NANCY STAUB PUBLICATIONS AWARD 2022

2022 Nancy Staub Awards

Out of the Shadows: The Henson Festivals and their impact on Contemporary Puppet Theater is wonderfully designed book with stunning photos which shares strategies that brought exemplary puppet festivals to New York in the 1990s. These events opened American eyes and minds to the breadth of puppetry arts The publication discusses presenting 136 different productions from 31 countries in 24 theaters as seen by more than 120,000 people. By scaffolding on Jim Henson’s commitment to advancing puppetry in the U. S., Cheryl Henson, Leslee Asch, and their team encouraged an end-of-the century wave of puppet performances that helped raise the status of puppetry as a 21st century art form. This book documents their accomplishments from the inside.

Puppetry in Theatre and Arts Education: Head, Hands and Heart is an excellent workbook that provides strategies, techniques and activities for integrating the puppetry arts into  K through 12 curriculum—a comprehensive pedagogical tool geared to the needs of educators. It shows puppetry arts can fulfill the Educational Standards for Theatre based on the California Visual and Performing Arts Framework (and comparable standards are found in every state in the U. S). The work makes a compelling argument for puppetry arts in educational curricula, while also focusing on the importance of assessment of student achievement.

Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing The Age of Animation from Taiwan contributes to the theory and history of animated objects, especially in Taiwan, by asserting that we are entering an age of animation. The book supports this contention by analyzing a variety of popular contemporary practices and gives an anthropological perspective on the emerging global culture of fandom. It shows the traditional importance of puppetry in Taiwanese culture, noting its segue into TV, mass media, and Taiwanese and global fandom. The work gives readers understanding of how puppetry and animation, past and present, have played out on the island, contributing to contemporary cultural studies.

This interactive eBook, Underground Railway Theater: Engine of Delight and Social Change, is a powerful account of Underground Railway Theater’s (URT) years of devising, performing, and touring politically charged theatre works, and URT’s transformation into a respected arts organization in Cambridge Massachusetts. It is an excellent resource for companies interested in addressing issues related to social struggle and wishing to integrate music and puppetry. Using digital strategies, the work allows readers to watch clips as they explore URT’s artistic growth and political worldview. Hence, this book is a treasure trove of information not only about URT, but also about theatre for social change in the last third of the 20th century, the process of creation, and the grit required to survive as a non-profit arts organization.

Women and Puppetry: Critical and Historical Investigations is a co-edited volume which takes strides in documenting object theatre's performance history generally, even as it interrogates puppetry’s gender issues, past and present. Editors and authors discuss both how the female body/voice is made visible (performed by a manipulator of any gender) and occluded (noting puppets may allow women, otherwise excluded from public display, to perform). The book succeeds in pointing out the challenges and triumphs of women in the art. The fifteen articles take us into diverse theoretical, historical, and cultural milieus and allow us to hear directly from many major female puppeteers. This thought-provoking volume promotes a future that is welcoming for female practitioners of the puppetry arts.