Making Meaning in Puppetry Materials, Practice, Perception
Making Meaning in Puppetry Materials, Practice, Perception by Dassia N. Posner is a comprehensive exploration of how puppets convey meaning in performance. Published by Routledge, Chapman & Hall, Incorporated on July 10, 2025, this 304-page edition is presented in English. The book delves into the intricate processes involved in puppetry, examining the selection of materials, the collaboration between puppets and puppeteers, and the spectators’ interpretations of puppet productions.
Readers will find a structured analysis divided into three parts: Materiality, Performance, and Perception. Each section builds a vocabulary for understanding the complex systems through which puppets communicate. The seventeen chapters feature contributions from experts in various fields, linking puppetry to disciplines such as robotics and cognitive science. This volume serves as a resource for students of theatre and performance studies, theatre artists, and anyone interested in deepening their understanding of this unique art form.
Official synopsis Publisher
From ice puppets to robots, from intricate marionettes to abstract forms, Making Meaning in Puppetry investigates the elusive and multifaceted how of how puppets make meaning in performance.
This engaging collection develops a vocabulary for understanding and articulating how the puppet’s meaning-making systems work across the book’s three distinct parts. Part 1 on Materiality illuminates how materials are chosen and dramaturgy is crafted into a puppet’s design; Part 2 on Performance investigates the interresponsive collaboration between puppet and puppeteer; and Part 3 on Perception considers how spectators understand and read a puppet production. The volume thus traces the full evolution of a puppet, from its raw materials, to its performance possibilities, to the moment it comes to imagined life. The seventeen chapters, authored by experts in the field, build bridges between puppetry and related fields, such as robotics, phenomenology, cognitive science, and queer theory, while using the puppet as their primary anchor of analysis.
Making Meaning in Puppetry is ideal for students of theatre and performance studies, theatre artists, scholars, and anyone who is fascinated by this rich performance form and wants to understand it more deeply.
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