Bringing Dolls to School: Theorizing performing Objects

A Graduate Student Conference

This one-day graduate student conference focuses on the academic study of and engagement with the field of performing objects. Performing objects have become increasingly prominent in adult theatre, regularly featured in mainstream and experimental works. Since puppetry is an art and academic subject that engages with other disciplines, its study proves to be an area of great vitality. The overarching objective is to foster and nurture new networks of emerging scholars coming from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives to look at the multifaceted ways performing objects are being used on stage.

Presenters:

“Voices Out of Things: Language Puppetry in Shaw and Yeats.”
LAWRENCE SWITZKY, Harvard University.

“Elisabeth of Spalbeek: Puppet of God.”
DEBRA HILBORN, Graduate Center (CUNY).

“Reclaiming the Total Art of Puppetry: A Revisionist Look at the Work of Mummenschanz and Implications for Theatre Pedagogy.”
DAHLIA KATZ, York University, Toronto

“High-Strung: Marionette Melodrama in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain and France.”
STEPHEN HUFF, Graduate Center (CUNY).

“Form, Function, Fantasy: Paul Klee’s Puppets and the Bauhaus Stage.”
PETRA HROCH, University of Alberta, Edmonton.

“Theorizing the Marionette: Actors’ Theatre and Puppet Theatre in Silver-Age Russian Theatre.”
DASSIA POSNER, Tufts University.

12 p.m., Monday, April 16, 2007
Martin E. Segal Theater. Free.