UNIMA-USA is starting a new publication!

In addition to PI, we are initiating Puppetry International Research (PIR) Review, which will be devoted entirely to peer-reviewed research on puppetry topics. Eventually, we foresee this as an online annual publication, but, for the next two issues of PI, we will feature a cluster of new research articles in the latter portion of the magazine, so you can get a taste of the riches to come.

Puppetry International first began publishing exciting and accessible peer-reviewed scholarship in 2007, when John Bell became PI’s first Peer Review Editor. Since John’s initial three-year term, Dassia N. Posner, the current Peer Review Editor, has served in this role for eight years and Dawn Tracey Brandes for three. In that time, puppetry scholarship has grown significantly—not only in the form of dozens of articles published in PI, but also in the context of exciting new books, conferences and festivals, and other settings in which sophisticated dialogue about puppetry has expanded into new spheres in new ways.

Once PIR Review is launched, we will continue our tradition of publishing short academic pieces in PI––but now there will also be a dedicated home for more in-depth research by the growing number of scholar-puppeteers in the field. We hope this new venture brings you a richer understanding of the world of puppetry and its history.

In the meantime, we invite you to immerse yourselves in the three pieces featured in this issue, which together illustrate the far-ranging topics and perspectives characteristic of puppetry scholarship today: Alicia Hernàndez-Grande’s essay, “Laughing at Violence: A Puppet-centric Revisiting of Mori el Merma, by Joan Miró and La Claca,” illuminates the significance of a pioneering Catalan puppet adaptation of Ubu Roi in the political, cultural and artistic context of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in Spain. “Puppetry in the Age of Posthumanism: The Terrors and Pleasures of Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” by Kelly I. Aliano, muses on the timely, reassuring pleasure of puppeteering video-game avatars during the pandemic. And finally, Poupak Azimpour Tabrizi, in “Dolls and Beyond Dolls: The Cultural Function of Dolls in Iranian Folk Beliefs,” reveals the astonishing range of traditional dolls in Iranian folk culture in the context of human belief in the life and spiritual power of inanimate objects.

Enjoy!

– Andrew Periale (Pi editor) and Dassia N. Posner (Pi Peer review editor)