deities of the Indigenous Snake People in Religious Marionette Plays

Fan Pen Chen

This chapter shows how deities of the indigenes of southeastern China competed with and reacted to the invading mainstream Han culture through six sacred string-puppet plays.
Introduction: Attitudes toward the Other

Matthew Isaac Cohen

The use of puppets, objects, masks and cantastorias in various societies around the globe, to represent and stage the Other.
Exhibiting Blackface Puppets from the German Imaginary

William T.F. Condee

German puppet collections face the problem of how—and whether—to display their extensive holdings of blackface puppets that are built on grotesquely racist stereotypes, including the Imagined Turk, the Imagined African, the Imagined African American, and the Imagined Multicultural German.
Commedia dell’Arte: The Mechanisms of Othering

Olly Crick

This chapter proposes that the dramaturgic flexibility within historical Commedia dell’Arte was predicated on a performance methodology that demanded a changing pattern of othering, depending on the class, economic strength and region of their audiences.
How to Signify Otherness and Diasporic Bodies through Puppetry: Two Plays by Kossi Efoui

Francesca Di Fazio

French-speaking writer of Togolese origin Kossi Efoui resorts to puppetry as a means of communicating the diaspora of the African people and the condition of Otherness experienced by a portion of humanity throughout history.
The Western Tourist as Exotic Other: Coping with the Aggressive Ways of the Casual Stranger

John Emigh

In the summer of 2004, the author traveled with Prof. Barbara Hatley to see a performance by the Ludruk Karya Budaya troupe of Mojokerto in Eastern Java and while there, the author participated in the performance; this chapter reflects on the minefield of cultural issues involved in their improvised sketch.
Ralph Chessé and Forman Brown: When Carving the Other is Carving the Self

Ben Fisler

This article examines two “closeted” puppeteers, Forman Brown and Ralph Chessé, who demonstrate alterity’s ability to disrupt itself. Their puppets are both exotic (“different from me”) and incorporated (“like me”), as the artists’ hidden racial and sexual identities blur the boundaries between self and other.
The Other in Southeast Asian Puppetry

Kathy Foley

Southeast Asian wayang/nang talung puppetry presents the local hero as refined. Three types of “others” repeat: 1) comic foreigners, 2) Raja Sabrangan (“Overseas King”) and followers, and 3) physically deformed clown servants. The last two groups are important and may relate to Austronesian concepts of spirit siblings accompanying each person through life.
Characters of the Other in Slovak Folk Drama and Czech and Slovak Professional Puppet Theater

Ida Hledikova

This chapter reflects on and compares depictions of the main heroes in folk theater in Slovakia as well as contemporary Slovak and Czech puppet theater and discusses reasons why the Romany ethnic minority was popular or a focal point of interest.
Mamulengo as Cultural Resistance

Mayumi Ilari

This chapter, using two recent examples from Brazilian puppet masters, briefly presents the origins of Brazilian puppetry and discusses the way Brazilian mamulengo tradition operates as a means of historical and cultural resistance, while enhancing diversity and racial equality through popular culture and theatre.
Puppetry for a Total War: French and German Puppet Plays in World War I

Didier Plassard

Comparing German, Austrian and French puppet repertoires composed during or in the aftermath of WW1, this paper examines how these productions took part in the “bourrage de cranes” (brainwashing) of public opinions, instilling the hate of other nations in the minds of the youngest.
A Real American Wife, A Japanese Object: Puppetry and the Orient in Minghella’s Madam Butterfly

Tobi Poster-Su

In Anthony Minghella’s celebrated 2005 production of Madam Butterfly, three white men manipulate the small, fragile body of Sorrow (Cio-Cio-San/Butterfly’s child), and, in a dream sequence, Cio-Cio-San herself–this paper explores how the production uses puppetry to represent the racialized Other, and how this might subvert, reinforce, or make visible Orientalist views of the East within the source text.
Always Busy Somewhere: Cooper Crafts an Entrée for the Other

Paulette Richards

African American ventriloquist John W . Cooper toured for a time with Richards and Pringle’s Famous Georgia Minstrels, but did not appear in blackface. Instead he used figures to get audiences to recognize the humanity and agency of a Black man.
Matter’s “Dark” Powers: Performing Objects and Racialization in Nineteenth-Century American Spiritualism

Hazel Rickards

In this article, I analyze performing objects that were attributed to the agency of Black spirits within the 19th-century American spiritualist movement, exposing how white, female spirit mediums supported and tested a racial metaphysics that assumed white transcendence and Black materiality.
When Klana and His Mercenaries Sailed to Java: The Expression of Otherness in Surakarta Court-Style Wayang Gědhog Performance

Rudy Wiratama

Wayang gĕdhog was once a popular puppetry in Javanese courts. Besides of its Panji romance themes, it also has political meanings represented by Sabrang and Jawa figures, which enrich the play and giving it a broader context in Javanese culture.