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Puppets: The Original Avatars

Presented by Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts and University of Pennsylvania at University of Pennsylvania

April 13, 2011

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For thousands of years, puppeteers and their audiences have known what Hollywood still hasn't quite mastered: how to breathe life into the inanimate to create a consistent reality. Puppets have historically served as the middlemen between humanity and its gods, inviting viewers to reimagine the world long before motion pictures and computers did. As live theater and cinema battle for audience, what role does the puppet play on stage and on screen? While technology races forward, creating new ways of defining experience, one question sums up the issues: was the puppet Yoda in the original Star Wars saga better than his digital representation in the later movies? Join us for a roundtable discussion featuring reflections, anecdotes, and analysis from some of the world's most notable scholars and practitioners of puppetry: Robert Smythe, Founder of Mum Puppettheatre and the director of Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat with the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra as part of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts at the Kimmel Center; Martin P. Robinson, Puppet performer and designer, and Director of International Puppet Training for Sesame Street; Eileen Blumenthal, Author, Puppetry and Puppets: An Illustrated World Survey, critic for the Village Voice, and Professor of Theater Arts, Rutgers University.

This event is part of the 2011 Philadelphia International Festival Of The Arts (PIFA).