So, who were the earliest puppeteers?
I am working on a paper where this bit of info would come in really handy, and little to no information really exists. A mention here, a mention there. Connect the dots yourself, and either come up with a Truth or a big fat ball of Supposition.
It's pretty apparent that puppeteers were mostly itinerant. Of course, there are the exceptions: the monks and priests that used puppets to tell religious stories, families groups competing in mua roi nuoc, those touched by the spirits in the Seneca Nation, to name a few.
But why didn't we organize earlier the way that actors did? The first professional acting company was in 1430. One hundred years later, drama was an institutionalized part of a student's education. Admittedly, I am skipping over some serious theatre setbacks (for example, the Puritan Revolution), but still...In 3 years, it will be the 100th anniversary of the theatre degree in the United States.
Were we solitary by nature, solitary by craft, or were we just bad organizers?
Many of us still live rather itinerant lives. Perhaps we don't cross the land in wagons (though some of us do - in trucks), but most of us do live lives of loading up cars with puppets, theatres, sound/lighting equipment, unloading, performing, reloading and unpacking...over and over and over again. Are we that much different? How would puppetry have evolved if puppeteers had created guilds and performing companies early on, instilling puppetry as a classic art?
I am working on a paper where this bit of info would come in really handy, and little to no information really exists. A mention here, a mention there. Connect the dots yourself, and either come up with a Truth or a big fat ball of Supposition.
It's pretty apparent that puppeteers were mostly itinerant. Of course, there are the exceptions: the monks and priests that used puppets to tell religious stories, families groups competing in mua roi nuoc, those touched by the spirits in the Seneca Nation, to name a few.
But why didn't we organize earlier the way that actors did? The first professional acting company was in 1430. One hundred years later, drama was an institutionalized part of a student's education. Admittedly, I am skipping over some serious theatre setbacks (for example, the Puritan Revolution), but still...In 3 years, it will be the 100th anniversary of the theatre degree in the United States.
Were we solitary by nature, solitary by craft, or were we just bad organizers?
Many of us still live rather itinerant lives. Perhaps we don't cross the land in wagons (though some of us do - in trucks), but most of us do live lives of loading up cars with puppets, theatres, sound/lighting equipment, unloading, performing, reloading and unpacking...over and over and over again. Are we that much different? How would puppetry have evolved if puppeteers had created guilds and performing companies early on, instilling puppetry as a classic art?
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