ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

people, the painted white dots suggesting shells and the carved multicolored nodes
suggesting beadwork. 114 Once again, Lano has introduced an ostensibly tribal
characteristic that, whether intentionally or not, exoticizes the blackface body.
For Collier’s Punch and Judy, this further marks a logical deviation from the
middle eighteenth-century Jim Crow puppet. Lano particularly chose the John Payne
Collier text for his Punch shows, an interesting choice given that its blackface puppet is a
“Moor.” Lano’s decision to use this version, at a time when the Jim Crow character had
become standard on both continents, further illustrates his commitment to capturing the
“authentic” foreign character of “Negroes.” He may have added the mallet to give the
“Moor” a humorous alternative to African tribal weaponry. A hammer fits nicely with
the bashing fights of Punch shows. Lano may have meant this to be entirely decorative,
since the Collier text never explicitly calls for the Moor to beat Punch with the Moor’s
own weapon. On the other hand, it would not be a drastic transformation of the text for
Lano to allow the exotic mallet to come into play during the Moor/Punch fight. In either
eventuality, its decorative qualities fit equally well with the representation of a then-
antiquated blackface character. Lano cleverly produces a bodily form for his blackface
puppet that is, at its essence, minstrel, faux-tribal, and clown, serving the needs of the
selected Punch text.
Most of Lano’s choices of subject in his lengthy career illustrate a commitment to
the innovative and exotic, often leading him to unusual plays with blackface character
opportunities. When Lano first played a show independent of his grandparents’ troupe, at
114 The cowry shell and beadwork of the Kuba is discussed in: Hultgen and Zeidler, A Taste for the
Beautiful: Zairian Art from the Hampton University Museum (Hampton, VA: Hampton University, 1993).
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