For more than 150 years, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has been a leader in educating the world’s most influential artists, designers​, and scholars. Located in downtown Chicago with a fine arts graduate program ranked number two in the nation by U.S. News and World Report, SAIC provides an interdisciplinary approach to art and design as well as world-class resources, including the Art Institute of Chicago museum, on-campus galleries​, and state-of-the-art facilities. SAIC’s undergraduate, graduate​, and post-baccalaureate students have the freedom to take risks and create the bold ideas that transform Chicago and the world—as seen through notable alumni and faculty such as Michelle Grabner, David Sedaris, Elizabeth Murray, Richard Hunt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cynthia Rowley, Nick Cave, Jeff Koons, and LeRoy Neiman. saic.edu

Ellen Van Volkenburg’s “Disarrangement” of A Midsummer Night’s Dream  
By Marissa Fenley, Ph.D. student in English and Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago
This talk surveys Chicago puppeteer Ellen Van Volkenburg’s process of fabricating and manipulating the marionettes in her production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1916. I detail how this process led to the creation of a “superficial” cast of character that directly contradicted the modernist, masculinist, ethos of the time.    

A Shift in Mindset: From Mastery to Material Listening
By Dr. Skye Strauss, puppetry practitioner and scholar, PhD from the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama, Northwestern University
In the performing arts, “raw” materials are often seen as incomplete, en route to a finished puppet, costume, prop, or set piece.  What if, instead, the material itself were taken as a source of inspiration during the creative process?  This presentation illuminates how the relationship between artist and material changes and generates new performance vocabulary when one shifts from a relationship based on hierarchy and control to one based on hybridity and cooperation.

What Makes an Object Scared? Or Black Functionality Through Objects
By Kezia Waters, interdisciplinary/ Performing Artist, MFA Candidate in Studio Art / Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Bridging the gap between old, traditional African American practices and contemporary performance with objects, this presentation investigates the Ashe or Spirit of an Object, witnessing an object’s breath, and allowing yourself to be moved by it. 

What is AroundBy Jess Bass, Art Director/ Creative Director/ Designer, MFA candidate in the Sculpture Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
In this lecture demonstration, I present several recent artworks made from materials such as paper-mache, silly putty, and balloons. I speak to how I use play as both a process and aesthetic, anthropomorphizing everyday and discarded materials to build mimetic and uncanny performances and installations.

Where You Look versus What You See: A Cognitive Approach to Puppetry Spectatorship
By Ana Díaz Barriga, Puppetry Practitioner and Scholar, Doctoral Candidate in the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama at Northwestern University
Puppeteers are masters of perception. Through their sustained praxis, they have acquired a deep awareness and understanding of how the minds and bodies of spectators work. By using the methods of cognitive science to examine what the audience’s gaze patterns reveal about their attention and awareness of the puppeteer, I explore how behavioral data provide new perspectives on how viewers make meaning in puppet theater—and what this reveals about the sophisticated work of the puppeteer.