ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

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Illusionistic sketches of two dancers, an acrobat, a singer, and a pianist mix with sketches of three clowns, one a blackface guitar player. The blackface clown’s exaggerated facial features seem almost apelike next to the smooth, naturalistic features of the ballerina. The ballerina’s light cocoa complexion, provocative outfit, and delicate form suggest the cultural hypocricy that made Josephine Baker a star. 196 The whiteface clowns are more exaggerated, suggesting that more humorous displays by the Podrecca marionettes were accomplished by more distorted objects. At a time when only African American female performers with light skin and less visibly ethnic features were enshried with the emblem of stardom, Podrecca’s star puppet is only vaguely stamped with the exaggerations of blackface. At a time when more ethnic-looking actors were relegated to more stereotyped roles, Podrecca’s minstrels are radically ethnicized. Hastings would have been attracted to Podrecca’s variety style. She reported disliking every quality of Remo Bufano’s Orlando Furioso in Fantastic Fricassee except the comedic action, rejecting his “hurriedly made and crudely finished” folk puppets. 197 Bufano’s work, discussed in the next section, was radically experimental. Hastings may have been rejecting what was not, as she perceived it, a lack of artistic integrity, but a lack of realism. But this distinction does not appear to have entered her mind. For her, it seems, professionally made puppets must be realistic. In her guide, she advised 196 One characteristic of white/black relations in America is a cultural politics that make lightskinned African American women acceptable for “celebrity status,” and forced darker women to play domestics or other stock roles. The interesting contradiciton of Josephine Baker’s career is that she was considered a little too dark at first, but later accepted as “light enough.” Discussed throughout: Kathy Russell, Midge Wilson, and Ronald Hall, The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color among African Americans (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992). 197 Dorlis M. Grubidge, Sue Hastings: Puppet Showwoman (North Vancouver: Charlemagne Press, 1993), 28. 149
puppeteers to avoid complicated and expressionistic productions like Peer Gynt and The Emperor Jones. 198 While she occasionally presented works like Crime and Punishment, her revues, specialty acts, and children’s plays outnumbered her serious works more than ten to one. Not surprisingly, therefore, Hastings produced a large number of light-hearted plays with blackface characters. In addition to the four already mentioned, her complete list of such works is as follows: Aunt Jemima and the Pickaninnies, Dance of the Golliwogs, The Golliwog’s Cakewalk, Harlem Madness, Little Black Sambo (1926), The Merry Minstrels, On a Cannibal Isle, and Pickaninny Songs and Dances (1926). Clearly, she was attracted to the type of plays that featured a large percentage of comedic action. What is surprising, however, is that Hastings’s marionettes for such characters were so markedly different from her others. Unlike Lano or Sarg, whose puppets are essentially variations on Lano or Sarg’s characteristic puppet construction filtered through the logic of blackface puppetry, Hastings produced a series of objects that seem suspended in artistic time. Her Cab Calloway puppet, as pictured in an issue of Puppetry, is locked in a pose similar to some of Al Jolson’s solo performances (head titled to the left, open palms on either side of the head facing the audience). It has dark brown “skin” and bright white teeth. Its upper jaw is thick and juts forward, closer in shape to a canine’s snout than a human face. The real Cab Calloway had a slightly triangular nose, but given the breadth of exaggeration and the comparison to Calloway’s skin color, which was fair for an African American, it is unlikely that Hastings based her puppet on 198 Sue Hastings and Dorcas Ruthenburg, How to Produce Puppet Plays (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1940), 26. 150
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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE
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THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF RACIALISM: BLA
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Dedication This dissertation is ded
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Table of Contents Dedication.......
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House and the Brooklyn Academy of M
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Bert O’States expands on the meth
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previous related performances, are
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“blackface” as counterfeit perf
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demands of this transcendent notion
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To manage such an investigation, th
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a celebration of superiority. 20 Th
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playbill, minstrel show script, con
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Lano fancies himself an advocate of
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of the African American race, and s
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in creating the first connection be
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In order to explain the interaction
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performance. 29 Marionette minstrel
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Nonetheless, it maintains the criss
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3), into more complex types. By the
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from the head and leg strings, can
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leased Queen’s Hall in Liverpool
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effectively capture the nonlinear p
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other puppet, is not slack and seem
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was already showing considerable ar
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The Marionettes in Performance The
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of an aged former slave who has esc
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The criminal acts and dishonesty de
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Antislavery songs in a marionette p
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e useful to compare the joke exchan
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the figure, once “folded up prepa
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eginning with a wide variety of mar
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Christy Minstrels, with their reper
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Walter E. Deaves Edwin Deaves, Walt
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some images of minstrel players (re
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Yet, one cannot easily reduce the s
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Daniel Meader Sometime after 1874,
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lackface makeup, rather than authen
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figure 12. His hair is slightly hig
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puppets for the last time, he may s
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The Meader Uncle Tom suggests the e
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Chapter III: David Lano The Essence
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lackface characters for ridicule; h
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doctor. Lano then depicts the black
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A colored quartet now sang. They we
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The Career of David Lano While thre
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Lano’s solo career. One of the la
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human oddities. Like many of its ki
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“continually transforms necessity
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David Lano’s Work Lano’s extant
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such as the kakunga of the Suku peo
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The clothes are a curious blend of
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the age of ten, he presented his ow
Page 105 and 106: Punch murdering the Servant. Lano c
Page 107 and 108: form by introducing sentimental mus
Page 109 and 110: creation on the basis of active mot
Page 111 and 112: divided between the “Sambo” and
Page 113 and 114: Though they share in the appercepti
Page 115 and 116: mild embarrassment on his use of Ji
Page 117 and 118: “The marionette can be anything o
Page 119 and 120: he [can] find them.” 147 Calthrop
Page 121 and 122: of the Moor, who is, though still m
Page 123 and 124: slanted and sharp, the nostrils are
Page 125 and 126: perhaps the beginning puppeteer, wh
Page 127 and 128: taken it from playwright Tsou Ku Ch
Page 129 and 130: figure, who dismisses his complaint
Page 131 and 132: Thus, the structure of the play pre
Page 133 and 134: Chapter V: The Majors The major pup
Page 135 and 136: Bedchamber.” 165 Sarg described:
Page 137 and 138: Critics and fellow puppeteers prais
Page 139 and 140: Sarg and Blackface Though Sarg neve
Page 141 and 142: “Skin me, Brer Fox,” sez Brer R
Page 143 and 144: possibilities of puppetry led him t
Page 145 and 146: was common with the so-called “To
Page 147 and 148: present his particular imaginations
Page 149 and 150: herself in need of independent econ
Page 151 and 152: The Essence of Puppetry for Sue Has
Page 153 and 154: the head to the right and left, to
Page 155: art,” and “a descendent of the
Page 159 and 160: delicate verisimilitude for blackfa
Page 161 and 162: Remo Bufano: The Local Emcees the E
Page 163 and 164: Club’s stage (ca 1932) began with
Page 165 and 166: world culture, including a Medieval
Page 167 and 168: impressive aspects of elaborate, la
Page 169 and 170: capture the great variety of black
Page 171 and 172: tangled a Prime Minister marionette
Page 173 and 174: program continued with a pair of ne
Page 175 and 176: no good messin’ aroun’ wid whit
Page 177 and 178: By inaugurating the action with thi
Page 179 and 180: lackface stereotypes, but also mark
Page 181 and 182: Brown’s puppetry work is enigmati
Page 183 and 184: (Marionette Minstrel Show), and Bru
Page 185 and 186: and personality for her/his creatio
Page 187 and 188: Paris’s semiotic choices introduc
Page 189 and 190: characters were common to the varie
Page 191 and 192: However, the essential realism of t
Page 193 and 194: A ninth grade Art Club in Oshkosh,
Page 195 and 196: the Royal Marionettes, with some re
Page 197 and 198: slips away with his clothes. The ti
Page 199 and 200: the same moment, Mumbo commented on
Page 201 and 202: Munger also introduced a range of a
Page 203 and 204: minstrelsy. They would also permit
Page 205 and 206: yo all arrested.” 249 In the same
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exclamation; “Oh, my lan’! Now
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Tom. Simon Legree was a puppet base
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event led to a full season of produ
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comic context of their puppet plays
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epresentations of blacks would cont
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impressive, and touted his enterpri
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clearly believes that some other pu
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of the play to connect with African
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its length (see figure 52). Finally
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O’Neill’s take on Henri Christo
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audiences, then goes on to suggest
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Chesse’s reading of Brutus was th
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meticulous artistic strokes then, c
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Many of the lost objects may have b
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sketches would be well-served by th
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The FTP production of Little Black
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transmitted to, and circulated with
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Conclusion: Phenomenology, Authenti
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the essence of less grotesque black
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used them in plays where puppets ce
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minstrelsy-derived Topsy, as genuin
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productions featuring blackface cha
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_. Race and Ethnic Relations. 3 rd
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Durham, Weldon B. ed. American Thea
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Hill, Errol. Shakespeare in Sable:
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Mahar, William J. Behind the Burnt
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Powell, Herbert Preston. The World'
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Spurling, Laurie. Phenomenology and
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