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Paul McPharlin is one of the 20th century's most important contributors to the art of puppetry. Over a period of nine years he created some 20 productions with marionettes, rod puppets, hand puppets and shadow figures. He was also a prolific writer whose technical, theoretical and historical works contributed significantly to a puppetry revival. His book The Puppet Theatre in America is considered the definitive history of American puppetry. Though shy and aloof, McPharlin was also energetic. He had an ability to bring people together and used this knack to found a national puppetry organization, Puppeteers of America. Besides the author's extensive research on McPharlin and puppetry, the book draws on significant contributions from McPharlin's wife, puppeteer and author Marjorie Batchelder McPharlin, who allowed the use of her 18-year correspondence with Paul in the creation of the book. Chapters take the reader through McPharlin's childhood as a loner in Detroit, his maturation and education in New York, and his early, erratic and often unsuccessful attempts at making a living. His puppeteering years, 1929 to 1937, are detailed, as are the later years that saw him first working for the WPA and then being drafted into the army to serve in World War II at age 38. He continued making important contributions to the art of puppetry until a brain tumor took his life at age 45 in 1948. Appendices present two of McPharlin's plays, The Barn at Bethlehem: A Christmas Play and Punch's Circus. Another appendix details puppetry imprints, including yearbooks, plays, handbooks, worksheets and books. A fourth lists Paul McPharlin's Puppeteers, members of the Marionette Fellowship of Detroit.
In this fascinating and colorful book, researcher and performer John McCormick focuses on the marionette world of Victorian Britain between its heyday after 1860 and its waning years from 1895 to 1914. Situating the rich and diverse puppet theatre in the context of entertainment culture, he explores both the aesthetics of these dancing dolls and their sociocultural significance in their life and time. The history of marionette performances is interwoven with live-actor performances and with the entire gamut of annual fairs, portable and permanent theatres, music halls, magic lantern shows, waxworks, panoramas, and sideshows. McCormick has drawn upon advertisements in the Era, an entertainment paper, between the 1860s and World War I, and articles in the World’s Fair, a paper for showpeople, in the first fifty years of the twentieth century, as well as interviews with descendants of the marionette showpeople and close examinations of many of the surviving puppets. McCormick begins his study with an exploration of the Victorian marionette theatre in the context of other theatrical events of the day, with proprietors and puppeteers, and with the venues where they performed. He further examines the marionette’s position as an actor not quite human but imitating humans closely enough to be considered empathetic; the ways that physical attributes were created with wood, paint, and cloth; and the dramas and melodramas that the dolls performed. A discussion of the trick figures and specialized acts that each company possessed, as well as an exploration of the theatre’s staging, lighting, and costuming, follows in later chapters. McCormick concludes with a description of the last days of marionette theatre in the wake of changing audience expectations and the increasing popularity of moving pictures. This highly enjoyable and readable study, often illuminated by intriguing anecdotes such as that of the Armenian photographer who fell in love with and abducted the Holden company’s Cinderella marionette in 1881, will appeal to everyone fascinated by the magic of nineteenth-century theatre, many of whom will discover how much the marionette could contribute to that magic.
Donald Keene combines informative works on two forms of classical Japanese theater into a single volume. The No text looks at all aspects of this traditional theater form including its history, its stage and props, the use of music and dance in its performances, the plays as literature, and the aesthetics of No. Also discussed are Kyogen, the comic farces that are typically interspersed with the solemn No dramas.