Seeing Puppetry: Winter Report from New York City

Abstract

It was February 2022 and I was standing in a crowd in the lobby of St. Ann’s Warehouse watching an elegant performance unfold: a three-dimensional, 20-inch-tall, faceless figure, manipulated by the hands of three people, walked silently across a suspended tabletop while interacting obliquely with a picture frame, also suspended in mid-air. From behind me, I heard a voice quietly exclaim, “That’s not what you think of when you hear puppetry.” Indeed, I thought, the legs and flats of the feet were being manipulated from the hips with some sort of interior mechanism. Typically, the foot puppeteer holds them near the ankles. But I don’t think that’s what my fellow spectator had in mind.