Exciting news from the editors!

It’s true – we’re doing something new! Puppetry International is combining forces with the Puppetry Journal for a One-Two punch of puppet pleasure.  How will this work? When your publication arrives in the mail next April, in the envelope will be not only issue #49 of Puppetry International, but the winter edition of the Puppetry Journal. Both magazines will focus on the topic of “Puppet Collections and Collectors.” This is another example of the good things that can happen when UNIMA-USA and the Puppeteers of America work together.

PI will have articles on puppet museums in Germany, Indonesia, Japan, and Korea, as well as a piece on the creation of a groundbreaking virtual exhibit in Canada and our own Nancy Staub’s reflections on how the Global Collection has been assembled at the Center for Puppetry Arts. Did you know that one of the world’s great collections of Indonesian wayang puppets is at Yale University? It has become an important research hub not only for scholars from the US, but for Indonesian academics as well.

Many of the great puppet museums around the world actually began as private collections, often as an outgrowth of a single puppeteer or small puppet troupe. More and more, though we find puppeteers arriving at the age of retirement thinking: What will become of my puppets? Is there a museum that will preserve them for posterity? Of course, not all puppeteers think this way, and we have an article on Michael Sommers, director of the Minneapolis theater “Open Eye” deciding to heap his puppets on a bonfire rather than have them hang on a museum wall somewhere, apart from the performances for which they were made.

The Puppetry Journal will focus more on puppet collection in the United States, but I’ll let its editor Steve Abrams say a few words about that.

 It feels like a particularly productive puppet pleasure to coordinate on the topic of collections. More than 60 museums in the United States have a few, or many puppet in their collections. Working puppet theatres and private collectors have thousands of puppets. Puppetry Journal can only cover a handful in a single issue. Eight of the many Smithsonian museums have puppets! More and more museums are posting digital photographs of their puppets, objects frequently packed away in storage. An online view provides a splendid opportunity to survey a collection. We hope to help readers find some hidden treasures.

Andrew Periale for Puppetry International
Steve Abrams for the Puppetry Journal