Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects

Claudia Orenstein is Professor of Theatre at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. She has spent over a decade writing on contemporary and traditional puppetry in the US and Asia. Tim Cusack is an Adjunct Lecturer in Theatre at Hunter College. He was the co-founder and artistic director of Theatre Askew, an independent theatre company dedicated to the exploration of representations of queerness onstage.

Part 1 Assuming Shamanic Roles 1. Consoling the Dead: Sim U‑sŏng’s Puppet Rituals for a Modern Korea 2. Spiritualist Material Performance, Whiteness, and the Animist Other 3. Worth Her Salt: Zombification and Liberation Theology in a Puppet Film 4. The Spirituality of the Mundane Part 2 Communitas Reclaimed 5. The Thing You Can’t See: Bread and Puppet Approaches Spirituality 6. Queer Puppet Saint: Nested Intuitions 7. Talking about Lunch with Sonia: A Ritual for Departing by Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company Part 3 Faith in Secular Performance 8. "When the House Is in Ruins": Tadeusz Kantor’s Archive as Reliquary and Tabernacle for Cross‑Temporal Performing Objects 9. Children, Birds, Flowers—A Minor Musical: Performance as Prayer 10. Fabricating Tales of Spirit: A Conversation with Jill Joubert 11. Puppets and the Good News Part 4 Staging the Other World 12. Yūrei and Puppetry in Japanese Ghost Stories: (Mis)perception and Ambiguous Bodies in Kaidan 13. Bardo! by Performers sem Fronteiras: A Reflection on Immateriality in Shadow Theatre Part 5 Complex Sacrality in the Contemporary World 14. Relics, Artifacts, and Bones: Activating Migrancy’s Traces Through Performance 15. Restitution and Reawakening or Resurrection: The Return of 26 Royal Objects to Benin 16. Meat Puppets: Death, the Body, and the Museum