Claudia Orenstein observes that the puppet must do in order to be. In this panel Alex Bird (Concerned Others), Giulia De Canio (Untold), Plexus Polaire (Dracula), and Josh Rice (Kayfabe) will address the question of how the puppet as kinetic object and the puppet as visual image work together. Moderated by Dassia N. Posner.

About the Ellen Van Volkenburg Puppetry Symposium

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.

This year’s theme is: Puppets Doing and Being. In her 2024 book, Reading the Puppet Stage: Reflections on the Dramaturgy of Performing Objects, Claudia Orenstein notes that puppets enact being alive by doing rather than through written dialogue. The 2025 Ellen Van Volkenburg Puppetry Symposium series explores the dramaturgical elements that distinguish puppet theater and actively engage audiences in endowing material with life.