Among the many programs in the arts that flourish during the summer months are festivals, conferences and workshops in puppetry, an art form that can serve as a window into all the creative arts and is growing in popularity around the country. Sarah Lawrence College will host a week-long, intensive puppetry workshop June 22-27, under the direction of award-winning artist and performer Dan Hurlin, that will immerse participants in this multidisciplinary art. (http://www.slc.edu/summer/index.php?content=puppetry)
Puppetry became popular as a serious art form in America during the 1960s, when experimental theatre groups seized upon the medium as a new way of communicating with their audiences. Since then many theatre productions have featured puppets, often in conjunction with live actors. Even so, Americans usually think of puppetry as a children's amusement, despite the fact that in other countries puppetry is considered to be a highly developed art form producing legitimate theater for adults.
For many audiences the 1999 Broadway production of The Lion King, designed and directed by Julie Taymor, brought puppets out of the realm of Sesame Street and into the realm of legitimate theatre. The Lion King employed over 200 puppets of every variety--rod puppets, shadow puppets, and over-sized puppets (including an 11-foot high elephant)--whose artful design was highly acclaimed by critics and wildly popular with audiences. In 2002 Peter and Wendy, the Mabou Mines theatre company's interpretation of Peter Pan, featured one actress and 25 Bunraku-influenced puppets manipulated by six puppeteers. This show was loved for its nuance and beauty, and also helped change the public's view of puppet theatre.
In New York, puppet theatre shows are performed almost constantly. The Henson Foundation, founded in 1982 to promote puppetry as an art form in the U.S., has a full list of current puppet theatre events in New York City on their website, http://www.hensonfoundation.org, under "puppet happenings." The Puppetry Homepage also has many puppetry resources and can be found at: http://www.puppetry.info.
Puppetry involves the intersection and integration of many art forms--set design, painting, sculpting, playwriting and music, among others--which make it a popular way to introduce students of all ages to the performing and visual arts. In addition, puppets have been at the forefront of new artistic technologies, from video art and installation to the barely-tapped potential of computer based art, which makes them popular at art schools.
Several colleges and universities offer the study of puppetry through their performing or visual arts departments. The University of Connecticut, for example, offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in puppetry. Sarah Lawrence, which fully integrates the arts into its liberal arts curriculum, but offers no majors, makes puppetry available through its theatre program. (see http://www.slc.edu/news_events/index.php?content=index&d=021220)
In addition to its significance as high art and as an educational tool, puppetry is also valued as a form of public art. Throughout history and in many different cultures, puppetry has been used to critique the powers that be. In the 1960s groups like Bread and Puppet Theatre used puppetry in public spaces to protest the war in Vietnam. Bread and Puppet Theatre is still active today, and in the last several years many activist theatre groups have reclaimed puppetry as a form of social critique, audience involvement and political protest.
Sarah Lawrence's Dan Hurlin is available to discuss puppetry and its role in American creative arts. He is the recipient of a 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. He earned a 2000 Dance and Performance Award (commonly referred to as the "Bessie" award) for his suite of puppet pieces, "Everyday Uses for Sight: Nos. 3 & 7." In 1990 he received a Village Voice Obie Award for his solo adaptation of Nathanael West's "A Cool Million" and in 1998 was nominated for an American Theatre Wing Design Award for the set of his chamber opera "The Shoulder."
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