Join the Ballard Institute for our fifth Summer 2020 Online Puppet Forum Series event on Facebook Live! These forums, hosted by Ballard Institute director and puppet historian John Bell, will consist of discussions with notable scholars and practitioners around the world about the past, present, and future of puppetry and puppetry studies.
On July 2 at 4 p.m. ET, in a forum entitled “Thinking through the Puppet,” Professor Claudia Orenstein of Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center will speak with John Bell about her research on women in puppetry, puppets and spirituality, contemporary Indian puppetry, how people watch and understand puppet performance, and how puppetry studies might be taught.
Claudia Orenstein is Professor of Theatre at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. She has spent over a decade writing on contemporary and traditional puppetry in the US and Asia, and her recent publications include the co-edited volumes Women and Puppetry (with Alissa Mello and Cariad Astles,) and The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance (with John Bell and Dassia Posner). With John Bell she has co-organized three editions of the Critical Exchange forum series at Puppeteers of American National Festivals; and with Dassia Posner, Alissa Mello, and Lawrence Switzky, heads up the Puppetry and Material Performance Working Group for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.
Forums will be available afterwards on our Facebook page and YouTube channel.