From: Bdfisler-AT-aol.com Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2008 22:27:52 EST To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] 19th C marionette minstrel shows To add to Alan's thoughtful comments on a difficult subject: Professional marionette minstrel shows are primarily an 18th century phenomenon, but the influence of the William John Bullock/Lambert D'Arc Royal Marionettes continued in amateur and regional production for decades. Among the more notable pieces were those that occurred as part of the Federal Theatre Project's marionette units, such as the Jubilee Singers. The question as to what is truly a representation of the classic minstrel show (or indeed, what should be ... given the sociocultural consequences of such activity in the 21st century) is a complex one, dependent on looking at the wider field of racial and faux-racial representation. My dissertation, The Phenomenology of Racialism: Blackface Puppetry in American Theatre, 1872-1939 attempts to engage these issues and catalogs both minstrel shows and minstrel show offshoots, as well as the many, many, many puppet productions that show the influence of minstrelsy in the faux-black marionette (or other puppet form) construct. _https://drum.umd.edu/dspace /bitstream/1903/2464/1/umi-umd-2332.pdf_ (https://drum.umd.edu/dspace/bitstream/1903/2464/1/umi-umd-2332.pdf) I realize my contribution can only make finding what you are looking for even harder, but if you look at some of the documents in the dissertation, you may find some leads. At the very least, it confirms that there are still marionette minstrels in existence. Daniel Meader's are at the DIA and the FTP objects, I'm not sure where they are now, but they are out there. Yours, Ben In a message dated 2/5/2008 6:25:52 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, alangregorycook-AT-msn.com writes: To Christine Klepper at Smithsonian's Museum of American History.: CC: to puptctit--with the hope that others can provide Christine Klepper with more information. Dear Christine Klepper, Steve Abrams forwarded your request for information about puppet versions of minstrel shows, along with his answer. I think his excellent response covers what we generally know, but I'd echo his suggestion to read Puppet Theatre in America by Paul McPharlin, since McPharlin covers the complications resulting from the use of the name "Royal" by more than one company. This was when puppets travelled long routes to reach audiences. A certain amount of ballyhoo went with the territory. That also occured with standard vaudeville acts. P T Barnham was famous for stretching the truth, but he was not the first in entertainment to do so. Steve thought I might have some minstrel puppets in my collection of over 4,000 puppets from around the world, but I can't think of any. The oldest American puppets I have date 1860-1900. Detroit Institute of Arts has some wonderful older pieces preserved by Paul McPharlin. John Bell makes an excellent suggestion to contact Latty Baranski at DIA. I do have black marionettes from 1910-30 by Mantell Manikins---A black dance couple from 1910 might by a stretch be considered Minstrel figures, but I think Len Ayres who headed the Mantell troupe thought of them as a standard dance act which was common to later vaudeville marionette shows, along wih an opera singer, a piano player, a horserace scene (the Mantell version of which included some black characters along with Sparkplug the horse from the Sunday funny papers). My impression is that puppet versions of minstrel shows were more common before 1900. The puppet stage tends to reflect the prevalent culture at large---one of the reasons I love puppetry is that it encapsulates the world in a smaller format. So in a marionette version it WOULD try to duplicate the larger minstrel show. When I was a kid in summer camp, how-to books often had scripts of minstrel shows which could be performed (without puppets) by campers ---but it struck me at the time as old-fashioned and a bit hard to relate to. Gary Jones, a puppeteer of African ancestry from Chicago, now in Los Angeles, did a show I saw in Chicago, with a plantation setting. The old white man & his wife who owned the plantation were seated, surrounded by others, to see sort of entertainment by various black puppets. Some members of the black community in Chicago liked it and some did not. Those were touchy times for puppeteers, when "political correctness" seemed to change every five minutes. At that time, a white puppeteer would not have dreamed of doing such a show. In that period, I knew white puppeteers who stopped using black marionettes altogether for fear of offending anyone, or else repainted them white. Finally, Sid Krofft in the early 1960s created a miniature Las Vegas type show for grownups with puppets, both black & white, and helped bring political sanity back to the puppet stage. After leaving Chicago, Gary Jones abandoned his large shows with several puppeteers, for solo turns with his large rod puppets, most of whom were black characters. You can contact Gary Jones at Blackstreet Theater, 4619 West Washington Blvd., Los Angeles 90016-1727 (213) 936-6091 He could be a helpful source re: current views of minstrel shows. He may have a contact for Schroeder Cherry who used to work with him, who also used black puppet characters before moving into a different field. I realize this is not a direct connection with 19th Century puppet minstrel shows, but I feel both puppeteers could help put the subject into a contemporary context. ALAN COOK Curator Conservatory of Puppetry Arts, Pasadena CA www.COPA-puppets.org **************Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) _______________________________________________ List address: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org Admin interface: http://lists.puptcrit.org/mailman/listinfo/puptcrit Archives: http://www.driftline.org
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