ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

Legree argue socioeconomic theories in commonsense language. Legree reminds
Careless that the slave owner is “a free man” with rights; Careless counters that an
abused servant cannot work very hard (11). Careless twarts Legree’s efforts; Legree exits
to get his hounds. Eliza, played by a Greta Garbo portrait puppet, enters and laments that
slave traders have sold her boy. As she discusses the evils that have been left behind by
history, such as the burning of witches, her presence as Greta Garbo blurs the distinction
between antislavery rhetoric and 1930s efforts toward political equality.
Richardson’s text interacts with his charming puppetry strategies to increase
vertical interest in the play’s sociocultural themes. Uncle Tom does not die; he flees to
freedom with Eliza across the ice. In the final sequence, Simon Legree beats his hound
puppets, focusing on one beast called Little Liberty. The hounds, appropriately, revolt
and attack Legree, symbolizing the rise of the oppressed against the oppressor. In a play
where Topsy is a representation of white American actor Martha Raye and Uncle Tom is
a representation of a living black actor, the revolutionary impulses would have had
immediate reference to the modern world. Richardson’s adaptation shapes what would
otherwise be a nostalgic reproduction of a nineteenth-century abolitionist text so that
audiences could perceive the events before them as part of a larger thematic comment on
modern struggles for social justice.
The context of amateur puppetry encouraged lowbrow artistic projects. However,
as evidenced by the work of Richardson and others, it also led to occasional ventures into
thematically challenging, even socially conscious blackface puppet shows. Weaver
Dallas is a prime example of the latter. In 1927, Weaver Dallas produced a puppet show
based on the “Uncle Remus” stories, at the University of Georgia, Athens. This single
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