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Puppets Are Serious Business

Connecticut Public Radio | By Colin McEnroe
Published March 29, 2011 at 12:54 PM EDT
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http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Commodore%20Skahill/Colin%20McEnroe%20Show%2003-29-2011.mp3

Before we begin, Clarence, the WNPR puppet, would like to address the New Britain puppet thieves.

You probably think an International Puppetry Conference at UConn -- there is one this weekend -- would be full of cute stuff, right?

Let me share some of the presentation topics:

  • “Metaphor and Hierarchy in Burmese Puppetry"
  • “Stillness and Fracture/Making Space for Disaster—Puppetry & Genocide"
  • "What a Piece of Work is Punch: Distortion of Appearance and Palatability of Distorted Behavior in Puppets”
  • "Death to Life!: A Phenomenological and Cognitive Look at Performance Perception”

The presenters are from Finland, Brazil, Japan, Algeria.

The topics are even broader in scope than the few I've sampled. Everything we as humans look at -- life, death, sex, science, philosophy -- are also being looked at by puppets.

And although we may think of puppetry and kind of a self-limiting field, the conference suggests the opposite. Puppets can tackle subjects we humans fear.

Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us @wnprcolin.
Colin McEnroe
Colin McEnroe is a radio host, newspaper columnist, magazine writer, author, playwright, lecturer, moderator, college instructor and occasional singer. Colin can be reached at colin@ctpublic.org.
See stories by Colin McEnroe

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Federal funding is gone.

Congress has eliminated all funding for public media.

That means $2.1 million per year that Connecticut Public relied on to deliver you news, information, and entertainment programs you enjoyed is gone.

The future of public media is in your hands.

All donations are appreciated, but we ask in this moment you consider starting a monthly gift as a Sustainer to help replace what’s been lost.

Donate