Save the Dates for the Next Festival: January 18-28, 2024

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The School of the Art Institute Performance Dept. & Chicago Puppet Fest present:

Online Symposium: Race & Representation in Puppetry

January 29, 2022

Moderator:
Dr. Paulette Richards, Puppet Artist and Independent Researcher

Panelists:
Torry Bend, Associate Professor of Theater Studies, Duke University, Creator, Dreaming
Ty Defoe, Creator, Skeleton Canoe
Margaret Laurena Kemp, Professor of Theater and Dance University of California, Davis Creator, The Bluest Eye
JaMeeka Holloway, Adaptation and Associate Director, Dreaming

The Ellen van Volkenburg Puppetry Symposium brings together practicing Festival artists with scholars to consider the intersection of puppetry with other disciplines and ideas. Before 1912, the year the Little Theater of Chicago was founded in the historic Fine Arts Building, the term “puppeteer” did not even exist. Little Theater director Ellen van Volkenburg needed a program credit for the actors she had trained to manipulate marionettes while speaking the text of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and she coined the word “puppeteer.” That marked the dawn of the movement that has brought us to the rich art form now practiced around the world. In van Volkenburg’s honor, the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival presents four discussions featuring festival artists and key topics from the works presented in the Festival.

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