The Passion of the Puppet: Exploring the Chicago Puppetry Renaissance
- Synergy Magazine
- Jan 23
- 6 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
By Heather Marie Higgins | Photos by Heather Marie Higgins
Out of the corner of my eye, I see what I think is a crouching fox — though maybe it's too big to be one. An ancient survival instinct senses a potential threat and fills my body in a subtle unease. Approaching the animal, I can see that it has three glassy eyes, and sticking out of its stomach are human legs clad in jeans and leather boots.
This fantastical creature, which I encountered in the Chicago Cultural Center, is not a fox, but a puppet titled Ophelia by artist Emilie Wingate. The head of the animal is constructed on a bike helmet, with wrist guards and high heels making up the arms
It is currently featured in the exhibition Potential Energy, Chicago Puppets up Close, which will run until April 6. This exhibition accompanies the Chicago International Puppet and Theatre Festival, which hosts productions by puppetry groups from around the globe. This festival and the swirl of creative collaboration that accompanies it have helped make Chicago a fluorescent cultural hub of puppeteering.
The puppetry scene in this city is flourishing, constantly bubbling with a zany energetic creativity. I would even go so far as to say that we are living through a renaissance of the puppet. These ancient modes of storytelling ring with new life and purpose in our current cultural landscape. Puppetry returns us to a time before screens and algorithms came to dominate so much of our lives. There is only a person, an object and a story—it is up to the audience to be alert to the magic.
Puppetry, like art of any form, is kept alive by a constant grind, fueled by passion and a deep, irrepressible urge to express oneself.
“I love working in puppets so much. I wouldn't trade it for anything, even though it is a hustle and it is a lot of work, I do it because I love it,” said Abby Palen, a Chicago based artist and puppeteer. “There are also a lot of artists I've met living in Chicago that have made this their career and don’t do anything else. Which is why I stay in Chicago, because I know that it is possible here and because it's just a matter of time before things get easier.”
It is a serious misfortune that puppetry as an art form goes overlooked by much of the modern viewing public. At times whimsical and childlike and at others dramatic and self serious, shows often dance across the emotional spectrum.
“Performing through puppetry allows the audience to place their own emotions onto that puppet,” said Rachel Hartman, a puppeteer that works with the Chicago International Puppet and Theatre Festival and along with Palen forms part of the group Rabbit Foot Puppetry. “It's odd to say it gives more life to a performance but I think puppetry is a way to focus on topics that would be harder to show if it was just human actors. There is a lot of play in puppetry and I think it’s almost more human than going on stage as yourself.”
Puppeteers often have a story of the first time they discovered puppets, in the same vein as someone might describe meeting their spouse or trying an addictive substance. Whether it was a class they took in art school or a coincidental introduction, once they are hooked on puppets there is no getting away.
The worlds of theatre and puppetry are inextricably linked, with many practitioners having a foot in both. When having conversations with puppeteers another pattern quickly emerges, the actor to puppeteer pipeline. Because its focus is an object removed from the self, it can be a kind of sanctuary for artists from the particular pressures of acting.
Dan Kerr Hobert, a teacher and performer who works with The Neo-futurists, a Chicago based puppeteering group, studied acting in college and soon became disillusioned with the process of auditioning. “Entering the performance auditioning world is about what your type is and things like that. None of that is coming into this stuff, your self gets to be this other, it's like an escape hatch,” he said.
This is a unique capacity of puppetry, allowing artists to perform, but not be the object of a performance. Being able to de-center oneself in such a way allows some performers, like Kerr Hobert, to feel a renewed sense of agency over their work.
“People can be politicized just by existing, whereas a puppet can be removed from that and become more of a symbol or an icon, an everyman,” said Palen.
In our contemporary cultural landscape, earnestness can seem to be in short supply, but in this case it is an absolute necessity. It is really difficult to be cynical at a puppet show, even a slight hint of the sardonic is enough to taint the experience. To truly and properly engage with a puppet show one must be ready to surrender, give oneself over to absurdity.
“Puppetry is collective illusion because the puppeteer’s job is to put forth as much effort to make this thing come alive and the audience’s job is to come to the puppet show prepared to believe and imagine that it is alive,” said Anthony Sellitto-Budney a puppeteer, clown, and founder of Break Fast Puppets.
Puppetry has a long history of association with protest movements, as exemplified by another puppet by an anonymous artist featured in the Chicago Cultural Center exhibit. Entitled “US-Israel War Machine,” it was originally created in conjunction with a protest calling for a cease fire and arms embargo at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. It is a towering spectacle puppet which features the faces of Benjamin Netenyahu and Uncle Sam, its large cardboard hands hold an overflowing bucket of tears and a MK-84 bomb. Along the base are written phrases like, “don’t look away,” “how many more,” “children killers” and “murderers.” The massive puppet is intended to act not only as a symbol of protest, but as a potential shield for protestors.
On January 22nd, a majority of the aldermen comprising the city council signed a letter to mayor Brandon Johnson asking that the artwork be removed from the exhibition. The letter claims that the artwork “crosses into unprotected hate speech.” Deborah Silverstein, the council’s lone Jewish member, condemned the artwork as “antisemitic” and “anti-American,” according to the Chicago Tribune.
The commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Clinée Hedspeth, has made concessions, according to Silverstein. The commissioner has agreed to place a sensitive content warning to the exhibition, remove the title “US-Israel War Machine,” and remove a death count included in the artwork, according to the Chicago Tribune. This move has sparked significant controversy, with many seeing it as an act of un-democratic censorship. Conversations of speech, protest and the right to critique have been opened up, turning this puppet into an emblem of larger issues in our contentious political culture.
In 2014 Lizzie Briet traveled with Manual Cinema, a Chicago performing arts and puppetry organization, to an international puppetry festival in Tehran, Iran.
“Puppetry is a really big thing in Iran, it’s obviously an ancient artform which has been happening there for millennia. But also because the laws in Iran are so strict there’s a lot of things that humans can’t do, in real life or in theatre. For example, it is illegal to dance in Iran in public, and it is illegal for men and women to touch each other in public, and that is true in theater as well. But puppets can do whatever they want, so it becomes this kind of language and this way to express things that humans are not technically able to,” Breit said.
Because puppetry is so universal, it opens doors to bridge cultural gaps which might otherwise hinder understanding. Breit explained that Manual Cinema’s dialogue-less shadow puppet work allowed them to form a connection across a language barrier and across a border that felt impenetrable.
“Until we went there and realized we have this common language, and that language is puppetry and storytelling,” Breit said.
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