Josh Rice Projects: Kayfabe

Optimistic Absurdity: The Expansiveness of Imagination in Josh Rice’s Kayfabe

An Essay by Dawn Tracey Brandes

The term “kayfabe” comes from the world of professional wrestling, where it refers to the idea that even though we all know that wrestling is not “real,” we must collectively embrace the illusion in order to enjoy the world it creates. As in puppetry, where the audience is asked to imagine an object as a living thing, pro wrestling is predicated on an active and enthusiastic suspension of disbelief. In Josh Rice’s Kayfabe, this symmetry between puppetry and wrestling combines with a third unlikely inspiration—the work of Samuel Beckett—to explore ideas of autonomy and imagination, all while having a really good time.

Before the show began, the audience was already offered an education in professional wrestling courtesy of a large screen that hung over a miniature wrestling ring center stage. On the screen, we watched wrestling moves performed by human wrestlers intercut with wrestling terms alongside their definitions, like Face (the good guy) and Heel (the bad guy). Our education continued with the entrance of Josh Rice, who would play the onstage ring announcer throughout. At the top, he spoke directly to us, explaining that, like a real wrestling show, this one would be responsive to our reactions—we were told we should cheer wrestlers or moves we like and boo when we were displeased. We were also directed to streamers under our seats, which we could throw onstage, and signs that we could hold up during the matches. With our interaction thoroughly encouraged, Rice introduced the four puppeteers—Rowan Magee, Madeleine Dauer, Emma Wiseman, and Takemi Kitamura—who took to the stage in wrestling garb as a highlight reel of their puppeteering prowess played on the screen above. 

Then the play took a hilariously incongruous turn: Just when we might have expected a puppet battle royale, the action began with a single Bunraku-style puppet finding himself alone in the wrestling ring. The sequence that followed was a puppet homage to Samuel Beckett’s Act Without Words I (1957), a short one-act play in which a man finds himself alone in a desert where an unseen force provides (and sometimes taunts) him with a series of objects, punctuated by a series of offstage whistle blasts. In this puppet version, the sound of a wrestling bell replaced the whistle, with each ding sending the puppet floating into the air before being dropped, once again, into the ring. The effect was one of futility; the puppet could never make any real progress, and when he finally seemed to be achieving a goal—using the provided ladder to reach for a world wrestling championship belt suspended just beyond his reach—a puppeteer’s hand unceremoniously pushed him over. 

When the puppet found a sequined rainbow cloak and adopted his wrestling persona—Dr. Kiss—the play shifted again, back to the raucous wrestling shenanigans promised by Rice’s opening gambit. We watched and cheered as Dr. Kiss fought the reigning Heavyweight Champion of Puppet Wrestling Entertainment (this world’s WWE). Kiss’s opponent was invisible to us, meaning that the entire fight was brought to life by the careful choreography performed by Magee, Dauer, and Wiseman manipulating the Dr. Kiss puppet. As we followed Dr. Kiss’s attempts to earn the coveted title, it was not only the wrestling choreography that was lovingly re-created but other details of the pro-wrestling world as well. We watched Dr. Kiss challenging his opponent in an interview performed live stage right but simultaneously projected onto the screen for our televisual enjoyment. Pre-recorded commercials for 80s-sounding products like “Pizza Pizzes” and puppeteer action figures interrupted the events . At one point, we met wrestling podcasters who broke down theories about the next big match.

Amidst all of this playful homage, the existential question introduced in that early Beckettian vignette never quite disappeared. In the show’s closing act, Dr. Kiss once again made it explicit. In his dreams, he told us, he was more than an object—he was “beautiful, like a flower.” But in real life, he said, he was just a puppet made for performance, manipulated onstage and then hung backstage when the show was over “on a stand in the dark.” Wanting to break free from this prescribed destiny, Dr. Kiss issued a startling challenge: He wanted to wrestle his puppeteers.

This narratively satisfying turn brought the fight choreography to the next level, inviting delightful opportunities for Dr. Kiss to somehow trounce the very people who were bringing him to life. The whole sequence played with and emphasized the suspended disbelief of both puppetry and wrestling: We must allow ourselves to believe (in a sense, at least) both that the puppet is alive and that his wrestling moves are real. But there are limits to this imaginative leap. When Dr. Kiss ultimately defeated his puppeteer opponents and they left the stage, he was left alone, lying in the ring, the mere object that he didn’t want to be.

If this had been the ending, it would have neatly mirrored the end of Act Without Words, when the main character stops responding to the items provided to him altogether, perhaps out of despair or perhaps as a small act of autonomy in the face of a world that seeks to control him. 

But this was not where Kayfabe ended. Instead, we saw a home video on the screen dated May 30, 1990, of a little boy playing with wrestling figurines. The context of the moment suggested to the audience that this may have been Rice himself, the wrestling-enthusiast-cum-puppeteer at the heart of the show, already imaginatively bringing objects to life. As the video ended, a new, larger version of Dr. Kiss entered the stage for a triumphant final dance number. This version was a kuruma ningyō cart puppet operated by Rice alone—he sat on a small box with wheels, with his feet, head, and hand connected to the puppet’s corresponding parts. Dr. Kiss was robed in gold, fuchsia, and feathers, and wearing the championship belt. A flower was projected on the screen above.

Act Without Words I ends with a kind of futility—the man may choose to act or not to act, but he remains trapped in his circumstances at the end of the play. While Kayfabe played with that claustrophobic reality, it ultimately celebrated the expansiveness of our creative and imaginative powers. Dr. Kiss’s resurrection—as a different puppet with a different operator but bigger and better than before—put the lie to his fear that he was merely an object. Instead, he could be whatever we wanted him to be, including a flower.