ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

the age of ten, he presented his own adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, despite urges from
his parents that: “It was hardly a thing to play in the South.” 115 He decided to press on
with this potentially controversial piece, suggesting an early commitment to ostensibly
African American narratives. In his memoir, he waxed nostalgic about the rustic
simplicity of the production:
My first marionettes were made out of corn cobs and corn husks. Eva was a small
doll. I whittled Simon Legree and St. Clair out of alder wood, and [my sister]
helped me make the costumes. I improvised a stage in the barn, and in May I
hung out my bill, announcing a grand dramatic spectacle, admission ten pins. The
children in the neighborhood were my audience. I played the show three times.
Then I gave my puppets away to members of the audience. 116
From the very beginning, Lano’s artistic activities combined the exotic (at least for 1887
Leesburg) with aggrandized self-promotion only supported by the novelty of the subject
matter. The visual art was crude, if apparently satisfying.
Shortly after setting on his own, the puppeteer found himself in northern Ohio.
After spending the night in a wood, or, as he called it, “the hobo jungle” (a sort of
civilization of homeless poor), he offered a Punch and Judy show to a band of
construction workers who were building a bridge. In return for $1.90, food, and
transportation to Hamilton, Ohio, he presented Punch as the foreman of a crew of
construction workers. This early puppet play demonstrates the most prosaic effects of his
exoticized view of African Americans.
Lano incorporated humorous jibes at the construction foreman with a scene of a
comic “Negro puppet” sawing through a bridge tie. Lano’s description is useful:
115
Paul McPharlin, The Puppet Theatre in America: A History 1524-1948 (Boston: Plays, Inc.,
1949), 205.
32.
116 David Lano, A Wandering Showman, I (East Lansing, MI: Michigan University Press, 1957),
96