Recent Essays

Producing artistic director Kellie Mecleary shares her experience participating in Vaba Lava Narva Theatre Centre’s first International Freedom Theatre Festival in Estonia.

Katrina Stelk discusses the role of nudity in theatre and the problem with requiring body checks during the casting process.

verity healey shares the journey and impact of Walk with Amal, an interactive, artistic project that centered on a large puppet refugee girl travelling through Europe.

While performing across the West and in Africa, Misheck Mzumara noticed stark differences in typical audience behavior. He discusses those differences, their cultural contexts, and their impact on theatremakers’ experiences in cross-cultural theatre productions.

Nicolette Bethel reflects on the creation and significance of Competent Authority, a play that focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic in The Bahamas.

Can a new holiday hatch humans closer to freedom? Eli Nixon's homage proposal messes with time, place, and puppets towards building inter- and intra-species solidarities.

Leda Farrow considers the history, legacy, and symbolic potential of Mr. Punch, a hand puppet characterized by his violent acts.

Denise Rogers Valenzuela shares the way that learning to perform improvised crowd scenes with large, flat puppets—called naked population puppets or potato people—encourages an embodied practice that resists individualism.

In 2021, Ian McFarlane and Laura Stinson of North Barn Theatre launched into a bicycle tour that brought a puppet circus to rural communities across Nova Scotia. They discuss the creation and performance of their show, which joyously embraced troublemaking as a path to activism.

Sarah Plummer kicks off the puppet series by introducing the series contributors and exploring the way their work highlights puppetry’s capacity to form solidarities among humans and nonhumans.