The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance

The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance offers a wide ranging perspective on how scholars and artists are currently reevaluating the theoretical, historical, and theatrical significance of performance that embraces the agency of inanimate objects. This book proposes a collaborative, responsive model for broader artistic engagement in and with the material world. Its twenty-eight essays aim to advance the study of the puppet not only as a theatrical object, but also as a vibrant artistic and scholarly discipline.

This Companion looks at puppetry and material performance from six perspectives: theoretical approaches to the puppet, perspectives from practitioners, revisiting history, negotiating tradition, material performances in contemporary theatre, and hybrid forms. Its wide range of topics, which span fifteen countries over five continents, encompasses:

visual dramaturgy
theatrical juxtapositions of robots and humans
contemporary transformations of Indonesian wayang kulit
Japanese ritual body substitutes
recent European productions featuring toys, clay, and food

The book features newly-commissioned essays by leading scholars such as Matthew Isaac Cohen, Kathy Foley, Jane Marie Law, Eleanor Margolies, Cody Poulton, and Jane Taylor. It also celebrates the vital link between puppetry as a discipline and as a creative practice with chapters by active practitioners, including Handspring Puppet Company's Basil Jones, Redmoon's Jim Lasko, and Bread & Puppet's Peter Schumann. Fully illustrated with more than sixty images, this volume comprises the most expansive English-language collection of international puppetry scholarship to date.