Orientalism on Stage: European Puppetry and the ‘Exotic’ Other

Dear Colleagues,

European puppet theatre constitutes a long and vibrant tradition in the field of animated arts. Puppet scenes have always quickly and lively reacted to political, economic and social change serving as a barometer of social moods and anxieties that tormented European societies. In terms of visual it both resisted and adapted mainstream tendencies in art and stage design. It also mirrored flaws in European taste answering to both lasting and fleeting fashions in material culture. Fascination with China, Japan, India, the Ottoman Empire, and, broadly speaking, Asian ‘Orient,’ constituted one of the numerous vogues in question which percolated taste across Europe. The question of how European culture reacted to the universe of unknown imagery is a recurring one in various fields of scholarly investigation.

This Special Issue is designed to explore Oriental influences on European puppetry. The very term ‘Oriental’ is understood here as a network of non-European, first and foremost Asian theatrical traditions and imagery which has served to shape and define European culture from the early modern period until today. We invite contributors to submit original articles, both theoretical and historical, interdisciplinary, or field-oriented, focused on the ‘orientalization’ of the European puppet scene. We do not limit our contributions with regard to any strict chronology. We are particularly interested in papers exploring archival and primary sources, both written and iconographic, and dealing with objects. The following topics of interest are suggested, however we cordially welcome other proposals as well:

• Images of non-European countries created on puppet stages,
• Stereotypes of Europeans and non-Europeans embodied by puppet characters,
• Oriental motifs/threads in puppet plays’ plots,
• Iconography of Oriental puppet plays: how the exotic other was created in stage design and costumes,
• Oriental attire as an instrument to criticize the foibles of Western societies,
• Relations between exoticism in art (i.e., chinoiserie, turquerie) and puppet stage design,
• Asian puppet theatre traditions on European stages – (re)interpretations of karagöz, Chinese shadows, wayang, bunraku, kathputli, etc.,
• Asian politics, histories, realities, and societies (re)created on puppet stages,
• Political background of the presence of oriental motives in European puppetry,
• Oriental issues in the puppetry in USSR and Eastern Bloc countries,
• Asian puppet theatre forms performed/adapted by European troupes,
• Asian puppet plays and theatres as depicted and described by Europeans,
• Asian puppets in European collections.

Dr. Kamil Kopania
Dr. Izabela Kopania
Guest Editors

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• puppetry
• puppets
• Asian ‘Orient’
• orientalism
• Japanism
• chinoiserie
• puppet stage design
• iconography of puppet shows
• images of Asia in puppet theatre