Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 10:59:53 -0500
From: wylli-AT-metrolink.net (Wyll Irvin)
Subject: Didactic Puppetry


I'll throw in my two cents. Coming from the slant of Education Psychology I
will leave Peckham's theories to someone else. Using puppets is an
effective way to teach. Many in our world are visual learners and when you
use and audio visual approach such as puppetry the learning is greatly
enhanced.
Is religious puppetry art? That depends. The Church has produced the
heights and the depths in art (I now refer to visual arts and music). When
the Christians do it good, it is good! No one will argue that Handel's
Messiah or ceiling of the Sistine (?) chapel is not art. I beleive high
quality puppetry is art as well irregardless of whether the performer is
performng for art's sake or to communicate a message. Didactic puppetry can
be art in My Humble Opinion.
Rev. Wyll Irvin
The JoyBringers

responding to:
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 10:39:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com>
To: puptcrit-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: didactic puppetry
Sender: owner-puptcrit-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: puptcrit-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU

Bill Elston, a while ago, raised the question of whether educational puppetry
-- for instance, puppetry in the service of Christian ministry -- was art.
Well, it's not like I have any useful thoughts on this, but I am very
interested in the topic of didacticism in art, and so I hate to see this
thread die prematurely. On the one hand, it certainly cannot be claimed
that art and its use for didactic purposes, or art and being in the service
of the Church, where at odds with each other in the past.  But it is also
true that there is something about these notions of "didactic use" and
"being in the service of an institution" that we have become much more
doubtful about.  I was reading an old (1966) article by Morse Peckham,
"Art and Disorder", in which he proposes that art has a biological purpose,
and that this purpose is to train humans to deal with cognitive tension.
Now I am very taken by this, mainly because it is such a charmingly blatant
biologization (?) of an avant-gardist sensibility.  Now one can say that
if one pursues Peckham's proposal, then all art is didactic.  On the other
hand, it is only _art_, by his standards, if it does something beyond, or
different from, imparting information or imparting a view -- unless this
information/view is likely to engeneder cognitive tension in the audience.
I am not necessarily declaring agreement with any of this, just trying
to re-stir the water.


-malgosia


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