In his essay on puppetry and authorship, Handspring’s Basil Jones proposed that the puppet and the puppeteer are engaged in two simultaneous performances: that of the story of the production, and that of the puppet’s life (2010). I suggest that the puppeteer is engaged in an additional task of manipulation when performing with a puppet: they are charged with guiding the cognitive processes of the audience. This lecture explores the complexity of the puppeteers’ task by applying insights from cognitive sciences to how we perceive a puppetry show, and, in doing so, it expands the horizons of our modes of inquiry. I examine this idea by exploring the role of the puppeteers in Shank’s Mare, a collaboration of master puppeteers Tom Lee and Koryu Nishikawa V. Through their praxis, the puppeteers have acquired a deeper awareness and understanding of how the minds and bodies of their spectators work. They apply strategies to direct (and misdirect) attention, to imitate biological motion, and to activate the spectators’ emotional embodied engagement. I use empirical methods from cognitive sciences to analyse the devices that the puppeteers utilize to guide the audience. The analysis demonstrates the depth of understanding these artists possess, as well as the complexity of spectatorship of the puppet theatre that is only partially captured when audiences recount their experiences. I focus on Shank’s Mare as an example of the intricacy of the puppeteers’ task as they go beyond their foundational role of giving the puppet life to shape the relationship that the audience builds with the puppet both as an object and as a character. The dynamic shifts of perception generated by the puppeteers invite spectators at times to immerse themselves in the performance, and at times to reconnect with their actuality, creating sophisticated multi-layered engagements.
Ana Díaz Barriga is a puppetry practitioner and scholar, and a doctoral candidate of the interdisciplinary programme of Theatre and Drama at the Northwestern University. She is the recipient of a Cognitive Science Advanced Research Fellowship and a Mellon Cluster Fellowship in Science Studies. Her research focuses on what the minds and bodies of puppetry audiences can tell us about the ways we make sense of a contemporary puppet performance by using methods from both cognitive sciences and theatre studies. Ana has an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. As a theatre practitioner, she has performed at various festivals including the Edinburgh Free Fringe (UK) and Sprint Festival (UK). She has been trained in puppetry by PIP (CZ), Yael Rasooly (IL), Improbable (UK), and Gyre & Gymble (UK), among others. She is a co-founder of Beyond the Wall, for which she built giant puppets at the US/Mexico border and at the 2019 edition of the Prague Quadrennial.