2026 Nancy Staub Publications Awards

BOOKS, JOURNAL ISSUES

Dassia N. Posner, Claudia Orenstein, and Alissa Mello, eds.
Making Meaning in Puppetry: Materials, Practice, Perception
London & New York: Routledge Press, 2026

— An extraordinary contribution to understanding and analyzing the contemporary fascination with puppetry, robots and AI and their interrelationship.
— Authors and editors did the work!
— This book is certain to become a standard text for those scholars considering the totality of what we know as “puppetry”. . Authors are (or have been) practitioners as well; their analyses are not merely intellectual exercises, but live in their muscles and bones.

Chad Williams
Puppet Slam!: History & How-To

—A how-to book both for those who want to participate in and those who want to put on puppet slams. It chronicles the growth and current state of this rich performance practice while honoring the many people across the country (sometimes across the globe) who have made Puppet slams vibrant, welcoming events.
—A fantastic book: it is definitely one that I would add to my own library and one that I would recommend to students”.
—A remarkable all-in-one resource, providing both historical and regional contexts along with practical advice for those wishing to create their own slams.

ARTICLES

Jo Ann Cavallo
“The Resilience of Sicilian Puppet Theater: Present and Future.”
Athenaeum Review 11 (spring 2025): 87-99

—This was an excellent survey of the performance adaptations made necessary by both the tastes of contemporary audiences and the Covid period.
—This is an article that, in my opinion, every researcher in the field AND puppeteer should read.
—I love writing that brings to life a rich tradition

Ben Fisler
"Ralph Chessé and Forman Brown: When Carving the Other is Carving the Self"
in Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects
John Bell, Matthew Isaac Cohen, and Jungmin Song, eds (2023)

—A clear and concise explanation of why Forman Brown and Ralph Chessé became puppeteers! Puppetry gave many of us artistic freedom of expression not limited to society's expectations.
—The essay made me want to know more. I thought the subject was fascinating.”
—It includes some important archival research . . . . It also adds Fisler's interesting phenomenological insights on otherness and identity.”

Mina Kyounghye Kwon
“Three Notable Puppeteers of Traditional Korean Puppetry and Beyond”
Puppetry International 57 Spotlight Korea, Spring/Summer 2025

—This beautifully insightful piece grows from relationships the author built with leading puppeteers active in performing heritage traditions in South Korea .
—A taste of the rich heritage of Korean puppetry timed for the UNIMA-International World Festival of Puppetry in Korea, preparing anglophone scholars and audiences they encountered in the context of this important quadrennial gathering.
—A significant inscape to ICH/Korean puppetry today

Claudia Orenstein
“Animated Objects in the Work of Ping Chong”
in Elizabeth LeCompte, Ping Chong, Robert Lepage: Multi-Media Interrogations,
ed. by Claudia Orenstein and James Peck
Volume 7 of the Great North American Directors series, Methuen, 2022

—written for a professional audience
—speaks [of] how Chong’s most recent pieces explore Asian American identity within American culture and connect with Asia by means of the puppet
— included references to collaborators. . . an important corrective to the "genius superstar creator/director" myth that often runs rampant
—clear, scholarly and beautiful prose brings this artist [and his work] to life

Lawrence Switsky
“Founders of the Field: Jane Taylor”
Puppetry Research International

—This finely-researched and written, authoritative yet intimate essay brings alive the woman and her significant contributions
—An extraordinary, a skillful combination of chronology and philosophy, precise information and poetic wisdom. It is filled with knowing articulations of what made Jane Taylor so distinctive
—It calibrates the impact of an important scholar, thinker, and contributor to South African and world puppetry